Our First BIG Trip (part 3)

Day 4- We Hit "The Wall"

On Tuesday of our trip, we woke up to Tropical Storm Debbie still in full force.  I think it was the night before that the storm was so loud it kept waking me up.  I have never heard wind that loud in my entire life.  I have no idea how it didn't rip the roof off the building!  Anyway, Laura and I decided to take the kids to the beach and fly kites.  It was not our best idea!  It was WAY too windy to fly kites and the kids were crabby and not listening well.  We went back to the condo and we all kind of "hit the wall".  The trip had been so stormy and everyone was disappointed but had been trying to make the best of it.  I was D-O-N-E with the girls being rude and disobedient and Seth's whining (plus I was super tired).  All I remember is going to lay down and try and nap (I suck at napping) and getting up a bit later to all three kids sleeping/resting, Laura gone on a walk (on which she saw a fox sitting in the dunes) and Carey enjoying the condo's cable tv!  

After our early afternoon, mid-trip meltdown, we were all feeling better and decided to head to "old town".  I can't remember if I've already said this, but St. Augustine is the oldest founded city in America, so there's lots of history and (more importantly to us) cute/neat old buildings!  We saw the nation's oldest wooden schoolhouse, went to an old fashioned candy shop (I feel like I should spell it "shoppe"!), found more lizards, and saw a Mary Poppins-ish street performer!  While we were there, the weather was alternating between really hot and pouring down rain, with the consistent windyness, of course!  At one point, it was pouring down rain, there was still some things the adults wanted to see, Abby was screaming crying about buying a horse necklace, and we didn't know which way to go.  I noticed we were standing right next to the church of St. Augustine (the saint the city was named after).  The sign on the door said people were welcome to go in but to be respectful of people who might be praying in there.  I told the kids to be quiet and we went on in, expecting to run out in two seconds because the kids would yell or something.  It was like a magical building.  It was huge and beautiful and so different than any church building my kids have been in, there were so quiet and in awe.  They loved hearing about what the different parts were (sidenote: Abby had asked me about the two doors that led to the confessional, so I told her about it.  Once we were home, she was telling my sister, Auntie Melissa, about the church and she told her "And they had these doors you go in and there is a man who goes in the other one and you say like 'I disobeyed my mom' or something like that.  But we don't have that at our church").  We were in there for a good 15 minutes or so, just enjoying the beauty of it.  And, when we walked out, the rain had stopped and it was sunny!

The street performer...who proceeded to make it half-way through a song and then break 2 strings at the same time!

Loving the entertainment!

The oldest wooden school house:)

Inside the gorgeous, tear-stopping, quiet inducing, rain-stopping St. Augustine church!

Day 5- An End In Sight

On Wednesday, good old Debbie seemed to be on her way out and the beach days we were expecting were seeming more like a reality!  We tried the kites once again, this time with more success!  Well, Carey had success; Laura, not so much, although it was hilarious to watch her kite!  We did some playing on the beach and in the pool and were so happy to see the sun out by the end of the day:)

Ready to go fly some kites!

These three kids are ready for the sun!

Our First BIG Trip (part 2)

Day 2- Carey's birthday

Our first morning in the condo, Laura and I took the kids straight down to the beach, so Carey could keep sleeping.  We walked out of the condo complex onto a boardwalk over the dunes down to the beach.  Ever since I was a little girl I have wanted to walk out to the beach on one of those boardwalks.  I can't even explain how excited I was to actually be walking on one.  I felt like a little girl meeting princesses at Disneyland for the first time!  It was surreal!  Despite the fact that it was cloudy and windy, it was plenty warm at the beach and we had a blast playing in the warm ocean water.  We even invented a couple games:

1)"Knocked Over"- you sit at the ocean's edge and every time a wave hits you, no matter how tiny, it knocks you over!

2) "Dead Squid"- in the super shallow water you lay down and just roll around however the ocean pulls and pushes you, just like it does to a dead squid!

The boardwalk!!!

First time in the Atlantic!

Awesome St. Augustine shells:)

Seth was the inventor of "dead squid"!

After a couple hours at the beach, we spent some time in the pool at the condo.  After a little while at the pool, we all headed up to the condo, ready for naps, and walked in just as Carey was getting up!

After naps we ran a few errands; grocery store, Dollar Tree for sand toys, fish market (at which Abby and Haley were thrilled to touch a huge dead fish, eyeballs and all, that the kind fish market lady brought out for them), and the cutest little cupcake shop!  Back at the condo we enjoyed the cupcakes and then headed back down to the beach.  At that point, we had been informed (by all the weather stations) that the bad weather was thanks to tropical storm "Debbie", and she poured rain down on us and tried to blow us away as we played at the beach.  I think that afternoon, playing in the water in the pouring down rain was one of our favorite memories!  We finally went inside when the rain was pouring down hard enough to hurt our skin!

