Children's Museum!

A couple of weekends ago, Mom and I took the kids to the Children's Museum.  Katie Wynn had been only one other time when she was really too little to enjoy it, and this was Thomas's first time ever.  They both LOVED it!  

In typical fashion, Katie Wynn was a bit shy and hesitant at first, but she was running all over the place in no time.  We stayed all morning and even had lunch there.  Know what that means?  Good afternoon naps!

Busted!  Headed to jail in the cop car.

We spent a long time in the toddler area because everything was perfectly sized for them.  They loved watching all the other kids their ages too.

Thomas LOVED the slide!

By far, the highlight was definitely the mini grocery store.  I loved it too when I was little!  Is it any surprise that "they" had to check out multiple times with those super cool cash registers?! :)

Even with so many toys and attractions everywhere, it was this floor fan that I had to drag Thomas away from so that we could go home.  He was obsessed with it!

I think there were a few spots we missed, and we didn't even venture outside to the playground and splash pad.  It's a good thing we purchased a membership because we'll definitely have to go back.  Hopefully soon!

July Phone Pics

It's July phone pics time!  Woot!  

My first week of July was spent in Jamaica.  You can see those pics a few posts back. When we returned home, we were greeted by a couple of tiny nude swimmers.  Can you believe we'd just spent a week at an all-inclusive couples' resort and it wasn't until we got home that we ran into skinny dippers?

Thomas was there too, but his pictures are too private...if you know what I mean. And posting these pictures of Katie Wynn will more than likely get my site blocked at my work for pornography.  (And if not, typing the word "pornography" should do the trick.)

I'm going in chronological order this month so I'll be jumping around all over the place.  Thomas was helping me upstairs in the Mint Tulip sewing room one afternoon when he spotted his Daddy outside.  He stayed at that window and watched him for a while!

The first weekend we were home from our vacation, we were called in to perform Super Aunt and Super Uncle duties.  My niece, Bren, and my nephew, Jett, were staying with a babysitter while their parents were out to dinner.  They had been out fishing at our neighborhood lake when Jett hooked Bren in the forehead!  Their babysitter called my brother who directed her to our house so we could assess the situation.  Just a couple inches lower and she could've totally rocked it as an eyebrow ring!

The first thing Matt did was cut of the extra dangles.  Then we both took turns tugging at it to see if we could pull it out, all to no avail.  That thing was not coming out the same way it went in!  Perk of small town living: one of our favorite nurse practitioners lives in our neighborhood so we went to see him.  He took one look and said, "Hop in the car, we're going to have to go to the clinic so I can deaden it."  And off we went.

Bren was pretty nervous on our way there.  She kept asking me if we would have to go to the hospital and what would happen if no one could get it out.  She did great though!  The APRN sprayed some numbing spray on it before giving her four or so shots - she didn't even know she got shots!  The shots made her bleed a bit and then when he wiped the blood away, the gauze got caught on the hook.  It was quite a mess!  I'm leaving those pics off for anyone who's squeamish at the sight of blood.  :)

After a couple tries, he was able to poke it through a new hole and pull it right out.  Bren left with a tiny bandaid and two popsicles in hand.  It made for quite a Saturday night adventure!

One night while Matt was out of town for work, I was at home with both kids when our power went out.  It didn't show signs of coming back on quickly so I told Katie Wynn we were going to have to go to Mimi and Poppy's house for dinner and baths.  She ran to her room while I loaded Thomas up and came back with her bag packed.  She's never packed a bag before so I took a peek to see what she'd packed...inside I found about 6 pairs of shoes and that's it!  I added diapers and pj's so at least there was something useful in it.  :)

Speaking of Katie Wynn and shoes, this is what happens when she goes shopping with me.  "Deez my size, Mama?"  "No honey, not only are they not your size, but they don't match and you have them on the wrong feet."

This guy never naps as long as his big sister so he gets all the attention in the late afternoon until she wakes up.  We played on the porch while Dad watered the plants out front.

Posing in a new outfit made by Mimi!

We are very deep into the "Hey Mama! Wook!  Watch dis!" phase.  I got to watch her swing on the monkey bars about a hundred times one night.

This is what happened after Poppy fed my one-year-old boy a dozen brownies after dinner one night...Matt got stuck giving an early morning sink bath to clean up from a majorly explosive diaper!

Oh no.  Think I embarrassed him?

More modeling!  The kids had a water day at school so they had to arrive in their swimsuits.  Katie Wynn was one of the cutest ones there in her monogrammed PFG cover up, if I say so myself.  :)

I love these pictures so much.  Like I said on Instagram when I posted one of them, I'm not sure if I'm cool enough to be their mom.  They are too, too cool in their shades.

My kiddos aren't quite used to not being the youngest ones at Mimi's house anymore.  They were very into my niece, Lilli Greer, one Saturday morning when my mom was keeping her.  They showed her all kinds of stuff from around the house and Thomas wouldn't stop touching her head.

