Sure has been quiet around here. Our little dude is growing up fast for us, probably slow for him. And the saying of the days are long but the years are short has never been more true!
Mrs. RTW gave me plenty of free time to go have solidarity with the fellas and I can not thank her enough as you can see we have been having a blast!
Being a new parent can be a mental mind funk from time to time (I tried to find a nicer way to say it, but the thesaurus doesn’t seem to help with slang). Thankfully EmSue has saved my sanity on multiple occasions by taking Miles to see his grandparents giving me a chance to head-out into wilderness for some rebalancing.
How in the world has it been over a year since our last blog post?! Trust us, we have been asking ourselves this…and well the answer is that we have been busy living life with our little man.
2017 was a year of firsts for not only Miles but also for us as new parents. From being a couple who loves to travel and experience epic adventures we have since morphed into a little family still having grand adventures; just that those now involve bringing things like diapers, sippy cups, and white noise machines. Before starting a family, a 10 mile hike into the woods was a “walk in the park”, nowadays we spend most of our time literally in a park running after a toddler who somehow has more energy than the energizer bunny. 
Yes, things are different these days and though the saying goes “nobody likes change”, this little guy has shown us that it is possible to feel more feelings than we thought were possible all at once and amplified times a million…love, frustration, guilt, anxiety, happiness, longing, jealousy and exhaustion…yes, yes, we are still very tired. At the end of the day we are blessed by this little blue eyed tow head and we can’t wait to watch him grow up.
Cheers to having more fun trips (vacations?!?) and epic adventures in 2018!
Rocky Mountain National Park
Prescott Arizona July 4th
2016… I can’t count the number of times I have heard someone say they have hated this past year and that 2017 can’t get here fast enough. For some this was a year filled with loss. Yes, we did lose many iconic people this year…Bowie, Prince, George Michael, Carrie Fisher just to name a few. Then there was the Presidential Election…ugh can’t even go there. For us though 2016 was not so much a year of loss…unless you are talking about sleep 
This year was a little different for us. Instead of loss, we gained. Our baby, the one we have wished for these past few years made his grand debut in September. Our son, Miles, “graced” us with his presence on a late Saturday evening. In fact, he came into this world 1 day before his big sister Grace’s original due date that was supposed to be 2 years prior. A time of year that had once been associated with sadness and grief, now will be so special and hold a positive light for years to come.
I am not gonna sugarcoat it…this having a baby thing is no joke. It is hard! Some people may think that leaving your job, selling your possessions and taking off into the big unknown world is hard. NOPE, that is easy. Of course Miles has definitely not been an “easy” baby. He’s given us a run for our money as new parents by being colicky right from the start (even now as I type this just minutes before 2017… yay happy new year to us ~ agghhhhhh). Sometimes we think maybe being married for 10 years before having a baby made us selfish and made it more difficult for us to adapt to parenthood. Maybe or maybe not… but either way Dustin and I like to joke that parents out there aren’t telling other future parents about the reality of starting a family and how tough it can be to adjust 
I will say though that each day gets a little bit easier. When Miles laughs and smiles we forget about the long, sleepless nights. And I will add that those sleepless nights are still in full force even now as he approaches 4 months and I am back to work full time. I understand completely now why sleep deprivation is considered a form of severe torture. However, I know this too shall pass and I have heard we will forget these hard times and even (gasp) miss them years from now. In any event, we have been extremely blessed with a HEALTHY baby boy who is growing like a weed and teaching us so much about ourselves as individuals and as parents. We love you, Miles!!
2017 is going to be a new year like no other for us as a family. We can’t wait to get Miles out there to start seeing the world! We can already tell he loves to travel and be outside just like his parents… How do we know this you ask?? Well, for one thing he has been best behaved when we have been either on an airplane or outside in nature!! So first on the agenda is getting him his own passport.
Typically in years past our New Year’s blog post lists our resolutions (or really goals) for the upcoming year. So here it goes…
Goals for our family…
Miles’s Goals for 2017 (his firsts)
We wish everyone reading this a VERY Happy New Year!! With so much love and thankfulness for the amazing year we had, we can’t wait to see what is in store in 2017!
Love,
Emily Sue, Dustin, Baby Miles & Vegas 
The problem with renting a Jeep in Hawaii is that it becomes your third wheel and eventually your companion, so much so that when you get back home to normal life you feel incomplete without one. This results in spending more money for a daily impractical vehicle and leaves you yearning for even more adventure.
It all started out before we departed Whistler halfway through our two week vacation of 2015. We had this very fuel economical (read cheapest) econo cereal box of a car that was going to be so cost effective for our week long rental that we could laugh in the faces of the $5/gallon fuel prices of being on the Big Island. As with most our travel procrastination we waited until the day before going somewhere to figure out what sightseeing we would want to do once we arrived. The shortlist for the Big Island quickly revealed endless amounts of waterfalls, Waipio Valley, Volcano National Park, and Mauna Kea Volcano summit. Here is the rub though, two of those places require 4wd to access them and once you see the cost for a one person tour to the top of the Volcano you quickly feel a drop in the gut that you won’t be seeing the summit without hiking to the top of the 13,800′ peak.
This all led to the bright idea on the day of flying to Hawaii to just see if rates were still as high when we originally reserved our econo-box weeks before. This is actually always a good tip as dramatic savings can be had one day before arrival for your same rental period ~ unlike airlines. SCORE for the same price as our 1972 VW Bug rental we can rent a 4wd 2015 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited 4 door for the week!
Everywhere across the internets you will find companies on the Big Island scaring you to death about taking your own rental car up to the summit of Mauna Kea and down into the valley of Waipio and if this scares you then you should probably heed their warnings. But…. Now this next part I can’t actually advise you to do as you would be breaking your rental agreement contract, but beyond mentioning that your contract actually says you can’t leave any “paved road”, which is just their disclaimer way of saying if you F’it up it’s on you $$$. If you can get over that then this is where the magic of your third wheel becoming your companion for the trip.
