Adventure Through the Alphabet

It’s hard to believe that Friday marked one year since our beautiful girl came home. During the millions of hours I had to think while I held her in the NICU and awaited her arrival home, I started making plans. Big plans, small plans, plans I instantly forgot about and ones I just knew I had to follow through on. Love Lesson Clothing and a little something I like to call An Adventure Through the Alphabet were among those “Just Had To” plans.

At the ages of 8 and 9 my sister and I became the luckiest girls in the world. Our grandparents adopted us. The beginning was messy (completely unbeknownst to us), but they made it look pretty. They took us into a whole new world. A world of laughter, experience and travel. A world of complete, unconditional love and opportunity. A world of Adventure.

We went from underprivileged and under supervised to having the whole world opened to us. It was exhilarating ! Life became an adventure and when I got to an age a few years later that I realized someday I wanted children of my own, I began planning. Planning what kind of Mom I’d be; kind, patient, understanding, encouraging and adventurous. All things my perfect example of motherhood, my grandma, had been for me.

That first summer after G&G took us, we traveled for four months straight. We “got the hell out of dodge” as my grandpa liked to say. We spent that summer exploring the entire western half of the United States. The fifth wheel had been packed and the trip had been planned. It was incredible ! We saw things we had no idea even existed in this world, let alone our own country. Our teeny tiny concept of life had just been blown wide open. We went from school days followed by a dark apartment and top ramen for dinner (again), to every day being an outdoor adventure. We learned about the Native American Indians by visiting the site where the Battle of Little Big Horn took place in Montana. We learned about our country’s national bird, the Bald Eagle, by observing it in it’s natural habitat; perched atop a tree high above the Madison River we were floating down in my Great Grandpa’s old drift boat. We saw Quake Lake and drove through trees bigger than my life had been for it’s first eight years. That summer changed me as a person. It instilled a need to be outdoors, a need to explore and a call for bigger plans.

Fast-forward two decades and there I was staring at my own perfect person and I just knew she deserved that same adventure. I wanted her to not only see the world, but learn it – by living it. And so was born this idea of an Adventure through the Alphabet. Starting at 18 months old (where did my baby go ?) I am introducing her to the world one letter at a time. So February has become all about “A”. We kicked off the month by checking out some of the local Attractions in one of our favorite states, Arizona.

We will be incorporating A’s into all areas of our lives this month, so follow along here on the blog or jump to Instagram to follow along through our photos - the Adventure is just beginning !