Yummy cupcakes on the balcony!

Day 3- Alligator Farm and Tropical Storm Debbie!

One thing we knew we wanted to do in Florida was to go to the Alligator farm, and since tropical storm Debbie was out in full force, we decide to start doing the things that we wanted to do in the beginning of the week and hope for sunny beach days towards the end of the week.  Laura and I started the day off taking Abby and Seth down to the beach while Carey and Haley slept in.  We wore dresses but were laughing as we walked back to the condo, because it had rained so hard that we might as well have worn swim suits!  We were literally wringing water out of our dresses.  We could not have been any wetter if we had gone swimming!  After the wet trip to the beach, we spent a slow morning in the condo.  Laura's mom, the fabulous Julia, had stocked it up with all sorts of treats for us (as well as necessities like laundry detergent and shampoo), making it super fun and cozy.  The condo itself was awesome.  It is two bedrooms and I'm pretty sure it is bigger than our whole house.  It has a great balcony that looks out onto the beach and ocean, too!

This is a pile of all the cookies that Julia had baked for us!

 We spent the rest of the day at the Alligator farm.  It was kind of like a small zoo, with about a billion alligators and birds, some snakes and lizards (Laura and I opted out of that part), and some cute little monkeys and things.  We had a lot of fun there, and I decided that I would like to be an alligator.  They just lounge around all day, and the bigger they are, the more impressive they are!

Looking at baby alligators and turtles!

This was a "pen" of 41 alligators!

We kept seeing these little frogs all over the zoo.  They are so tiny (that's Haley's hand) that it looks like tons of little bugs jumping around!  Haley caught a ton of them (an activity that not all of the frogs survived)!

First BIG Vacation

Last week we flew across the country to spend 6 full days (sandwiched between 2 days of traveling) on the beach of beautiful St. Augustine, FL.  Our dear friend, Laura, is from Georgia and grew up going to her aunt Ann's beach condo in Saint Augustine.  "Aunt Ann" so kindly let us all go and stay there for the week and we had an amazing time.  I am little overwhelmed at the thought of trying to blog about such a big trip, so I am going to break the post up into days, and, depending on the behavior of my kids as I post (they are supposed to be having "quiet" time) I may have to do it in more than one post!

DAY 1 (Traveling)

On Saturday morning, June 23 we left our house at 3:00 in the morning to get to the San Fransisco airport for our 6:00 a.m. departure time.  My mom (who so kindly drove us to the airport at such a lovely hour) and Laura had spent the night so we were ready to go!  We made it to the airport really quickly (since there isn't much traffic at the time) and hopped in the line to check our one big suitcase and the 3 carseat/boosters.  The line ended up taking super long, and by the time we went through security, we walked straight onto our plane!  Oh, and as a sidenote, I am so thankful that you can gate check strollers for free, because we used ours as a luggage cart for all the kids carry-ons!

Once we were on the plane, the kids were so excited for it to take off.  I think the flight was about 4 1/2 hours and they all did really good.  No tears, a little napping, lots of snacking, and lots of checking all the new little trinkety toys and entertainment I had been collecting for weeks!

Ready for the plane to take off!

So excited for his first plane ride!

Enjoying some $1 CVS modeling clay!

Working really hard!

We landed in Atlanta, GA, ready for a 4 1/2 hour layover.  We got some lunch, rode on some escalators and moving walkways, rode the tram from terminal to terminal, then headed to our gate with about an hour left.  Unfortunately, our flight was delayed.  So for the next few hours, our departure time got pushed farther and farther back and I think they changed our departure gate 4 times!  During this time, Laura, Haley and I made a new friend.  She was three years old and named Amelia.  She was FUUUUULL of energy.  I mean, FULL.  Not that my kids are mellow, sit around the house and read kids, but this girl was ready to go out and run a half-marathon or something!   Anyway, she and her brother (who was 7 and engaged Laura in an argument about where we were going for our vacation) kept us pretty darn entertained!  And Seth was still just so excited about going to Florida.  Every so often he would say "raise your hand if you want to go to Florida!" or "Let's just get on a plane and go to Florida" (as if that was an option none of us had thought of)!  

The layover and the early rising took it's toll on Carey!

Finally, after a little over 7 hours in the Atlanta airport, we took our short flight to Jacksonville, FL.  We got off our plane and Carey headed over to get our rental van while Laura and the kids and I went to get our suitcase and boosters.  We waited and watched everyone else get their luggage of the carousel and go merrily on their way until we were the last ones standing there and the carousel was empty.  I kept thinking "oh great, we're stuck at the airport.  It's too late for any stores that would sell boosters to be open and we can't just throw the kids in the van with out them."  Thankfully, I went over the the little luggage office place and our luggage was there (apparently it did not have a 7 hour layover in Atlanta)!  We made it to the rental van, loaded up, stopped at McDonalds for a nutritious late night meal and delicious sweet tea, and headed off to St. Augustine.

