We always make it out to visit our immediate families in their homes once annually since they live out in Arizona and California literally across the giant United States. Jenny’s sister lives out in Arizona with her husband and their dogs and Jenny’s parents also live out there (as do Jenny’s 9 of aunts & uncles and one of her cousin’s large families). Jenny’s parents often come out to the state just across the border from us (in a house 45 minutes north of us) for half a year to the lake house her grandparents used to own (RIP), but her sister only comes out here to Indiana a couple times a year- often 4th of July & a college football game in the fall. Jason’s twin brother & his wife visited us 10 months after we moved back here to the Midwest and his dad visited just a couple months later at our 1 year mark as we were moving into our house in Indiana, but no one on his side has visited us in almost 4 years, so us visiting them is the only time we get to see them throughout the year. (We tried to offer to fly his mom & grandma out to us this Christmas to see us in our house that we bought 3.5 years ago, but they didn’t take us up on it since his grandma is in her mid-80s and they worried about physical health).
Due to everyone being so far away, we make it a point to go out and visit for a Christmas trip. One Christmas about 4 years ago we piled in about 6 visits to family from Arizona to California in a TWO DAY SPAN from New Year’s Eve to Christmas, but it burnt us all the way out and was ridiculously short for time visiting each family member. Due to this AND due to our often working 7 days a week in December for our clients with our business (this- photography), we most often opt for a mid-January 2 to 3 week belated Christmas visit to our families- some years only to California since we see Jason’s portion of the immediate family the least. Last year was an odd one though wherein we decided not to visit for Belated Christmas and instead visited Jenny’s family in Arizona for Easter (seeing the 7 aunts & uncles, her siblings, the dog, her parents) and then visited Jason’s family twice within a month between August and September since his brother’s baby daughter had a Baby Shower & we then rolled a wedding in California with the trip to see her right after her birth-!
This year Jenny’s sister is pregnant & due in 4 months, so though we saw both immediate families in Arizona & California a month ago in January, Jenny will be going back to Arizona in a couple months for the Baby Shower and then we’ll likely go for the birth as well (amid wedding season, so based around our clients’ weddings obviously). We’re sad that we’ll miss out on a lot of family the rest of the year since it’s possible that between our immediate families we may only see Jenny’s mom or both parents at all quickly in May (maybe part of June) here when they come to Michigan, but with running a business we can only swing the trips that we make to them annually and cannot control when others come to visit (which is obviously made harder with the having of kids and ALL of us having 2 dogs each).
For this last trip we started in Arizona for 5 days. There were only 4 flights out of the local airport 8 minutes from our house to them in Arizona for the entire month of January, so that helped us narrow down our dates tremendously. We got in late, late on a Saturday night, slept, packed again, and went to hang out with Jenny’s sister and her husband for his birthday the next day! (We were thrilled that Jenny’s parents left their Christmas decorations & lights up outside and inside that week & a half into January, btw!) That first full day in Arizona day we enjoyed his birthday at Midieval Times (his first time), got to see their new (first ever) house for the first time, then played with the dogs at their house. We photographed Pregnancy Announcement photos for them and planned the rest of the week before we slept over in their guest bedroom.
The next day we caught up with Jenny’s 7 aunts & uncles on her dad’s side. Her aunt hosted it, so we went over there, said hi to her dog, and enjoyed a great lunch with everyone (including her parents). We also got to see her 4 aunts & uncles from her mom’s side to celebrate her aunt’s birthday a few days later, so it was a family-filled visit seeing 15 of Jenny’s family members in Arizona! ((We also got to see our mutual friend from Professional Photography school down in Phoenix (though we didn’t take any photos because we were all laughing so hard together, so that was a huge treat at a cafe about an hour away)).
The following day Jenny’s sister took off of work and we spent the day with her. That day we did a bit of hiking in the desert, shopped a bit at a Mexican store, ate Raising Cane’s, and more!
