Indiana Playground

I know I've done plenty of posts before of my kids playing on the playground, but here comes another one.  I dunno why I love taking pictures there - I guess because it's so easy to get good smiles when they're having a blast playing!  These are the last of the pictures from our Indiana trip and were taken Saturday evening before dinner.  We took the kids to a nearby neighborhood park and it had the biggest playground equipment I've ever seen!  The sign said it was designed for kids ages 5 to 12 (or something like that) so most of it was too tall/advanced for our kids, but that didn't keep them from loving every minute of being there.

I'm so glad they had a couple of smaller slides that we could enjoy.  Katie Wynn is always a little hesitant at first but once she gets going, she wants to do it over and over and over again!

Watching Sis...

...and thinking he might like that too!

This is one of my favorites.  I love that they're grinning at each other.  They are best little buddies!

Thomas and Daddy climbed up to the top part.  It was so high up!  We quickly learned that our little girl may have a fear of heights...you could see through to the ground and she had a little bit of a come-apart up there!

Braving the big, tall, twisty slide with Daddy.  I had already done it and got a few burns on my elbows from taking the turns too fast.  Ouch!

Can't go wrong with swings!

Matt did a little monkey-ing around of his own.  I think he liked the big kid playground.  :)

He channeled his inner ninja warrior to travel across these spinning monkey-bar wheels. 

Katie Wynn's favorite part?  The long ramp up to the playground!  She ran up and down, up and down...

She even convinced her Daddy to do it with her.

Thomas is my no-fear child.  He's all about flying down the slide at top speed...he even attempted to climb up a huge ladder after me.

The playground was also the perfect spot to get a good picture with Lala and Poppa!  (But why can't the kids smile at the same time?)

I'll wrap this playground post up with my favorite pictures from the day.  Matt took these at the playground while I was throwing the kids up in the air.  Love them!

Children In The Corn

Isn't there a movie called Children of the Corn or something?  But it's scary, right?  I dunno because I don't watch scary movies.  Anyway, this post is about cute children IN the corn and there's nothing scary about it!

Why children in corn?  Well, 'cause they grow it BIG in Indiana and Matt's parents have it growing all around their house!  Seemed like a good place to take some pictures.  I had told Katie Wynn we were going to see the corn but she was a bit confused when we walked up to it.  I opened (shucked?) and ear so she could see the corn inside.  She loved it!

It took a little convincing to get her to walk inside the rows of corn but she finally made it in.

And there was no way she was going to put down her corn.

Thomas got his own ear of corn too but he was a little too uncooperative for any good pictures.

I let Katie Wynn pick out one ear of corn for me just so I could snap a few more pictures.  (I hate corn!)  In total, we stole three ears of corn from this farmer.  I would've happily paid him if I knew who he was! 

Right next to the field of corn was a big open field of grass that had a really good hill, so we visited it to do some good running around.

I thought it would be fun to teach them how to roll down a hill.  Don't you remember doing that as a kid?  So I laid down and gave it a go and luckily was able to stop myself before I got too dizzy.  Would they try it?  Of course not.  I couldn't even get them to lay down.  And guess who had to immediately go home and shower and coat her legs in benadryl cream?  D'oh.

One last post from Indiana coming up next!

Weekend in Indiana

A few weeks ago we decided to make a quick trip up to Indiana for an extended weekend visit with Matt's parents.  For the last few years, I have only gotten to go to their house around Christmas when it's cold outside, and I was really wanting to go during a time when we could spend time out on their awesome back deck.  And that's exactly what we did!  The weather was glorious and we spent nearly all day everyday outside.  In typical fashion, I took WAY too many pictures.  Like, over 400 pictures for just 3 days.  What is wrong with me?!  I may have to break this weekend vacation up into multiple posts.

With that said...here are all the pictures of us just hanging out at Bill and Pat's house in the country.  They start with  an early morning drive down the road in pajamas to visit the neighbor's cows!

Isn't the color of this horse so pretty?

The rest of Friday, our first full day there as we drove after work on Thursday, was spent just hanging around the house, eating peaches and ice cream!  And Bill and Pat were kind enough to let Matt and I go out for dinner that evening which is always so nice and very appreciated.

Lala and Poppa have a wagon attached to their lawn mower (the "tractor") which has been a hit with every one of their grandchildren!  There are always lots of tractor rides with Poppa.

Sometimes Poppa gets crazy and lets his grandchildren drive!

This one below and the one a few pics back of Katie Wynn "driving" with Poppa in the wagon are two of my favorite pics from the weekend.

