2015 :: week 22

May 24

I made the kids re-take a "Mother's Day" picture with me before we headed to church Sunday. It has been another stormy week. Raining for a day or two with short breaks in between storm systems. Maybe some day it will start feeling like summer.

May 25

We went to our ward's  Memorial Day luncheon at Shawnee Mission Park. The kids had a blast playing with their buddies. Will claims he and his friends caught three snakes. Being that I never saw a snake and no one else made similar claims I have my doubts, but at least he was having a good time. In the late afternoon we made our inaugural visit to the neighborhood pool. Due to the it being early in the season and all the rainwater we've been receiving the water was COLD. But both kids jumped right in and never looked back so we still had a fun time.

May 26

It was a bit windy Tuesday and the kids were dying to go to the pool again. We decided to try a pool with sand so they'd have something to do if it was too cold. Will's sand love picked up right where it left off when we were in Florida last month and he had a great time digging trenches and building various other sand structures until we had to leave.

May 27

I had wanted to take my kids strawberry picking last year and didn't get around to going in time. My facebook feed had been inundated with people and their strawberries over the weekend and Wednesday was the day that worked out best for us to go which worked out nicely because it was also my birthday. I mistakenly chose the wrong route on my google maps app and it took us an extra twenty minutes to get there. It was the hottest day of the week and by the time we got to picking both kids were very hungry (I was too) and hot which made for some mildly grumpy pickers. We got a decent haul, picked up lunch on the way home and headed to the pool.

May 28

The kids built beaver lodges in our living room and played in them for several hours throughout the wet, gray Thursday. Will's in the one near the couch somewhere buried somewhere underneath all the blankets and pillows.

May 29

We ended up with a lot of fresh, ripe strawberries from our picking throughout the week (we went again with my sister Emily and her family Friday morning). After we put the kids in bed Anthony and I made 96 ounces of freezer jam. I recruited TJ to help me because jam is one of those things where you need a cook with an exacting eye. Precision in the kitchen isn't really my thing. Even though his attention to detail annoyed me a few times (it was late), it did come in handy as ALL of our jam set. Last time I made jam it did not set properly.

May 30

I mentioned that we've received a lot of rain this week. I think it has only not rained 4 days this May. Anyway, ss soon as Will realizes it has rained he's off to the back yard to collect worms. His love of worms has been passed on to Lauren as she has started to collect worm after it rains too.  Please look past all the weeds. This area of our yard is not a high priority.

2015 :: week 21

May 17

The mock orange bush in our yard has finally bloomed. We do nothing to encourage its growth, but look forward to its beauty each year.

May 18

This girl has princesses on the brain all the time. Here she is thinking about her plans for the summer while chewing on Ariel's hair.

May 19

I took my glucose test on Tuesday...and PASSED. I wasn't super stressed about it, but it is always good to have it done. I got really bad acid reflux after consuming the drink, but it's hard to find something that doesn't give me acid reflux these days.

May 20

Wednesday afternoon I hired a babysitter and Anthony and I met up at the Liberty Memorial. I bought a groupon for half price admission a few months back and of course, forgot to use it until the day it expired (which was Tuesday). We took the kids with us but it was a struggle, but the tickets were good for two back-to-back days the museum was opened so we decided to come back by ourselves. We had a fun time and have been scouring wikipedia and crash course history youtubes to supplement what we learned.

May 21

Thursday was Will's last day of preschool. He was in Ms. Lindsey's class for 2 years and we are sure gong to miss her and Mr. Laura and Ms. Elizabeth next year when he starts Kindergarten. His class put on a short "graduation" program and then we participated in some outdoor activities with the rest of the school. Summer has started!

May 22

My friend Emilee is due to have a baby any day now so some friends from the ward got together at Peachwave to celebrate her baby and eat some frozen yogurt.

May 23

Anthony and I worked hard in our yard Saturday morning cleaning out the gutters, mowing the lawn, weeding and putting out new mulch. Then we met up with friends at the farmstead in the afternoon and paid our dues with our babysitting swap and watched 6 additional kids in the evening.

2014 :: week 20

May 10

I wanted to get a nice Mother's Day picture with the kids in front of our flowers, but it started pouring rain about an hour before church. I had to settle for a picture on the fireplace. I also had to settle for a picture with a mad Will. When I picked his glasses up the night before one of the sides fell off in my hand. He was very upset with me for breaking his glasses, never mind the fact that the were basically broken when I picked them up to clean them. He's upset in this picture because I tried to get him to wear his old glasses to church and he thought they "felt weird." We left immediately from church to drop Anthony off at the airport and both kids fell asleep in the car. Late afternoon naps are not a great way to start off a week. That night neither child went to bed easily or fell asleep quickly, so I got to spend the entire day with them. Good thing I love them so much. :)

May 11

Lauren and I ran errands to get ready for our trip while Will was at school Monday afternoon. We stopped at the library and couldn't resist putting a few puzzles together. Lauren has gotten very into puzzles recently. She gets out a puzzle or two (or more) at least once a day. She's getting quite good and has declared herself a "puzzle expert." She'll do wood puzzles like this one, but more often than not she puts together our floor puzzles or a 48-piece Frozen puzzle (with a little help) she received at Tony's work.