While in Arizona, Jenny’s aunt who’d hosted the party also encouraged us to go up to Flagstaff and Sedona where her new-ish apartment was. She couldn’t make it, but we did go up to Flagstaff, hung out on a semi-snowy melting mountain at the ski resort, and shopped a bit after enjoying a favorite of ours: Pita Pit. Sedona was gorgeous as always, so we stayed the night at her aunt’s apartment and we enjoyed thrifting in the cities we passed through the next day.
When we returned from Flagstaff & Sedona it was Jenny’s aunt (on her mom’s side)’s 70th birthday, so we joined Jenny’s parents and 3 of her aunts & uncles in from Indiana and went out to birthday dinner with them! We’d already had dinner with them a few days prior earlier in the week for a pasta dinner that aunt made at her home, so it was good seeing them again! While there in Scottsdale we also made Jenny’s parents British “clotted cream” through the 2 to 3 day process and left that for them as a gift to enjoy eating!
After 5 days in Arizona we headed to California after getting our rental car. We made the 7 hour drive a casual day and stopped off to enjoy gem and stone shopping as well as plant shopping-! We somehow got swept up in looking at stones for 5 hours and ate up even more time stopping off to get exotic plants for family members!
On part of our drive we visited with dinosaurs! (Jenny would always pass these when driving from California to Arizona to go to family holidays from fall 2012 to fall 2015)!
Once we got in to Jason’s mom, grandma, & uncle’s house, we went off to get groceries and cooked them 2 different unique pastas from scratch! We’d been meaning to make these recipes, but never had time (one being a recipe from one small city in Italy Jenny once lived in), so we figured this “break” was as good a time as ever-! Jason’s uncle had been in the hospital just a couple days earlier for his diabetes, so the mood there was a little somber, but it was great starting off with California leg with making pasta from scratch for his family and catching up with everyone-!
Our trip in California was about 6 days, so on the first full day, we headed an hour up to go see Jason’s brother and his brother’s baby daughter! Their “new” city was very green as opposed to the deserts that we’d just 7 days in, so it was nice to see the Southern California winter green.
His brother’s wife was at a bachelorette party for the day an hour South, so we made the day an adventure day in nature heading first an hour north to try to catch a Farmer’s Market in Santa Barbara, grabbed tea & coffee, then headed to the beach for lunch, then ended at another gorgeous cliff side park for sunset. We haven’t held many babies outside of our clients’ babies for Newborn Portrait Sessions, so it was interesting getting used to 2 pups and a 4 month old baby all together!
We even captured some professional portraits of our niece in nature- sort of her 4 Month Infant Portraits-!
We made a vegetarian dinner for his brother & they worked on a clock that had been their grandpa’s.
That next day his brother’s wife was back very early in the morning, so we all headed off to hike to a waterfall, then headed to eat Mexican food for lunch. It was a great day and we spent more time with niece Ellie!
That night we watched a series on Netflix and relaxed with them which was awesome. Following the couple days up with them, we then headed down to Los Angeles as planned. It was only a little more than an hour away, but because Ellie was only 4 months old and the area would be very, very crowded with people shoulder to shoulder in Santee Alley, Jason’s siblings opted to not go down and instead they enjoyed their holiday Monday off.
In L.A. as usual we went to Santee Alley & Little Tokyo. We made it a tradition a couple years ago and really enjoy those things while in Los Angeles. That evening we headed up to our old home city of Santa Barbara 1.5 hours north to see Jason’s best friend who graciously hosted us in their little back house!
The next day we brought his friend lunch at work, hung out there on the beach side cliffs for a bit, thrifted, then went rollerblading by the beach!
Jason had never been rollerblading in Santa Barbara, so since Jenny’s friend introduced her to it when they all lived in SB, we had a blast cruising along the beach! It took forever to find thrift roller blades that fit Jason for $5, but we did succeed!
That evening we met his best friend & his wife at their home again and headed to dinner before the International Film Festival! We went to check out the Animated Shorts there at the festival and absolutely loved it! Jenny’s friend had introduced her to them 7 years ago and we’d gone many years in a row to them as they evolved over the years! Jenny even accidentally sat directly next to the actor Christopher Lloyd (from Back to the Future, Taxi, etc) which was insane! That night we again stayed at his friends Bryan & Annika’s guest house, then we headed out in the morning.
