a day in our life...

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

A little girl + lip gloss = a sticky, sparkly mess

Sydney has all but given up on taking naps in the afternoon. I still "encourage" (it sounds better than demand or require ;)) her to have some rest or some quiet time in her room. She usually will read or play and as long as she's quiet, it's fine with me. (It's important to note that recently a friend of mine got me hooked on a trilogy of books that pretty much consumed my mind, therefore consuming every free, quiet moment I had during the day. So, nap time became even more precious while I tried to read as much as possible while I had some free time. :)) With this in mind...when I heard movements from Sydney, I confess, I did not go up to check on her because it sounded like all of her other "nap time" movements--I assumed she was just hanging out quietly in her room. She was hanging out...she was being quiet...but she was up to no good.

She had found lip gloss. Sparkly, gooey, Victoria's Secret, vanilla scented lipgloss in her drawer. Stuff that she never wears, has never asked to wear...and apparently thought it was to be used as lotion. She was literally covered from head to toes in sticky, vanilla, sparkly lipgloss. It was in her hair. Her ears (I later discovered at bath time that night). Her eye lids even had the sparkly goop. As much as I was unhappy with what she did...as you can see I went against my better judgment and documented this moment. But I knew that this would be something that we could both look back on and smile about later. :)

As a testament to the quality and "durability" of the lipgloss...VS sure knows what they're doing. We scrubbed and scrubbed and couldn't get all of the stuff removed. She was quite sparkly for a few days. ;)

Monday, July 16, 2012

Boys and their toys

When we had Gavin, I knew that this poor boy was being thrown in to the world of a girly girl. Of course he had more "masculine" books (I branched out when he was first born and bought some truck/emergency vehicle/firetruck books that are favorites even today), etc. But understandably, for awhile the majority of the toys in our house were mostly girly. We even tried to evade the whole princess phenomenon with Sydney by trying not to feed into and it still sucked her right in (I think it is partially innate!). So when Gavin grew old enough to move around and eventually started becoming interested in Sydney's "things" I found it quite entertaining when he'd wear a necklace or choose a Dora book over an animal book. Then my little boy continued to grow and somewhere along the lines he was introduced to trucks (I think it was actually a combination of hand-me-down Tonka trucks and new Caterpillar trucks from Aunt Ginny and Michael!) He's never looked back. Now he is all about trucks. And cars. Firetrucks. Trains. Dinosaurs. Most recently he has become obsessed with monster trucks thanks to a buddy of his from daycare who generously shared his monster trucks with Gavin! Now he has a small collection of about 4-5 monster trucks and he is very quick to correct you if you call just a regular truck a monster truck, or the other way around. He's very particular, my little man. :)

Anyhow, this is a video of Gavin with some of his "mon-trucks" as he calls them. I think I love this video so much because right around the time that he turned 2 I was beginning to be concerned about his speech. I knew he was still young, I recognized that he has a very chatty big sister, and I knew that with his personality, he probably wasn't very interested in trying to work on communicating with us. Over the last few months there has been an explosion of words and now he has no problem voicing his opinion(s). I have loved watching his personality blossom--he is such a funny, happy little boy!

Happy 4th of July and heading home!

By this point in our vacation we were staying at Bailey and Derrick's place, which was so much fun. They cooked some yummy food for us and had all of our favorite things all ready for us to enjoy! One night they even kept the kids so Joe and I could have a date night! (Mostly Bailey's idea of course, but Derrick kindly went along with it! ;)) This was essentially our last full day in Florida because we were going to head back home the next day. I really wanted to see where Bailey and Derrick would be getting married so I could actually see for myself, this amazing place that I had heard so much about! So off we headed to Santa Rosa Beach where Gulfplace is located. :) It is such a cute little area, with shops and fun, funky restaurants, swimming, awesome lodging, etc. Something I loved about it was that we could park our vehicle and literally walk everywhere--with two young children this is a huge treat!

Little shops!

Mermaid and Merman :)


after a yummy lunch!

Bass Pro Shop

Happy 4th!

We were able to attend a fireworks show very close to where we were staying. Sydney was completely excited--Gavin wasn't so much-especially after a few went off beforehand and surprised him. About ten minutes in to the show however, he did finally remove his hands from his ears and enjoy them.

We left the next day to head home for Kansas. It was bittersweet. It was so nice to be there with Bailey and Derrick and spend time with them. Even Sydney asked me before we'd even left the parking lot in front of their house "Mommy, does it make you sad leaving your sister here?" She is so perceptive that little girl of mine--she blows me away. Yes, it made me sad, but happy too...knowing that they are happy there together and making their home there, even if it is a temporary one. Plus, we'll be back in November. ;) Anyhow, it was an amazing trip, one that we thoroughly enjoyed and returned with so many wonderful memories. However, as usual, it was good to get home and sleep in our own beds and see Maggie again (who didn't leave our side for days!)

