Over the past few years, we’ve been blessed with the chance to travel all over the world. Oftentimes one of the sweetest parts has been traveling with friends, who we always seem to become closer with as a result of traveling together. Few things, we found, test friendship like hunger and sleep-deprivation in a foreign country do! It either makes your friendship stronger. Or it breaks you. (Fortunately, Ryan knows how to cook and fix things –– good ol’ southern boy! –– so, in this case, traveling with them not only made us stronger… but probably kept us alive!)
It’s no secret how much we love Anna and Ryan, and traveling with them is definitely one of our favorite things. Now that we’re both in our third trimester with our first babies though, instead of traveling somewhere exotic for a babymoon, we just wanted to stay home… and spend time with each other. Arizona is beautiful this time of year, and so, they flew out from snowy Virginia to our 70-degree temps, and we did something we’ve never done in all of our years living in Scottsdale: we booked a massage at a local resort! We got in big fluffy robes, the girls got prenatal massages and we spent most of the day going back and forth between the free prickly pear lemonade stand, and the pregnancy-approved 95-degree jacuzzi! Along with our spa day, the thing we loved most was just spending quality time together, our last days in person for a while,  reminiscing about how life’s been as parties of two, and dreaming about how it’ll be as families of three.
Anna and Ryan, the next time we see you, it’s still surreal to think you’ll have your baby boy in your arms! Since neither of us have much experience as parents yet, we don’t have much advice to offer each other. So we’ll leave you with this encouragement instead: If you’re as intentional as you’ve been in your friendships as you are in your relationship with your son, he’ll be one the luckiest little boys around. Because like Scripture says, “Every good tree bears good fruit.” And aside from the obvious literal fact (that Ryan is built like an actual tree), as far as souls are concerned, you two are some of the stablest, sturdiest, best producing trees we know. We love you and your little boy so much, and we’re so glad we snuck in enough time to snap a few photos to freeze this joyful season of expecting together.