What I did on my summer vacation

I am home again. It is good to be sleeping in my own bed, I hate sleeping on air mattresses (although they are better than sleeping on the floor). We are now trying to get organized and clean up the house. It always seems like no matter how clean the house is when you leave, unpacking the car destroys all that in a matter of seconds.

We had a lot of fun during our vacation. We went on a small hike in some old growth redwoods. The boys loved running along the path and touching the trees. Harry did quite well with his little legs and only needed to be carried at the very end. There are no pictures since everyone forgot cameras.


Evan and Harry had a blast eating the fruit in Grandma and Grandpa's garden. My inlaws have plums, pears, cherries, apricots, peaches, apples, raspberries, boysenberries, blackberries (wild and thorn less), blueberries and strawberries. Blackberries, raspberries, peaches and plums were in season in a big way. Evan and Harry each ate several plums every time they went out in the yard in addition to numerous blackberries that I would pick for them along the way to the plum tree.

It was a bad week for the drones in my father in law's bee hives. He found several drones that had been booted from the hive for having tattered and worn out wings. Since they are sting less he brought them out to the boys so they could get a good look. Evan kept dropping them when they were put on his hand because they "pickled".


Croquet was all the rage. Evan was even able to get in on the fun when his Uncle and Daddy tried to teach him how to play. Sadly his stellar career as a croquet star was cut short when he hucked his ball down the gully into a thicket of blackberries and poison oak. For some strange reason no one was willing to let him play after that.



The boys had a lot of fun playing with their cousins. Evan even joined in a game of dress up. My niece would take him dancing down the hallway and Evan would beg for more.

We had a blast at the beach. Evan spent most of the time digging in the sand. Harry was freaked out by the waves and cold water but eventually the little dare devil decided that the icy cold water was fun. We could hardly keep him out of the water at the end. He tripped running away from an extra big wave and fell in the water. That worried a bystander who talked to my husband about all the dangers of the ocean. I guess it is nice to know that people care, but I was right there next to him the entire time between him and the ocean at all times.

It is good to be back but I will not be relaxing I have a box of plums and several boxes of peaches to turn into jam.

Vacation time

We are leaving tomorrow for a week at my inlaws. Evan has been harassing me ever since I mentioned that a trip to Grandma's house as in the future. He can't understand why we can't just hop in the car and leave right now. He also now has an incredibly tenacious memory, a good night's sleep is no longer enough to make him forget about something. I doubt I will be doing any blogging, they have dial up and it takes forever to simply check my email. Here are some fun links to entertain you while I am away. Enjoy!

• A shirt that combines two fun things, knitting and pirates.
• The Navy really knows how to have fun while on deployment.
• A great pillow for a fun practical joke.
• More Monty Python, but with a hilarious twist.
• What stars would look like if they were normal like us.
• The hot new cell phone.
• This is what happens when someone has a lot of time on their hands.
• It is never too early to turn your child into a geek.
  

I am baaack!

We had a crazy and fun time. It was neat meeting some relatives that I had only heard about previously and seeing some that I last saw at my reception. This was a reunion for my husband's mother's family, so I had a lot of catching up to do. My own family tree is not all that branched, so we don't really do reunions.

Evan and Harry are quite beat up and filthy from playing outside so much. Harry was quite impressed with my mother-in-law's yard. They have a nice orchard and a lot of berry plants. He thought it was neat that we could go outside and eat all the berries that we could find. Neither of them napped all that good the last couple of days, so I am exhausted and have a bit of a head ache.

On the way down we got to see what happens when truck runs into the bathrooms at a rest stop. The fire fighters that were there to make sure the truck did not burst into flames gave the boys some Smokey the Bear bracelets. Harry was also a bit of a whiner, so we had to stop pretty often to let him stretch his legs.

The motel we stayed at had large cow sculptures in the yard. Evan had fun kissing the cow.

Evan and his beloved VW bus. He had a ton of fun playing with all the different toys at Grandma's and Grandpa's house.

These are the steps from the living room to the play room/sun room. He managed them quite well all but once. I had just assured one of my husband's uncles that he could handle them quite well, when he decided to take a header down them. He was ok but a tiny bit banged up. I guess he wanted to prove me wrong.

Harry trying to blow the pinwheel. I love the drool hanging off of his lip.

