It's a . . .

I used to watch the reruns for this show on Nick at Nite when I was in middle school, but I never thought it would become my life.

(And about the important stuff - the baby looks great - body, heart and brain look good, 2 legs, 2 arms, he's going to be a very cute baby!)

Conversations with Charlie

"You can pray to God if a big scary animal is going to eat you . . . like a monkey."

When he started his sentence, I thought he was thinking of lions (from Daniel and the lions den). It's fun to see how their little minds work. He was talking with Coulson at the time and the conversation continued. I can't do it word for word, but basically Coulson asserted that a monkey can't eat you. The conversation somehow led to wolves and they concluded that they can pray to God if there's a wolf because they don't want the other animals to get hurt. Coulson said, "That would be sad because I really like animals."

H1N1

So yes, Coulson has the flu. It came quite suddenly - On Friday night around 11pm, I went in to check on the boys before bed as I always do (there's just something about watching them sleep, all the craziness from the day transformed into absolute peace). Both boys were sleeping fine and I didn't notice any warmth when I gently kissed their forehead. At midnight, Coulson woke up crying. Casey went to check on him and came back asking for the Tylenol because he had a fever. "I was just there an hour ago, he was fine." "Well, he's burning up now. Most likely the flu." (Although the general population likes to distinguish between the 2 different flus, the medical professionals are quite adamant that the seasonal flu has not yet hit, therefore all current cases of the flu are in fact H1N1.)

Coulson had pretty high fevers off and on Saturday and the occasional upset stomach. Even under normal circumstances (ie not pregnant) I have a very sensitive gag reflex when it comes to vomit. Once, when he was a puppy, Chester threw up in the living room when Casey wasn't home. I couldn't handle it, so I laid some paper towels over the mess, retreated back to the bedroom and just waited a couple hours for Casey to come home. When I was pregnant with Charlie, I was nauseous most of the first trimester, but didn't really throw up. Until Coulson got a stomach bug. I never caught the bug myself, but everytime Coulson threw up in the toilet, I was next to him throwing up in the sink. Charlie has inherited this reflex, but I'll spare you those examples. So on Saturday when Casey was away at work and Coulson's upset stomach first hit, I saw visions of horrible chain reactions plaguing our morning. Thankfully, so thankfully, Coulson mostly made it to the bathroom and the small amount that didn't wasn't too offensive and I could take care of it completely while holding my breath. The next time the tummy troubles hit, there was a bowl available and my husband was home to empty it. I would have totally lost it if I had to deal with the bowl myself.

Sunday (today) was much better. His fever went down a lot and eventually went away later this afternoon. All day long, he refused to take any medicine. After dinner, he proudly announced that he hadn't had any medicine all day. (I found this behavior odd, since I had never really noted a quality of stoicism in Coulson before.) When I told him that he wouldn't be able to go to school tomorrow, he said, "I know that. I can't go to school for a full day after my fever goes away without any medicine." "Is that way you didn't want to take any medicine today?" "Yes" he replied. My son, the nerd, being strong in the face of the swine flu just so he can go back to school. I love that kid!

Now, we're just waiting for Charlie get hot...

(And don't worry about me. Since I'm pregnant, I'm a candidate for Tamiflu, the highly coveted anti-flu medicine. Casey is jealous that I get to take the meds and he has to suffer the potential consequences of this exposure.)

P.S. Real Time Update - Coulson just now woke up with a very bad headache and he still refuses to take any medicine!

CROP Walk

My church participates in the CROP walk every year. I remember walking in the CROP walk when I was in high school and I also did it 2 years ago in Charlotte. Last year I was out of town, so I was looking forward to walking again this year. I'm especially excited this year because Coulson has agreed to walk with me. This is good for two reasons: 1) I love that he is interested in getting involved in ways to help others and 2) If he's walking, then I don't have to push him and Charlie in the double stroller, knocking 40+ pounds off my stroller weight! (I'll still be pushing Charlie...)
The CROP walk is a 2 mile walk to raise money for programs that provide relief and development assistance both locally and around the world.
I know that you are all asking yourselves, "How can I help you? I want to donate money!" to which my reply is simple: Check out my personal fundraising page and you can learn more about the CROP walk and make a secure credit card donation. (If you'd rather write a check, just email me.)
This is the third time I've tried raising money in this way as an adult (CROP walk 2 years ago, triathlon for World Vision last year) and I'm always surprised that it's actually difficult to raise money this way (it's kinda of awkward to ask your friends for money, but as you can tell, I just have to charge through that awkwardness). But this time Coulson is also raising money for the CROP walk and it's actually quite easy for kids to fundraise - He took in $50 in less than 45 minutes yesterday afternoon going to our neighbors. And he hasn't even hit up the grandparents yet. My progress has been slower, but I'm not giving up yet...