K-dub also got to help Lala fill all the bird feeders to feed the birds.

On Saturday, some more family members came over to join us for lunch.  We love getting to see as many people as we can when we're in town since we don't get up there often enough!  I had brought some water balloons with me to entertain the kids, so we had a good ol' balloon toss contest.  Each child had to have a grown up as a partner.  I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty sure Mia and I won every time!  (We may have also had a water balloon that was too small to pop...)

By far one of the highlights of the weekend for Katie Wynn was that Granddaddy came over.  She was SO excited to get to see him!  And I am totally kicking myself that I didn't get a picture of them together.  She just walked up to him where he was sitting and told him to hold her.  (If you know her at all, you know she is way too shy to do this to just anyone!)

Like I said, all the kids love the tractor...

Thomas got his first taste of chocolate milk when he stole his sister's carton.

Not so happy when she took it away...

When all of our guests were gone for the day, most of us (well, me and the kids...) crashed for an afternoon nap.  Thomas found himself a comfy spot to sleep...

Ok, I have two more "groups" of pictures from this trip that I think I'll let be posts of their own.  So that's all for now.  We had such a wonderful time in Indiana and wish we could go back again soon!

Jamaica, Party of Twelve

The first week of July, Matt and I were lucky enough to join five other couples for an adults-only vacation in Jamaica.  To say we had excitedly been counting down would be an understatement!

We booked this trip back in January and it has been so fun having something to look forward to.  The group emails started almost immediately and got more frequent as the trip got closer.  Of the 12 girls in my group of friends from college, it got whittled down to just 6 of us (and our spouses) that were able to commit to the trip.  (Maybe everyone will get to go in a few years when there aren't so many new babies!)  A lot went into our destination choice (that I won't bore you with) and we ended up staying at a freshly renovated, all-inclusive Hyatt resort in Montego Bay.  Most of us had been in Ocho Rios, Jamaica this same time of year just six years prior for a destination wedding.  The couple that got married then was on this trip too so we got to celebrate their anniversary with them.

The Hyatt used to be a Ritz Carlton property and just re-opened last December.   The bulk of the resort was pre-existing buildings that were completely renovated and a brand new building was added on.  There are two properties that sit side by side, the Zilara (where we stayed) is for adults-only and the Ziva is family friendly.  We were able to easily access the Ziva property which was good because they had a lot of good restaurants!  If you are looking to book a trip to Jamaica, I would recommend this property.  

I mean, when this is your first view after stepping off the hotel shuttle, you know it's going to be a good week, right? 

Three sets of couples arrived at the same time and since our rooms weren't quite ready yet, we enjoyed a late outdoor lunch.  It was a good kickoff to the relaxing days ahead.  When our rooms were finally ready and we had access to the wifi, I snapped this view from our balcony to send to our parents to let them know we'd safely arrived.  

I was thinking this post was going to be quick and easy to write because I didn't take my real camera and only have a few pictures from my phone.  Then I realized those "few" pictures from my phone total 233.  How in the world?!  I won't bore you to death by narrating the whole vacation, I promise.  

Here are the six couples that were in attendance.

Sarah and Charlie

Jenny and Darrin

Emily and Andrew

Darbie and Kendall

Chris and Roxy

Matt and Me

This is the only picture from the whole trip that has all 12 of us in it.  (Thank you, selfie stick.)  Fun fact: I crammed a whole roll into my mouth right before smiling for this picture.  It's just hanging out in there while I try to look normal.

So the gist of the vacation went like this: get up whatever time you feel like it, do whatever it is you want to do during the day, and then we all meet up for dinner.  Matt got up early every morning and worked out.  (I know!  What in the world?!)  When he came back to the room, we'd suit up and head to the beach to claim our spots for the day before grabbing breakfast.  Then, for us, pretty much the rest of the day was spent at the beach.  There were actually three couples that seemed to prefer the beach and two that preferred the pool and one that flip-flopped back and forth.  We all met up for dinner every single night though so we still had lots of time together!

Our first morning on the beach, I thought it would be cool to walk out on these rocks for a picture.  Turns out that's not really allowed and I got in trouble.  Not really, they just told me not to come back off the rocks and not go out there.  I'm kinda glad because once the waves splashed up on my shoes, my feet started slipping around and it got a little scary.  I made it almost to the end before I realized they were trying to get my attention.  I was happy to turn back around!