The boys going nuts over a very friendly neighbor's dog. The dog comes now and then to visit my inlaws and loved all the attention that he got from the kids.

The boys all tuckered out in the car while we were driving home.

Tags: kids, family reunion, family

A lovely evening

I had never been to an Eagle Scout court of honor before so it was a very interesting and novel experience for me. It was neat hearing about my brother-in-law from the leaders that had helped him on the path to this very high honor. It is easy to see him as a rather trying teenager rather than the good man that he is becoming.

I was the photographer for the event which was a bit tricky at first with two kids that wanted to run around and my husband up on the stage with his family (At a court of honor all other Eagle Scouts are invited to sit up front). Luckily my mother-in-law had thought to ask one of her friends to help me. Evan who was the loudest and friendliest went with this kind woman to run the hallways of the church while I hitched a cranky and sick Harry around on my hip. My husband's grandmother helped me entertain him the few times I did sit down by letting him play with her keys.

I am excited that there is a chance that my boys will be able to follow in their father's footsteps and have the chance to earn the highest scouting award. I did not get much exposure to scouting since I came from a family of all girls but it is a very worthy program. It will also be neat that my husband will have the chance to be involved in something like that with his sons.

Good

We had a wonderful weekend. It was perfectly lazy. We didn't go anywhere except for church and to the gas station to fill up for the trip home. Saturday I devoted to knitting and Sunday was a book day. In between I took naps and went to bed early.

My darling husband forgot to put our play pen in the car so we had to improvise our sleeping arrangements. I decided to put Evan to bed on the trundle bed in one of the spare bedrooms. It lay on the floor pretty low so Evan falling off would not be a big deal. Then I would lay on the bed with him until he went to sleep. This strategy actually worked very well, so well in fact that we are going to transition him to a twin mattress in short order. We had been thinking about bunk beds for the boys but are not sure how that will work out with Evan's non working hand.

One of Evan's favorite toys at grandma and grandpa's house was some sunglasses. I snapped a few highly hilarious pictures to show to his prom date.

This one is my all time favorite! He just look so hilarious.

Here is a cute one of Harry, lest any one accuse me of playing favorites.

Vacation is over

My husband, being the macho man that he is decided that we would try and do the drive home in one day. We managed to do it suprisingly. Even with all of our stops we made super good time and the kiddos were pretty good.

I has been very weird coming home. This is the longest that I have ever been away from home in a really long time. I am glad that we took the time to clean before leaving so that we came home to a spic and span ant free home. I am already missing all the free babysitting that I got. This was a true vacation because I actually got a nice break from caring for the children for 24 hour every single day.

Utah was starting to grow on me again. It really is not such a bad place. Sure it is a bit behind the times but there are a lot of friendly people there and the shopping was excellent. It was also fun visiting some of the places that my husband and I used to go to when we were dating. I know that Evan will miss my parent's backyard and his Auntie's rats.

Tomorrow we will be back in our old groove. The one thing that I am super glad to have back is our DSL and our computer.

What a day

I have a head ache. Today we did a two hour drive to spend two hours with my husband's grandmother and stepgrandfather. We had the same conversation over and over with his grandmother (she is getting senile) and I had to stop Evan from dragging around the 102 year old grandfather. Evan has developed a very annoying habit of taking the hand of any handy adult and leading them to places, generally places that he should not be going. Harry in the mean time was spitting up on me and refusing to nap.

Once we finally got home I had a horrible headache that was later cured by advil. Sadly that cue did not last because Evan puked on me in The Olive Garden. My mom had decided that she did not want to cook so we went out to eat. I was giving Evan sips of my frozen lemonade. He coughed a lot after one drink so I stopped giving him sips for awhile. Sadly I had a horrible lapse in judgment and at the end of dinner gave him one last sip. He coughed so hard that he ended up puking on me. That is when the headache returned.

I didn't do a Father's Day post on purpose. My husband has done his typical thing of ruining a nice time. We had a wonderful anniversary which included a stay at a bed and breakfast. It was heaven not being awoken by a crying child. Later that day at his niece's birthday party he acted like his two year old son and is now in the dog house. But hey I will always treasure that morning of sleeping in.