So happy to be almost there!

Dance Recital

This past Saturday was Haley and Abby's annual dance recital (their 3rd one) and it was awesome, as usual.  Dance recital day is a thrilling day in our house.  Auntie Laura comes over and helps me put on the girls' "stage make-up".  Probably one of their favorite parts of the dance recital is that they get to wear make-up...and TONS of it.  I actually think it looks pretty weird, but they think it's gorgeous (which is a little concerning)!  It sure does make a difference on stage, though.

Anyway, they both did an amazing job on stage.  It was so fun to watch them up there.  They loved it and I am just so proud of them for getting up on the huge stage in front of SO many people.  This year, being 6 1/2 year olds, they really knew their dances well, and Haley even had a little cartwheel "solo"!

After the recital, we went out for ice cream and then the girls and I stayed downtown to go watch the "big kids" dance recital.  The one they were in is 3-7 year olds and we've never gone to the big kids one.  They LOVED watching the older kids dance, and Haley decided that she really wants to do a solo some day.  So cute!

Let It Go!

As I was putting on a load of laundry just now, I was thinking of what I need to/should do during Seth's nap and the girls' quiet time.  Then I started thinking of the ridiculous number of things that I think I need to/should do each day and it's crazy.  No wonder so many mommies (some days I include myself in this) feel like we are failing!  I consider a day to be from 5:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. (although it usually goes later because of the crazy amount of things on my list), and here are all the things that I put on my list:

• make meals for 4 people twice a day and 5 people once a day (making sure everyone is getting a balanced diet with all the nutrients they need)
• clean up all those meals
• go on a run
• spend a little bit of one on one time with each of the kids
• gather, wash, fold and put away laundry
• take care of the garden
• feed the dog
• play with the dog at least a little
• spend time in my Bible
• spend 15 minutes resting (in the middle of the day)
• keep the house tidy
• shower every couple of days
• brush 4 people's teeth twice a day
• floss all those teeth once a day
• keep in touch with friends (email/cards/texting)
• keep the house stocked with all the necesities
• read at least 20 minutes with the kids
• have the girls each read at least one book to me

I'm sure there are so many more, plus there are the tantrums and fights and spills that take up so many minutes of every day!  Anyway, I am getting much better at "letting things go" since I really can't do all of those things every day and still try and have some time to sleep at night!  Oh ya, and I have a hubby who hardly even made the list, but we all know they have needs too!

Last Day of Kindergarten

Alright, let's see if I can get through this post without crying!  Today was Haley and Abby's last day of kindergarten.  I've said this a hundred times today, but I just can't believe it!  I was just crying about their first day of kindergarten.  This year has FLOWN by (as I was driving to school this morning I was thinking that it won't be long before it's Seth's last day of kinder!).  There is something so special about kindergarten, and both Haley and Abby had wonderful teachers and classmates, making for a great year!

First day of kindergarten.

Last day of kindergarten (Abby is really loving to tuck in her shirts...not my favorite phase!)

Abby and the fabulous Ms. Dorrian

Haley with two of her buddies and her wonderful teacher, Ms. Schewe (Shayvee)

Pete The Pirate

We got a dog.  At this point it's been almost three months, but it's still a little crazy to me.  We've been saying "no dogs 'till no diapers" for quite a few years now, and we finally made it to the "no diapers" part!

Seth potty trained last fall, and the kids were pretty quick to start asking for a dog.  Carey and I decided that we wanted a dog that doesn't shed, is medium sized (not so small that the kids can easily carry it, but not so big it makes our house feel small), and is a rescue or someone's pet that they couldn't keep any more.  I was mostly looking on Craigslist, hoping for a standard poodle that someone had to let go.  I also checked the local animal shelters, but they were basically always 90% chihuahuas!

One day, when I was checking on Craigslist, I saw a cute dog named "Pictor Galaxy" that was in a foster home through a rescue organization in San Fransisco.  He was a schnauzer mix and medium size and really cute, so we made a date to go up and meet him.  When we went to meet him, I made the kids wear all black, and any fleece that they had, because I really wanted to make sure he didn't shed (schnauzers don't, but we didn't know about the "mix" part)!  Anyway, he was a keeper, so we took him home and renamed him Pete the Pirate.

When he first came home, he was kind of shut down.  He just stayed in his bed, not really interested in treats or toys.  It was three days before I heard him bark.  After about a week, though, he was used to us and his new home and now is a super happy puppy.  We just finished training (with THE BEST TRAINER) and he's a great, smart, sweet puppy. 

We all love Pete.  The kids will tell you that he really is a pirate, because he loves to steal their stuffed animals and shoes!

This is when we first meet Pete!