You may be able to tell from the picture above that this beach was not like the white sandy beaches in Florida.  This was a rocky beach that they had poured sand over, so there were still plenty of rocks around.  The water was really rough and the sand stopped just a few feet into the water and it became rocks again.  You can see, too, that there was lots of dark seaweed at the edge of the shore.  I actually didn't touch the water at all except for when we were out on the boat.  (The weather was so perfect and there was so much wind that there was no need to get in the water to cool off!)

Ok, here are just a bunch of random beach and pool pictures.

There were quite a few of these enormous bed cabanas and they got snatched up so early every day!  Matt and Andrew made it out to the beach at 6:30 one morning to claim two of them for us and we laid on them all day long.

View from the cabana bed.

There were catamaran sailboats that you could ride out on with a guide.  Matt and I went on a ride one morning with the Thompsons and our guide was awesome!  He kept us out on the water for far longer than any of the other rides and he told us all about Jamaica and pointed out houses and buildings to us, including the property where Queen Elizabeth stayed when she visited and the house Johnny Cash owned.  The terrifying part of it though was that he asked if I had a camera before we went out on the water - I told him I did thinking he was just going to take our picture before we left.  And then he tucked my phone into his life vest - not in a pocket or anything, just between his life vest and his chest, and carried it out on the boat with us.  I had only had my new phone for a little over a week and I was a nervous wreck he was going to drop it in the ocean!  He didn't, though, and I'm very thankful that we have these pictures from our boat ride.  

When we got out far from shore, our guide stopped the sailboat and made us stand up to take pictures.  There was NOTHING calm about the water or steady about the boat to make standing up easy.  I'm pretty sure I screamed a hundred times trying to stay upright.  And then he would tell us to "prove that we belong together" so that we'd kiss for the camera.

We had breakfast and lunch outside everyday.  It was so nice to be somewhere that wasn't unbearably hot and humid!

And for dinner each night, we showered and put on real clothes.  All of the food was really good!  We ate somewhere different each night - everything from Brazilian steak house to pizza and pasta to pub grub.  

We were there for the fourth of July so we hung out around a fire pit to watch the fireworks.  The Jamaicans put on a pretty good show!

And then we danced the night away under the watchful eye of Uncle Same.

I think when we were out on that dance floor is when I was the very hottest for the entire trip!

More evening photos.  One thing we noticed is that it got dark quick there!  It would still be light outside as we walked to dinner but as soon as we stepped inside the restaurant it seemed like someone would flip the light switch.

Our last night together, we hung out on a rooftop patio for after-dinner drinks.  They had these huge light-up eggs scattered around that changed colors.  I loved them and would love to have a bunch of themm for our backyard.  Wouldn't that be fun at parties?!

While we enjoyed being on our adults-only vacation, we really couldn't go the whole time without seeing our babies!  We are very, very thankful to Matt's parents for A) keeping our kids at our house so that we could go on this trip and B) face-timing with us while we were gone so that we could see them.  

We all departed at different times on our final day.  We left, though, having made the decision that these trips should happen every two years at least.  We've got start scoping out our next destination.  Anyone have any suggestions?

The Best Vacay!

Warning:  this post has 117 pictures.  If you aren't already seated with your coffee (or martini or cherry coke or whatever it is you drink) in hand, you may want to go ahead and do that first.  This one is long!

So, back in May, we spent the better part of a week at our beach house in Florida.  While I won't go as far as to say it was the best vacation ever, it was definitely the best vacation we've had with kids in tow to date.  Matt and the kids and I left after dinner on a Tuesday night and drove most of the way there.  The kids slept which was great, but we had issues at the hotel and getting them transitioned and back into bed was a bit of a struggle, but we survived the night.  The worst part about breaking up the trip with two kids is that you have to almost completely unpack the car just to repack it all back up a few hours later.  At least we have some cute luggage.  :)

The best part about breaking up the trip is that you arrive earlier in the day! 

We pulled up to the house right at lunch time, unloaded a few things, and walked to one of our favorite restaurants, Wild Olives, to get some lunch.  Then we put on our swimsuits for the first swim of the season and vacation!

My parents arrived at the end of our swim when we were getting to put the kids down for naps.  We were glad they joined us so we'd have extra hands to help with the kids.  That evening, we put the kids in the stroller and walked to La Cocina for a delicious taco dinner.  The best part of the evening, though, was the ice cream we had for dessert.  We let Thomas have some for the first time and he decided it was the best thing ever!  

Just like on past visits, Katie Wynn loved playing in the gravel rocks from our street parking spots.