Randomness

That accident that stopped traffic on our way over had three fatalities including a pregnant teenager. I am feeling sad about the fact that I was so annoyed with the whole incident. People died and I was merely inconvenienced. It really makes you think. If we had left any earlier it could have been us in that accident.

Evan now has a shiner thanks to his cousin. We went to my husband's brother's house to spend a bit of time with them. We are not too fond of them and the life choices they make but we are cordial. Evan was playing with his cousin when the cousin took Evan's arm and pushed him into a rocking chair. He apologized after but I was still a little gumpy about the whole incident even though I know that when you get two toddlers together things like this happen. It also looks so bad only because of Evan being on blood thinners.

My sister-in-law makes me feel like an over protective parent. I was getting very antsy when Evan wandered off with his cousins in the yard. I try not to obsess but I just feel so much better when I can see him. I did give Harry a toy that had fallen on the ground much to my SIL's chagrin so I guess I am not too obsessive.

Tomorrow I go to get my hair chopped off. I am very tired of having Harry grabbing my hair and it is so hot during the summer that I like to have a shorter cut.

On Vacation

Isn't the internet wonderful? We are in Utah on an extended vacation yet I am still in the same place online. I won't be able to blog too much or read my favorite blogs because my parents have sucky dial-up internet. Plus they have an awful computer that has a horrible monitor. All the websites I go to are wonky, all the colors are different. The pictures that are on the computer look pixelized. The keyboard needs to have the keys hit harder than I am used to so I keep messing up with spelling.

The drive over here was quite an adventure. We took it in two days because I wanted to take it easy on Harry since it was his first long trip. In Reno we go behind a guy that had a pick up truck filled with household items that were improperly restrained. One rug that came flying down the road almost took out the car in front of us. The next one hit us, luckily it hit low so instead of blocking our windshield it went under the car. I was annoyed when we finally managed to pass the idiot because I saw him busily chatting with his passenger and not even paying attention to the accidents he almost caused.

We stayed the night in Battle Mountain Nevada which is known as the arm pit of America. I can't say I disagree with that assessment. There wasn't much there. The mattress in the motel was rock hard and we ended up with a room that had two double beds so sleeping arrangements were a bit tricky. Evan slept in the bed with me and Harry ended up with my husband. I think my husband got the better end of the deal because I woke up several times with my bottom hanging out of bed because Evan had pushed me over.

We thought we would get an early jump on the day. Sadly only a few miles out we ended up being stopped in traffic because a semi took out two cars and it blocked both lanes going east. We were at a stand still for a good hour before the highway patrol moved us off the road and on to the frontage road to bypass the accident. Shortly after we were stopped I heard Harry grunting. Then the smell of the diaper hit me. I didn't want to chance changing it in case traffic suddenly started moving again. The smell got too bad so I finally ended up doing a super quick change in the middle of stopped traffic. We put the diaper in the trunk so it could get nice and ripe when we later took out our luggage at our destination.

The kids did pretty well on the trip. Evan did much better than Harry. Harry would not sleep for anything but was obviously tired. I ended up having to give him some Benedryl to help him sleep. Evan was happy as long as he had his Baby Einstein videos playing when he started to get cranky. Most of the time he was happy just watching the cars out of the window.

I am tired but very glad that we will be sleeping on a nice pillow top mattress. Tomorrow we go to see a park with ducks in it, Evan is going to be thrilled.

Are we there yet?

I am feeling so blah. I need to start packing but I just can't make myself start. The kids have been super whiny all day, with Harry being especially whiny this afternoon. Evan was pretty much running away from the physical therapist for the entire appointment this morning. I can tell that he needs a break as much as I do. I don't know what Harry's deal is but I suspect it is tooth number two popping up. My deal is undetermined at his moment. I just feel so blargh and nothing has been able to change that not even chocolate.

I am supposed to be at a church activity tonight but I don't want to go. We supposedly planned it at the marathon meeting on Sunday but there has been no follow up so it makes me even wonder why I tortured myself by even going. I think the whole Young Women's organization is in a big rut and we need something to shake us up. I think a lot of us are too busy thinking about summer right now. I know that I am just counting down the days to vacation. More later, Harry is pitching a fit.

later



After getting Harry into bed I crashed and now despite what the time stamp says it is the next day. I woke up at 4 am and I know I am going to be screwed sleep wise. At least I don't have anywhere I have to be today which is a nice change.