Permission granted

This post originally written Wed, Aug 12

Not that their opinion would change anything, but I like to get my kids' thoughts on a new baby before we actually crash their world with news of an addition. Before we got pregnant with Charlie, I asked Coulson if he would like a brother or sister and I made sure I got his affirmative answer on video. (See video at the end of this post.)

Last night, as the subject came up in natural conversation, I didn't have the camera ready, so I thought I would blog the conversation verbatim, in case the boys complain one day about their little sibling, I can remind them they wanted this. We were talking about pacifiers and that's where this started:

Charlie: Where are the pacifiers? Where are the pacifiers?

Mommy: We don't have any pacifiers now, we don't have any little babies in the house.

Daddy: Would you like to have a little baby in the house?

Both boys nod their heads yes.

Mommy, looking at Coulson: Do you really want a baby brother or sister?

Coulson: Yes, and I don't care if it's a brother or sister, because I'll be all grown. (I think he was saying that he's older now, so he doesn't need it to be brother a for a playmate)

Charlie: Or we could have two babies.

Mommy: Two babies? Ha, ha!

Coulson: That would be twins.

Mommy: And that would twice as much work. Maybe three times as much work.

Coulson just nods his head in agreement.

At this point, I was starting to get nervous about twins, so I just ended the conversation.

We really want to tell them, but we have decided to wait until the ultrasound next week and make sure we see that beating heart before we share with them. And we realize that once we tell them, we are risking exposure because they can't keep secrets.

2 pink lines

I haven't been in the mood lately to blog, but I thought I'd post some entries I wrote a while ago and was saving...


This post was originally written on Aug 3, 2009

It's been 2 weeks and a day since I first saw those 2 pink lines. I had my own suspicions when I was on my trip to NY, but I wanted to wait till I got back home so I could take the test when Casey was home. We're not too sure of our due date, but I'm thinking around the 3rd week of March.

So far the morning sickness hasn't been too bad, but I'm sure that will change soon. On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is perfectly fine and 10 is on my knees bowing to the porcelin goddess, I've been about a 2 for most of the time. With my other pregnancies, I usually maintained a 5 or 6 pretty much all day long for the first trimester, so I'm expecting my queasiness to get worse.

The main symptom I'm experiencing is extreme fatigue. If I could just lay in bed all day long... but I have 2 little imps to kick my butt in gear first thing every morning, so that's just a pipe dream. Every morning I try to rest on the couch, but it's hard to do with elbows and feet and knees jamming into me. Apparently a body on the couch makes an irresistable climbing and jumping spot. I usually try to take a break in the afternoon too, somedays with more success than others. Helping out at VBS last week didn't help me conserve any energy either, but I made it through the week.

We've told our parents, but not the boys yet. I'm looking forward to telling all our friends, but I want to get through my first round of OB appointments before we share the news.

And life gets even crazier!

Here's a conversation we had with the boys last week. It's about 1 1/2 minutes, but it's totally worth watching. Coulson has some funny lines.

(Amy, in light of our conversation last night, you'll get a kick out of this ;-)

First day of kindergarten!

Yep, today was Coulson's first day of kindergarten. Since my boys don't sleep in, we didn't have any early morning-drag-a-sleepy-kid-out-bed-grumpiness that most of my friends were dreading. His natural wake-up time will be perfect to catch the bus on time. We tried to make this morning special for him. I got up and made his favorite breakfast - Swedish pancakes. (My childhood friends probably remember these from our sleepovers, it's my mom's specialty. For those who don't know, they're kinda like crepes.) Making breakfast is always special because we usually eat Cheerios for breakfast 30 days a month. And of course Casey took the obligatory pictures. Look at those gleaming white shoes! What kind of a mother buys gleaming white shoes for her 5 year old?? Silly lady.