May 12

The kids and I flew through Nashville to Washington DC Tuesday and to meet up with Anthony. He had another full week of work away and we wanted to get in on the fun. Our flights went about as well as I could have realistically hoped they would (I did not get to sleep). When we arrived in DC we took the metro to Rosslyn and met TJ who helped us find our hotel. Then we quickly left and headed to Union Station to board a train to Baltimore and the Orioles game. That day we traveled by car (to the airport), plane (from KC to DC), metro (airport to hotel and hotel to union station), train (DC to Baltimore) and van (friend Kevin drove us back to our hotel). Will was very pleased with the various modes of transportation we used.

May 13

After Anthony finished with work Wednesday evening we made our first visit to the National Zoo. Most of the free stuff in DC closes at 5:30pm, but the zoo grounds are open until 8pm. All of the buildings were closed, as were the shops and dining, but you could still walk around and see a few animals. The highlights of our evening zoo trip were a roaring lion, tigers, elephants, bald eagles and sea lion.

May 14

My friend Nikki and her kids met us at the Air and Space Museum Thursday afternoon. It was pretty crowded so after about an hour we took the kids outside and let them play on the mall. Will's favorite activity was to chase birds and Lauren's favorite thing to do was forage "dinner" for her bunny. Will had been looking forward to this museum the most out of all the things we were going to do in DC, but when I asked him what his favorite part of the day was he said, "making a new friend."

May 15

Friday night we finally got around to visiting the monuments. There was no way I was going to take the kids to DC and not get pictures of them at the White House, etc. The weather was gorgeous and despite a few setbacks, we had a great evening.

May 16

The last thing we did in DC before racing to the airport was visit the other air and space museum in Virgina. Pictured behind the kids is the space shuttle Discovery. At this point in the trip the kids were not humoring my picture taking very well.

2014 :: week 19

May 3

Often when we arrive home and get out of the car Lauren likes to slip in a tricycle ride around our driveway. I snapped this picture of her riding and our yard after church on Sunday. We did some yard work on Saturday mowing and weeding and in combination with the several bushes blossoming at the same time, our yard has never looked better. I'm glad I took this picture because with all the thunderstorms and hail we had this week our pretty azalea blossoms have since been crushed and fallen off.

May 4

Monday afternoon I bought a new double stroller. Our sit and stand works great for our trips to and from the pool, but doesn't have a great turning radius and I was getting worried about pushing it by myself around DC. A friend of mine posted that she was selling this gem after a trip to Disneyland so I decided to snatch it up. The kids seem to like it and it is much easier to maneuver.

May 5

Anthony left Sunday afternoon to spend the week in Boston for work. Luckily he was able to spend some time with his parents too. Tuesday night they went to a Red Sox game together. It isn't very often that he gets to spend time alone with his parents.

May 6

Lauren and I took some selfies to send to Anthony because we were missing him Wednesday afternoon while Will was at school. Lauren really tested my patience this week. I thought Wednesday was bad and things only got worse as the week went on.

May 7

I had hoped to take the kids to the park Thursday before it rained, but just as I got the energy up to plan a trip it started to rain. It rained pretty intensely for about 5 minutes and we even saw small pieces of hail. It slowed down for a few minutes and the kids had fun splashing around in the small puddles that accumulated on our driveway and yard. Unfortunately the damage was done and it was much to wet for us to venture out to the park.

May 8

We did a little shopping Friday evening. The kids love the small carts at Trader Joe's and against my better judgement I let them each use one. I had a hard time keeping them close once they spied the long, open aisles.

May 9

We were all pretty happy to have Anthony back today. For some reason this week was harder than most. Will and Anthony sorted the baseball cards alphabetically by team. Lauren just wanted to be close to her dad.

FLO RIDA

Sometimes giving in to peer pressure is a good thing. Like, when your sister tells you she is going to spend a long weekend visiting another sister in Florida at the end of April and suggests that you go too. Once the idea was out there I couldn't get it off my mind. Thanks to a slew of variables falling into place we spent almost five days on the Gulf Coast of Florida and had a great time.

We caught an insanely early flight to Pensacola and then drove about 45 minutes to Melanie's home in Navarre, arriving around 11:30am. The kids were incredibly excited about waking up "when it was still dark."

Luckily they caught a little shut eye on the plane.