This is probably the funniest picture from the trip.  Gotta make sure that booty gets clean!

We hosted some friends of my Dad's one night and attempted a family photo before our guests arrived.  This was the best one.

I have about 50 outtakes that look more like this.

The kids were so well behaved on this trip.  That's not to say we didn't have any problems at all (um, see above photo), but in general, they were in great spirits and so fun to be around!  They were good on shopping trips and pretty good at restaurants too.  I think that helped make this trip so great.  We also had fantastic weather!  The weather had rain in the forecast for every day we were there but we never saw a drop.  It was in the 80s with a nice breeze every day.

I love these two kiddos so, so much!  

My sweet little T-Man and his sweet little grin.

We went to the splash pad one night after dinner and both kids were a bit hesitant at first.  I think Thomas warmed up to it before Katie Wynn did, but both eventually ended up completely soaked!  

Katie-bug was more interested in running around in the huge green lot!

Poor Thomas...behind bars on the patio and trapped in the shower.  That's what happens when you get into everything, buddy.

Fun times swimming with Mimi!  We love having our own pool at the house - best decision ever.  

My parents offered to watch the kids one night so we could go out to dinner and we didn't say no!  Thanks, Mom and Dad!  We hit up another of our favorites - La Crema - for tapas and the best desserts ever.  I'm still thinking about those crab cakes, steak empanadas, and our layered chocolate dessert!

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Now, on to the best part - the BEACH! This is one of the main reasons this vacation was so great.  In the past, Katie Wynn has been terrified of the ocean and absolutely hated the sand.  Our last trip to the beach resulted in me carrying her back up the stairs before my Mom and Thomas even got to join us.  But this time, she stepped into the sand with no problems at all and started digging with her shovel before I even had our spot set up.  I was so relieved!  

We had the best wide shore and shallow water to play in, and one morning it felt like we had the beach to ourselves!

What is it about the salty air that turns on the snot faucets?  Or is that just something special that only happens with my kids?  Their little noses dripped non stop while we were on the beach!

We were able to take four different trips to the beach and stay for a couple hours each time.  I had given Thomas a strict deadline to be walking before we left for the beach because I thought it'd be easier for him than crawling through the sand.  He likes to make his mama happy so he met my deadline, but it turns out it wasn't even necessary because he didn't mind crawling through it at all!  

Thomas absolutely LOVED the water.  I got my workout from dragging him out of the waves and up the shore and then chasing him back down, over and over and over again.  I was so pleased that he didn't mind having his hood or hat on - he never once tried to pull them off!  No sunburns for any of us - a major success!  

Poor T-Man's face got so red from all the sand he smeared on it when he rubbed his nose and eyes.  I think he over-exfoliated his cheeks a little.  :)

Probably one of my favorite photos ever.  This one's definitely going in a frame.  :)

My top three guys!

We were so thankful to have this ramp so we could pull the wagon to the beach!  It made hauling everything there and back so much easier.  Thomas didn't mind being packed in with the chairs and food.  I'm pretty sure he thought he was driving the wagon.  :)

Serious about sand digging.

Katie-bug loved having these shallow puddles to splash in.  Won't it be great when she doesn't need that enormous swim diaper anymore?!

"It too bwight, Mama!"

I mean, can you think of a more perfect place to take a nap??  This guy passed smooth out in his daddy's arms while listening to the roar of the waves.  I think he took a beach nap every time we went down there!  

This is Katie Wynn's version of sitting with her toes in the water.

Oh man, can't you just hear her bossing him around with those arms going?  She told him exactly how to build that sand castle.

And then she smashed it flat! 

Then they got to do it all over again.  :)

Thomas did a lot of sitting and watching after his naps.

We took the kids to the beach one last time on the day we left.  It was a good way to get some energy out before packing them into the car for the 8 hours drive home.  On our way to the beach, Katie Wynn said she wanted to build a snowman.  So build a snowman we did!

After chasing Thomas in and out of the waves repeatedly, Matt dug a hole to put him in.  It only kept him still for a few minutes until he figured out how to crawl out of it.  Little stinker!

Katie Wynn took over the hole and loved it when a big wave would fill it with water!

My little beach bum has come a long way!  It only took her two and half years to decide that the beach isn't all that bad.

None of us wanted to leave on Sunday to come home, not even my dad!  It just wasn't a long enough vacation.  We think we'll wait until September to go back but next time we'll be sure to go for the whole week, if not more!  I'm counting down already.