Posing with his new lightsaber. Have I ever mentioned that he likes Star Wars?
Anyway, then we were off to meet the bus. My plan was to wait for the bus so we could say Hi to the bus driver, but then I was going to drive him to school myself for the first day. So we waited where the other kids in the neighborhood usually wait, but Coulson goes to a different school than the other kids, so his stop is at a different time. And apparently at a different place. The info on our sheet just named an intersection as the bus stop, but an intersection has 4 corners, and we didn't know from which direction the bus would be coming. We chose wrong. The bus stopped on the complete opposite corner from us, waited for 3 seconds, and then drove off, even though we were walking towards it at the time. So the bus system is not very forgiving, not even on the first day.

So I drove him to school and took him to his classroom. The teacher told the kids to come in and sit on the carpet and look through some books that she had available and Coulson followed directions very well. He was so busy looking through his book when I hugged him good-bye, that I don't know if he realized I was saying good-bye. Afterwards I started thinking that I should have been more clear that I was leaving so he wouldn't look up a few minutes later and wonder where I was. But I reminded myself that he's not two years old and looking up to find his Mommy gone isn't going to ruin his whole day.

Charlie and I made chocolate chip cookies for Coulson to have when he gets home from school, yummy. Soon, Charlie and I will head outside to wait for him at the bus stop. The correct bus stop this time. For K and 1st grade, there must be a parent or adult to meet them at the bus stop or else they won't drop off the kid, so I'm planning to be there early, in case the bus driver is impatient again.


P.S. UPDATE - Coulson had a good day at school. I started to get worried since his bus was pretty late, and I had arrived at the bus stop early to make sure I didn't miss it, so I was waiting for a while. I think he may still be overwhelmed by everything new, but overall he had a positive experience. He even made a friend and actually remembered his name. Most of the time when he makes a new friend, he doesn't know his name.

And my life gets a little crazier...

First of all, I love being a stay-at-home-mom. Although when I'm honest, I'll admit that there are days when I have seriously considered getting a job. A couple months ago I filled in at the church office for one day when our church secretary was on vacation and it was very nice -- Adult conversation. Respect. No screaming or fighting. No whining. The list goes on and on. And when I got home, I actually enjoyed being with the boys again. You know, absence makes the heart grow fonder. At one point several months ago, I even found myself scanning the help wanted ads in the newspaper. But when it comes down to the logistics of having someone else take care of my kids and having to follow someone else's work schedule and be on time, it's just too much of a hassle. And when it comes to the actual job of parenting, there are so many opportunities throughout the day to impose my own values on their impressionable minds (ha!ha! as if it were that easy!) Anway, I don't think I would trust someone else to enforce my personal values as well as I (try to) do. I know that there are a lot of good working mothers out there that have figured out a way to raise their kids with their own family values. But I don't know how to do that, I'm too saturated in the stay-at-home-mom approach. All I can do is wait until they start school...

In the meantime, being with the kids all day makes me feel like my brain is turning into mashed potatoes. I feel like being home is just where my life is right now and I accept that, but I still have great dreams of what I want to be when I grow up. I feel like I'm in a "holding pattern" as far as pursuing my passion. God has given me a passion for peacemaking and helping others and there are small ways I can do this now through my relationships and volunteer work. And now I have started preparing myself for my future work. The University of North Carolina-Greensboro offers a Master's Degree in Conflict Resolution. But even better than a local university offering the program I want - offering the program entirely online! I've waffled back and forth for years about which program to pursue for my Master's. I started with conflict resolution 4 years ago (after I saw Hotel Rwanda, the movie that changed my life), dabbled in international affairs and non-profit management, seriously courted the idea of law school (but I refer back to being saturated with the stay-at-home-mom statement) and came back full circle with even more enthusiasm for Conflict Resolution.