We were excited to see Leah, brand new cousin born February 17th, and see the area that Melanie and Andrew call home these days. We ate lunch and then were off to the beach!

We had such a fun afternoon at the beach! It was the kids' first time in the ocean and they loved it! I was worried it was going to be a letdown, we'd been talking about going to the ocean a lot in the days and weeks leading up to our trip, but they both had a total blast wading into the waves and playing in the sand. We only left because we were all exhausted and starting to wilt.

Even though we rinsed off in the ocean, then again in the showers on the dock, we still found ourselves covered with sand when we got back to Melanie's place. We all took a bath or shower, slept, then enjoyed a relaxing evening with the Staritas. The boys played baseball while the girls watched Tangled. Will was excited to find tiny frogs on the outside windows as it started to get dark.

We all slept well that night.

We started the morning off slowly and then headed back to the beach. The only unfortunate part of our stay was that thunderstorms and rain were in the forecast at least part of every day we were there, meaning we had to plan our beach trips around them.

 Lojo was a little too nonchalant for my liking around the jellyfish we found washed up on the shore.

Another great day at the beach! It was much hotter than it had been the day before, and the lost sleep was starting to catch up with the kids, so after a few hours we headed home.

It rained quite a bit that afternoon while we clean up and rested.  Lauren never liked to be far from Leah's side. She often referred to her as "Melanie's precious baby" during our time there.

Then Melanie and I headed to the airport to pick up Jill and then everyone went out to eat some delicious barbeque.

(A picture from their practice session)

Sunday we went to church and Melanie and Andrew treated us to an inspiring musical number. Our kids went to primary AND attended their classes. They are shy enough I wasn't sure they would go without knowing anyone in their classes, but they did. Melanie is in the primary presidency and she took this picture of the kids getting the "Hello Song" sung to them. Lauren still talks about people singing hello to her.

After Sunday naps and dinner we went to the beach with the intention of taking a gorgeous evening walk along the shore. Turns out it is harder to keep the kids dry at the beach than I thought it would be.

 I just can't believe this is a 5 minute drive from Melanie's house?!?!

Root beer floats in over-sized containers and visiting rounded out a fun night.

The forecast for Monday was pretty bleak, so we headed to the beach right after breakfast. We only saw 3 other people the entire time we were there.

 

The water was perfectly warm, but it was breezy enough outside you had to commit. Once you got in the water you pretty much had to stay in it because the wind cooled you off pretty fast. Will opted to never submerge and had great time. Lauren went straight into the water and then suffered in a towel the last half hour we were there. We heard thunder and lightning while we played on the beach and finally decided we better head back.

We were really hoping the storm would pass quickly and we would be able to go on a harbor cruise in the afternoon. Unfortunately once it started the rain never really stopped. The kids played with Leah and worked on puzzles while we decided what to do. We decided to check out the National Museum of Naval Aviation and headed to Pensacola for the rest of the afternoon.

By the time we got there we only had about 45 minutes to explore. You really needed a couple of hours to do the place justice. Will was fascinated by all the jets and asked tons of questions. 

The rain cleared up while during our drive home and as it was our last night we decided to check out the Navarre Pier.

 

According to Wikipedia, the Navarre Pier is the longest pier in Florida. We saw lots of cool sea birds, fish and even a sea turtle swimming off the side. There were tons of fishermen and we saw two reel in King Mackerels. The kids were both fascinated and a bit horrified.

That night the kids played with Leah, we ate some delicious homemade pizza, played nertz and had one last round of root beer floats.

Our flight was scheduled to leave Tuesday night, so we had one last chance to get on a cruise. Many thanks to Anthony and his diligent efforts in tracking down the ONE dolphin/shelling cruise that left and returned in time for us to clean up and make our flight.

Due to the storm we didn't see very many dolphins. Luckily there were just enough that the kids were able to see them.

The unexpected highlight of the cruise was the shelling excursion. Tony and I were silently wondering if the price we paid was worth it until we were able to get off the boat and explore the tide pools off of Okaloosa Island. To say the kids has a blast would be an understatement. Though initially nervous, Will very quickly got into hunting for hermits crabs. He ended up finding over thirty! Lauren loved basking in the sand and shallow water, calling herself both a sand monster and a mermaid.

 25 week bump

Hermit crab race once we were back on board.

After the cruise we headed back to Melanie's to clean up and then head to the airport. We were not excited to be leaving, but at least we had a great time! Many thanks to Andrew, Melanie, Jill and Leah for making our trip a smashing success!

Bye, Florida!

As with most of our trips to visit family, we always wish we lived closer together. But, having family live around the U.S. is giving us reasons to explore parts of the country we don't see often. Will in particular is very interested in United States geography and wants to visit every state ASAP. So, Minnesota, Utah, Boston, Michigan and North Carolina--we're coming for you!