Beach, beach, and more beach!

This will be a post of photos of our next few days! You should notice a theme. ;) One of these mornings as I was sitting on the beach, while the waves were crashing, my kids were digging and playing in the water, the ocean breeze was blowing...I remember thinking "I could stay here all day long." It was so peaceful, my kids were having a blast, they were engaged, we were outside....it was perfect. There were so many other moments when we were on the beach that I felt completely content watching my little family make memories together.

Sand castle!

Burying Daddy

Lunch at Fisherman's Wharf

Burying Sydney!

Sand castles

swimming!

Gulfarium

June 29th...

Our first day of driving on Thursday brought us to the lovely city of Clinton, Mississippi, a suburb of Jackson. We had already decided this would be our stopping point for the day as we had been on the road about 12 hours by now, if not more. Luckily we were able to pull in early enough that we could play at the hotel pool for awhile before getting ready for supper. It was so much fun just wading in the pool with the kids and it brought back memories of when I was a child on vacations with my family--the hotel pool was something I always looked forward to (who knows why!) and luckily I married a man who is part fish, so he enjoys it too. ;)

On the morning of Friday, June29th, we filled up at breakfast, filled up our coffee cups and water cups and hit the road! By the time we reached Alabama we realized we were well ahead of schedule and we were going to get to our hotel about two hours before check-in time. As we were heading out of the city of Mobile and approaching the Gulf we saw a huge battleship which just so happened to be a historical landmark of the USS Alabama and the submarine USS Drum. Since we were ahead on time we decided to seize this opportunity to visit, stretch our legs and get some exercise. And we did. Who knew battleships were so huge?! Lets just say that with the humid and hot Gulf air and close quarters of the ship with little to no air movement (and with Sydney persisting that we continue to climb up the stairs and go higher...and higher..and higher...)...we were completely soaked with sweat by the time we scrambled back in to the van. It felt great to get out and move though and to enjoy a piece of history together as a family! Another reason to love road trips...the spontaneity of little stops like this! :)

We arrived at our hotel in Fort Walton Beach, Florida couple of hours later. We had a view from our room of the beach and the kids (mostly Sydney and Joe :) ) could not wait to get to the beach. Bags dropped off and somewhat organized, swimsuits on, we headed to the beach!

We played in the water and sand for awhile before it was time to head to the room and get ready for supper. I would have insisted we head back sooner if I would have known it would take us nearly 45 minutes start to finish of baths/showers. The sand stuck to everything and clumped in their shorts, it was embedded in their hair...it was quite an experience. :) Not complaining of course....it was just somewhat of a challenge that first night! :) Aunt Bailey and Derrick joined us at our room and Bailey gave them their "beach" goodies. Bath towels, sand "tools" (which were put to good use for the rest of our trip!!), new swim suits and new beach chairs! They were quite spoiled! ;) Later we headed out to eat at a yummy restaurant in Destin!

Monday, July 9, 2012

May...and June...

May...

brought spring recitals (actually late April ;))...

Our beautiful flower!

a Dinosaur adventure!

playing outside!

and picnics too!

June...

brought more fun in the sun, fishing, and fun ideas from Pinterest :)

fishing!

sidewalk paint!

moon sand!

and an anniversary for Joe and I! We celebrated our 8 years of marriage by attending a rock concert. :) We both love concerts and we decided that we need to attend more of them and more often! Our next concert will be in August! (Maybe one of these days I can convince Joe to go to Bon Jovi with me. ;) ) I cannot believe we've been married for eight years. It truly continues to get better. I feel so blessed to have him by my side on this journey through life and to watch him as a father to our children...it brings me so much joy!

On our way to the concert we were "spotted"...a woman literally jumped in front of us, snapped our photo, and told us to check out the website the next day. For being completely caught off guard, our picture turned out pretty well! Happy Anniversary to us! :)

June 28th...

In the early morning hours of Thursday, June 28th, Joe and I got our van prepped and ready for our long road trip. We turned off all of the lights inside the van (as best we could), dimmed the screen and dash (as best we could), turned off the garage lights and house lights before going to get our sleeping babies. We were as careful as possible to ensure that their transition from sleeping in their beds to "sleeping" in the car seat went as smoothly as it could. Our efforts were all for not when about twenty minutes south of town Gavin was spotting trains and Sydney was searching for the moon. *sigh* We learned very quickly that this strategy that works for countless other families...isn't quite as successful for us. Luckily, they are both early birds which I guess worked to our advantage this day.

All in all, they both ended up napping about an hour later in the day (yep, awake for approximately 16 hours that day and only slept for one of them) and they were still rockstars by the time we reached the hotel in Mississippi. We all crashed at 8:00 on the dot that evening, preparing for the rest of our journey to Florida the next day!