So I signed up to take a graduate level class in the Conflict Resolution program. I'm not officially admitted to the program yet (I keep procrastinating on that pesky GRE test), but I am taking the course for credit, so my grade counts. It's just one class and I will probably just take one class a semester for a while. Since I'll be crawling through this program at a snail's pace, I figured I should get started. My class starts tomorrow, the same day as Coulson's first day of school. It's online, but done through a live lecture that we log onto through the computer. I've already seen the syllabus and I have 2 short papers, 1 long paper, a group presentation and several journal reviews due. This will be fun - I haven't written a paper in 10 years!

The Boy Goes Camping

Guest Blogger today: Coulson, age 5 1/2 years

Once upon a time there was a boy. He was camping with his daddy. They went to a mountain called Hanging Rock where there was a campsite. They slept in a tent that is green with black words on it. He was going fishing and swimming and going to see waterfalls. But they only did fishing and swimming because the boy would not wear his sneakers and was too tired to walk.

Instead he made a bow and arrow out of a stick. Then he woke up. It was a BEAUTIFUL morning so they went fishing. Then they went swimming. Then they ate dinner and roasted marshmellows. Then they stayed up late and played games and went to sleep.

Father and Son Camping

Casey and Coulson are doing some father-son bonding this weekend. (Which means that Charlie and I are doing some mother-son bonding - sharing Reeses Peanut Butter cups and going to Chuck E. Cheese!)

So they are tent camping in the woods. Both of them have been preparing and looking forward to this for weeks. Setting up a time for Casey to go camping can be tricky with his schedule. Usually when he has 2 days off in a row, he'll work until midnight or later the night before his break, and then have to work first thing in the morning when he gets back, which makes for a very cramped "weekend." So when he can fit a camping trip in his schedule, that's a big deal. That's why I was bummed when I looked at the forecast for campsite for the next 3 days - chance of rain : 80% today, 50% tomorrow and 30% Sunday. Casey is determined to make the best of it, but Coulson's attitude can make it or break it. I'm hoping they'll have a good time no matter what.

I don't think that Casey has good cell phone coverage, not because he hasn't called me yet, but because he hasn't posted any facebook updates.

Anyway, just because it fits so well, here's a link to the latest post on Stuff White People Like
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2009/08/14/128-camping/

More of Charlie's birthday

I tried to post this earlier, but was having problems with the computer. Looks like it's working now!

Geocoin travels to Germany

It's been a while since I've blogged about geocaching, and I'm hoping to do some more in the fall when the weather gets cooler. But today I found out that our geocoin has travelled to Germany. A geocoing is a special coin made for geocaching with a unique code on it. The owner of the coin logs the coin and its code at Geocaching.com and then places it in a cache. When someone finds the cache, they can take the coin with them and place it in another cache. And the next person takes it to another cache and so on. Each person who moves the coin logs an entry at Geocaching.com so we can follow its trip. We placed our coin in a cache in Charlotte last year. It travelled around Charlotte for a while, then made it to the mountains, then Illinois. Someone in Illinois found it and logged that they were going to take it to Germany. We hadn't heard from it for a while, but I just got news today that someone found it in a cache in Germany! The log entry is in German and Casey doesn't remember any of his German from college, so we don't really know what it says. I guess I need to use BabelFish to translate it. Anyway, woo-hoo to our geocoin!

A refresher for those who don't remember my earlier caching posts:
A treaure hunt
The curse of the pirates' treasure

Charlie's Party!

Charlie turned 3 years old this week! We celebrated with a fabulous "Backyard Birthday Splash!" party. We had a sprinkler, Slip-n-slide, inflatable pool, some bubble toys, a small fishing "pond," and lots of friends to help celebrate. The backyard splash was a great way to have a mostly outside birthday party in August. I think everyone had a really good time. Of course we had the famous Costco cake (I've blogged before about my sordid love affair with this cake, and since Charlie is too young to preemptively voice his opinion, I was able to get the white cake with white icing) which garnered lots of compliments. Unfortunately, I only got to eat one piece of the cake, but that's a story for another day...

Instead of gifts, I asked everyone to bring school supplies to donate to the local Children's Home and I was blown away by our friends' generosity! I expected the kids to bring a couple notebooks and a maybe a pack of pencils, but everyone brought a bag full of goodies! The list-maker in me just had to catalog everything, so I included it at the end of this blog. The boys helped me count everything. Charlie has trouble counting past two (he always wants to count 1, 2, 5 and he sometimes insists that he just turned 5, not 3...) so Coulson did most of the heavy math. I love being able to donate stuff instead of getting a bunch of toys that we don't need, but Coulson is starting to get wise on my plan and he says that he wants his friends to bring gifts for his next birthday.