The next day we packed up and headed back to Jason’s mom & grandma a couple hours away-! On our way down we bought some vintage plant pots & amazingly unique desert agave, succulents, and other plants for our families and ourselves. Once to his family we enjoyed seeing their cat, 3 dogs, and 2 birds there as well.
We also went to visit a large cat sanctuary with Jason’s mom and reunited with one of Jason’s friends who works at a plant nursery! We definitely loaded the rental car to the brim with many plants for our families and ourselves! All of the plants pictured here are only a portion of the plants we bought!
It was nice to spend a few days & a couple nights there with Jason’s immediate family. We got a good 6 days in with his immediate family and a good 5 days in with Jenny’s immediate family (with a good few days of adventure to 4 other cities to see a few other friends strewn in there). It’s pretty crazy that our families live mainly in the desert out West- a far cry from our soggy, wet Midwest that teems with a plethora of vegetation. On our last day we headed back to Arizona to return our rental car and catch our flight.
In Santa Barbara, CA we’d grabbed our favorite paper (The Independent) and found an image that we’d edited a person out of and another person into within the paper randomly! It was cool to see the photo in print! We also stumbled upon the manzano pepper again- a pepper that we accidentally bit into 4 months prior in Big Sur while heading to see Jason’s niece. Jason grabbed another couple for the nice memory of blazing hot, sweet apple-y pepper.
We also this time went IN to the dinosaurs we visited on our way from Arizona to California a week earlier! We’d never been inside of the dinosaur gift shop and it was really cool to be standing INSIDE of the massive dinosaur statue high off of the ground!
When back to Arizona in our final hours there, we again visited Jenny’s aunt & her dog, then had breakfast the next morning with Jenny’s entire immediate family at her parents’ house.
It was nice getting to sit in a hot tub for a couple nights in the desert and visit with our immediate families. We wish that our combined 6 doggos could all play together and that we could be closer to our siblings, but are happy that our business is here because we love our garden, clients, our house, and the area.
On our way home we enjoyed the gorgeous small airport near Jenny’s parents’ house that has a gorgeous middle-of-the-airport outdoor area and also enjoyed children toys and Mexican snacks on the plane! When we got back that last week of January in winter, we sadly returned to a rainy, wet Midwest. Though only 3 hours from Canada, global warming has really done a number on our area which has resulted in pretty much no snow this winter as well as a YEAR FULL OF RAIN CONSTANTLY IN EVERY SEASON- EVEN WINTER!
Post-trip we cleaned our house for 3 hours straight the late night we got back and reunited with our pets. 3 of our family members gifted us belated Christmas gifts while we were out West, so Jenny’s mom graciously packed and shipped those to us after the trip since we already told everyone that we didn’t have even an inch of space in our tiny bags on the discount flights. It was nice to get re-settled after we did a deep-clean of our house and pets. In the time since our trip we caught up on any orders that we missed from clients over those 2 weeks, printed & sent those out, had wedding consultations for more 2020 and 2021 weddings, and set up even more upcoming wedding consultations. We’ll soon be printing more Wedding Invitations for clients, designing a final 2019 physical wedding album, sending out 3 final orders from shoots at the end of December (have been waiting for clients to choose their prints), and sending out the 2 last sets of Wedding Boxes to two 2019 weddings who at the end of 2019 didn’t have time to choose their printed photos. We have let our pups enjoy the only “big” snow we’ve had since we returned which was less than a week ago, watched again as all the snow melted, and enjoyed this past weekend of Valentine’s Day at the ski slopes up in Michigan, then bowling in Indiana (things we hadn’t done in 17 & 13 years respectively).
Coming up next Weekly Wednesday we’ll be sharing some of the gorgeous products that we made in the past year for clients! We generally only remember/ have time to photography the physical albums that we create for them, but we’ll dig through to see what we can find in the archive of client products that we’ve remembered to professionally photograph before shipping it all out-! **Catch ya back here next Weekly Wednesday!