Weekend Love: The Adoption Party Edition

I mentioned in yesterday's Round Up that I spent the weekend in Phoenix for a super special
celebration.

On December 3, my best friend and her husband finally adopted the twins they'd fostered for 818 days - since the kids were just 3 days old and are now rambunctious, talkative toddlers. They'd been waiting for this day for SO long in the midst of crazy ass legal crap, lots of lawyer speak, the threats of being taken away, managing the foster system and all the shenanigans that surrounds such a process. I wasn't even in the middle of it (obviously), but listening to Tina go on and on about the ridiculousness of the system just blows my mind - still. Regardless, Jaxson and Jaycee are officially part of the Lyons clan and so this past weekend, Tina and Jon threw a big ol' celebration party to commemorate such a fact! Doug and I had been planning that - whenever it happened - this was one trip to Phoenix we would not miss out on.

It'd been in my calendar for weeks!

Doug and I packed up Thursday night and headed out to Phoenix as soon as I got home from work Friday evening. A disastrous 5.5 hours later, we rolled into their house at 12:45 am (talk about feeling like you're breaking into someone's house, even with the key in hand!) and promptly passed out. Saturday was party day! There's nothing like waking up in a house with two toddlers - I was awake at 7. Mind you, I hadn't seen the kiddos since last February and tell ya what, 11 months makes a huge difference in toddler time - they're now little people! Once they warmed up, chatty, snuggly little people who wanted to have a pillow fight and loved it. My heart.

Doug and I went out for a run mid-day Saturday because the Phoenix weather was perfect and he wanted to get some more decent mileage in before Surf City next weekend. We got back, showered, and headed out for the full purpose of the weekend: party time!

Why yes, that's a cake. Courtesy of Tina's sister, Lisa.

The park is pretty freaking cool and Tina and Jon went all out with a food truck, bounce house and more. The park features a train that takes you all around so, duh, we went on it. Why can't 30 year olds play along too? It was an amazing celebration, complete with family, friends, and even the kids' lawyer came by for a few minutes to say hello and celebrate alongside everyone else. I'm so far away and I know Tina and Jon have had an amazing support system while they've gone through the last two  and a half years, so it was incredible to see the full force come together to celebrate their family of four!

After the party, some friends came over to their house (where we crashed) and had a fire with intedend s'mores (but we never got that far). I crashed first, totally feeling the lack of sleep from Friday night and running around all day with so much fun!

On Sunday, Tina and I rose early (I guess Doug too, though he wasn't as excited about it) for the inaugural Phoenix Women's Half Marathon. I registered for the half as a decent long training run since I hadn't gotten in more than 13 in three weeks, and Tina did the 10K with the kiddos in tow.

More on that later this week, but we had a beautiful morning in Phoenix followed by lunch before Doug and I hit the road back to LA.

A super amazing weekend - filled with love, friends and definite celebrations for the Lyons family. I love them so much and am overjoyed that everything came through in their favor after so long. #togetherweroar will now forever be a thing. :)

How was your weekend? Anything super exciting?