School Supplies to Donate (All this from only 10 families!):

• 14 boxes of crayons
• 9 bottles of Elmer's glue
• 26 glue sticks
• 14 folders
• 3 packages of pens
• 6 packages of pencils
• 5 packages of mechanical pencils
• 1 set of watercolor paint
• 3 pencil pouches
• 4 erasers
• 2 packages of highlighters
• 5 packages of markers
• 1 scotch tape
• 1 pencil sharpener
• 1 hand sanitizer
• 1 tub of sanitizing wipes
• 3 scissors
• 1 package of dry erase markers
• 14 composition notebooks
• 11 spiral notebooks
• 8 packs of loose leaf paper
• 2 packs of graph paper
• 2 book bags
• 8 packages of colored pencils
• 1 pack of batteries
  

Playmates

Occasionally in the past couple weeks, my boys have been displaying behavior that is quite frankly strange in our household.
If you've ever spent much time with my oldest child, you know that he is relationally very intense. Meaning that he doesn't play well by himself; he needs companionship pretty much all the time. When he was a toddler, I noticed that often his playmates would get overstimulated and naturally need some down time to play by themselves. But no, Coulson never need that quiet down time, he always wanted interaction with other people. Early childhood development experts talk about "parallel play" where young toddlers play next to each other, but not "with" each other. Coulson skipped this phase of development and went right to playing "with" the other kids (kids his own age didn't always appreciate his intervention, but he played well with older friends).
Anyway, all that to say that I don't get much time to myself while Coulson is awake. I purposefully put the playroom right next to the kitchen because I knew that he would never use a playroom upstairs. But even being in the room right next to me is too far away, as he spends most of his time in kitchen begging me to play with him. Anytime I can get him to play by himself with his toys in the playroom for more than 5 minutes, I consider it a victory. I've always been jealous of other moms whose children actually play with their toys without needing to threaten punishment.
Well, now Charlie is getting older and becoming a better playmate for Coulson. When they first started playing together, Coulson would tell Charlie what to do and most of the time he would do it, but fights were frequent because Charlie wouldn't understand or he'd simply rather "parallel play." Then as Charlie got older, he got more opinionated and thus more arguments would ensue. So I've been happy that they're playing together, but not too happy about the referee role. (And teaching kids to get along and work out their own problems requires a lot of patience; they don't learn those things quickly.)
Okay, anyway, lately, they have had moments where both of them actually work together and get along, often for up to 30 minutes at a time. And they're playing together upstairs in their bedroom! Today I was able to completely clean up from breakfast and prep dinner (it was a slow cooker meal, so was making dinner in the morning) and take a shower in complete peace. This is unheard of in our household. And they did it again before dinner tonight and didn't even notice when Casey came home from work (also unheard of...)
So what are they doing upstairs in their room? When I went to make my bed this afternoon (doesn't everyone make their bed in the afternoon?) I noticed that all my pillows were gone. The sleeping pillows, the decorative shams and the throw pillows, all gone. This has also been happening lately. They take all my pillows, all their pillows, all their blankets, even the comforters on their beds and pile them into a mountain on Coulson's bed. Then they take turns standing on the nightstand and jumping into the mountain of bedding. (I'm a responsible mom and I tell them to not get hurt.) When they get tired they turn the mountain into a fort and settle in and Coulson will "read" books to Charlie. Or last night they went into the closet and pulled down all their clothes (I don't think they'll do that again.)
So for my peace and quiet, their room looks like a tornado hit it several times, but the rest of the house is starting to look a little bit better. Everything's a trade-off and I'll take my peace for now because who knows how long it will last.

Floppy Bunny

Here's a bunny that I finally finished for Anne's baby. I started making it back in September, thinking I should be able to send it to her before the baby arrived in December since it's a small bunny and theoretically should take me a week's worth of evenings to compete - LOL! I finished it in early June and was able to give it to her precious baby when they visited my home while vacationing in NC.

This floppy bunny is crocheted in the amigurumi style from Floppy Friends pattern I bought from etsy.com. Mine still isn't as cute as the original, but I think I'm getting better from my previous amigurumi attempts.

I have another friend with a baby due in November and baby showers for her at the end of Aug and beginning of Oct. I'd love to have something crocheted to bring to one of the showers, but at my current rate, I don't know if it's going to happen. A crocheted gift would be especially meaningful since this friend taught me to crochet and I got her started in knitting. Now she mostly knits and I mostly crochet, go figure.

Ketchup

Here's a list of the things that Charlie eats with ketchup:

ketchup alone (with a fork or spoon)
french fries
hot dogs
hamburgers
chicken nuggets
baked chicken
grilled chicken
fish
corn
rice
broccoli
carrots
sweet potatoes
mashed potatoes

and yesterday he topped them all with this one:
pancakes

Road Trip

Long post, but scroll down for pictures if you don't want to read it all...

Casey thought I was crazy, but I actually wanted to take the boys on a road trip by myself. I wanted to visit my brother in New York, but I also wanted to take the time to visit some friends from college, and trying to arrange for a trip that length with Casey's work schedule wasn't possible, so I decided to go alone. The logistics and details kept changing - I had planned to leave on Monday or Tuesday, but on Friday I worked out a plan with my dad to leave on Saturday, the very next day, very short notice for me. When we went to Florida last October, I meticulously planned for the road trip portion of the trip everyday for over a week prior to the trip. But I must have absorbed all that preparation, because I basically "winged it" for this trip and we did fine. My dad joined us for the first half of the trip.
Along the way, we met up with Anne, one of my college roomies (and the friend who first coaxed me into blogging). She had just visited us a couple days before and the boys were already great fans of her adorable baby, so they were super excited to have dinner with her. Then we travelled on to Harrisburg PA and stayed at a hotel that night.
The next morning, we drove around and I showed Coulson the hospital where he was born and the apartment we lived in. (A few weeks ago I had pointed out the hospital where Charlie was born and Coulson was curious about the hospital where he was born, so I was hoping to sneak in a trip to Hershey on this trip.) He was impressed with the hospital, but visibly disappointed with the apartment building. Then we went to our old church and saw some old friends. Casey and I helped this church get started about 9 years ago, so it will always be special to us. Then I took the boys to my favorite free tourist attraction in Hershey - Chocolate World! We enjoyed the short ride about how chocolate is made, especially the free Hershey Kisses at the end. After that we met up with one of our friends from medical school for lunch. Unfortunately his wife (who was with me at the hospital when Coulson was born) and daughter were out of town that weekend, so I didn't get to see them. Then we were off to my brother's home in NY.
We had a great time with my brother and his 2 kids. We stayed for 4 days (well, we took a one day break to visit NYC). We enjoyed his small town life, walking to the park and the country store for some ice cream, eating yummy healthy foods (well, I don't think the boys ate much of that strange healthy food, but they did load up on Cheerios in between meals, oh, they did chow down on some fresh local black raspberries and blueberries), playing with chickens at a friend's barn (my niece is a bit of a chicken whisperer), swimming in a cold stream and playing soccer with the cousins. It was great to be with my niece and nephew again and give them some auntly hugs and kisses.
My dad and I and the boys took the train into NYC one day because I thought Coulson would like to see the Statue of Liberty. It was a great day. We found a parking spot at the train station and made it on the train, awkwardly but successfully navigated the subway system with a double stroller, got the in short line at the ferry for Liberty Island because I bought tickets online the night before, Charlie took his nap in his stroller while we toured the Ellis Island museum and we made it to my friend's apartment in Greenwich Village exactly at 4pm, which was my uneducated estimate of when we might get there. Charlie even got to chat with Spiderman at Battery Park (where the ferry for Liberty Island docks).
I had a great time with my friend and her 2 kids. I knew her when I was in high school and she was in graduate school. She graduated from my alma mater and was probably the biggest influence on my decision to go there myself. I hadn't heard from her in years, but "found" her on Facebook, so it's been fun to re-connect with her. Coulson and her 4-year-old son had a fabulous time inventing new Super Heroes together.
My dad left our journey to visit his brothers on the other side of NY and I started my journey back down South. On the way, I stopped in the northwestern suburbs of Philly to visit another old college roommate and her family. Actually, her husband was Casey's college roommate (for 3 years! I guess they got along well) and the reason I met Casey in the first place. I was in a class with his roommate and he introduced me to Casey (twice, because I apparently didn't remember him from the first introduction). Anyway, we spent a day with them and their 4 year old son and 2 year old daughter, playing at the park, eating ice cream and swimming. It was a relaxing day and I had a wonderful time staying connected with good friends.
On the way home, we took our time, stopping at Chuck E. Cheese for lunch, playing at the rest stops and taking a short detour to visit Casey at work. Coulson was missing his daddy so much, it was pathetic in a sweet, loving sort of way. So we stopped in to see Casey and even got to watch the helicopter land to transfer a patient to another hospital.
Then we went home. Finally.

Weekend Getaways

On Sunday I got back from my 4th annual girls' weekend with my best friends from high school. This year I went to visit them in Decatur, GA (right outside Atlanta). As usual, I will let Christi tell the story because she can do it so much better and with much better detail - I wouldn't be able to tell you what I ate at each meal, much less what Christi and Kate ate, but in case you are wondering, it's all in her blog post. I love that we are still in touch after all these years and we can get together once a year and enjoy each other again. It's always fun and relaxing to be together and I'm looking forward to our "knitcation" next year.

Right now I'm at the Biltmore House in Asheville celebrating my 9th anniversary with Casey! We are enjoying all the luxury and the peaceful mountain views. It's the middle of the week, but we are only here for 2 days, so it kinda feels like a weekend getaway. Today we toured the mansion and the winery and tomorrow we are going to ride our bikes around the property - they have a lot of nice bike trails. We'll probably also see the mansion again and walk around the gardens before indulging in a fancy dinner.

I love these weekend getaways. These 2 getaways back-to-back are probably a little rough on the boys, but I'm grateful that there are so many other people in their lives that can love on them while I'm gone - my husband, my parents, in-laws and dear friends have all helped to give me these two much needed breaks. I'm actually looking forward to next week - no VBS, no half-day camp at the Y - just me and the boys enjoying the summer!

Guess it turned out okay after all...

Well, we're back home again and we actually ended up having a great time despite Coulson's injury. His cut shouldn't get soaked in water, but little splashes here and there were okay. Since he wasn't much of an underwater swimmer (note the usage of the past tense! I'll try to update his swimming skills in my next post. Also, note to Nanna and G'pa bud - you should bring your bathing suits this weekend) keeping his head mostly dry didn't stifle his swimming habits. We continued to have a great time at the ocean and in the pool.

We got body boards so we could "catch some waves" and both boys (but Coulson especially) enjoyed going out with us deeper in the ocean to "jump the waves." Charlie loved playing in the sand, especially if we would dig out a big hole that would fill up with a little water and he loved jumping in the hole, or simply sitting in the hole. When we would leave the beach and wash off his feet, he would cry and whine over the tiniest bit of sand still remaining in his shoes, but on the beach he would literally roll around in the sand and shovel it on top of his head. So I didn't offer much compassion for the few grains left in his shoes.

Another interesting aspect of this vacation - I actually enjoyed the ocean. My prior position was that I liked the smell and sound of the ocean, but not the water or sand. My ideal beach vacation is the pool at the hotel right next to the beach. But as a testament of my love for Casey, I have tolerated these sandy beach vacations, even as my kids threw sand on me and in my hair and in my soda can and in my book and then climbed into my bare lap for hugs and cuddles. Let's just say I love my husband a lot. So anyway, if you've ever gone to the beach with me, it will shock you to learn that I actually got in the water, waded past the waves, used the body board, played in the water with the boys - it was great! The water was not cold at all, and that made all the difference. I still didn't like the sand, that hasn't changed.

We also enjoyed mini-golf and ice cream. My brother and his family also happened to be vacationing at the beach, so we met up with them one night for a good all-American all-you-can-eat-fried-seafood buffet and then some 3-D Dinosaur Imax shows. There were some thunderstorms, but only in the evenings. A very nice family vacation!