We brought a sprinkler!  It's a little wonky and I have to weight it down so it doesn't fall over but it's been fun to have.  KW enjoys running through it some but they both love it most when I pick them up and swing them over and around it and through the water sprays.  Did I mention I get soaked every time too?

A full morning of sprinkler fun resulted in two kids sitting still on the couch for, like, 5 minutes.

My mom's birthday present (a wrought iron glider) came in a big ol' box that we turned into a house!  I cut a door and windows and two chimney holes to make the perfect tiny home.

If you can't tell from their sweaty heads, it was super hot outside and even hotter inside the box, but they kept climbing in and out of it anyway!

Thomas thinks he's big enough to sit up at Mimi's bar by himself.

My mom bought the kids some chocolate pudding (pronounced "pooh-ding" by Katie Wynn) to have as dessert at her house, which means they were nice and wound up after dinner when it was time to go home!

And finally...the last weekend of the month, Matt played in a big golf tournament.  We only had a sitter for Saturday night's dinner so for Friday night we picked up our meal to go.  The kids loved running outside on the putting green while we waited for Matt to come back out.  I really don't understand why he doesn't want to take them with him for his Saturday morning golf games?!

Sunflowers!

The Saturday evening after we'd returned from Jamaica, we threw the kids in the car and went on a hunt for some sunflowers.  Actually, we were headed directly to a friend's house that lives out in the country - she had said we could borrow the sunflowers in her backyard for pictures anytime.  But, when we got there (unannounced), we realized they were having a party in their backyard (where the sunflowers are!).  Obviously we didn't want to interrupt so we turned around to leave.  But then Katie Wynn spotted the cutest double adirondack swing so we had to do some quick swinging before getting the heck outta dodge!

Isn't this swing just the cutest thing you've ever seen?  I seriously want one.  Who wants to help build me one?  (Dad?)

I still haven't actually told my friend that we were at her house and borrowed her swing.  I guess I should probably do that sometime. 

I had already promised Katie Wynn that we'd see some really big yellow flowers, so we set out to find ourselves a different field of sunflowers.  I knew there were some close because my mother-in-law had seen them when they were in town.  We passed one field that looked like it was almost dead, before driving up on a perfect field of the big yellow flowers.

And the first one out of the car and into the flowers was this dude.

Katie Wynn wasted no time finding a broken sunflower that she could carry around with her.  For the whole photoshoot.

I just love how they were planted in evenly spaced rows.  :)

This picture totally cracks me up.  Doesn't it look like she's popping her neck like she's going off on somebody?  

Right across the gravel road from the field of sunflowers was a rusty barn-shed-thing.  We used it as a backdrop for a few pictures.  Some of the cutest ones are on Matt's phone, though!

No pictures of Thomas in front of the barn-shed-thing because he was way more interested in the gravel road.  Of course.

Follow the sun, sunflowers.

Here's a bee, just doing its thing.

Katie Wynn went back into the field...

...and then we lost her.

If she wanted to switch to a different row to walk down, she would look at the sunflowers and then say, "Hey Mama, you open this door for me?" meaning, could I hold the sunflower stems to the side so she could walk through.  

Anywhere she goes, he goes too.

"Hey, wook Mama!  I found a wittle bitty one!"

Did I mention that this photshoot took place on July 11th?  And that it was, like, a thousand degrees outside?  Yea, we were pretty sweaty.

It was a hot and fun adventure.  To be honest, I wish we could do it again, but I'm guessing the sunflowers are all gone now.  (Right?)  I'd like to have a redo and go right after dinner instead of right before.  I think that would make happier kids and be better lighting.  Oh well, next year, I guess!

UPDATE:  Here are a couple bonus sunflower pics from the phone.  :)

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?

June Phone Pics

Well, after posting pictures from Lala and Poppa's visit, our trip to the zoo, and tidbits about Thomas, there aren't TOO many pictures left from the month of June.  Don't worry, there's still enough for a post!

After quickly scrolling through the selection of photos, it seems most of June was spent playing outside, "mowing" the yard (both with and without clothes), and posing for pictures in cute clothes.  :)

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Playing outside...

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"Mowing" the yard (and driveway)...

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Posing for pictures in cute clothes...

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Of course, there are still a few pictures that don't fit in those three categories.  Like, for instance, this fun picnic we had in our front yard the same day that we went to the zoo.  Katie Wynn thought it was so fun that we were eating outside on the ground.

One morning I got to take two of my nephews to a splash pad for a little while.  I think they had fun running around in the water.

I didn't leave my own kids out of the fun, though.  They got a trip or two to the kiddie pool at the golf course.  

Katie Wynn did her own bedtime reading one night.  Sometimes she surprises me with how much of her books she can somewhat recite.

A little fun standing in front of the fan like a supermodel...

No month would be complete without chocolate.  Both fudge pops and cupcakes were in the house during June.  My kids come by their love for sweets honestly.

There ya have it.  Nothing like squeezing the June round-up pics in during the last few hours of July 31st.  I would say that I should jump right into July's phone pics post, but I still have other pictures to post first.  Like, for instance, our trip to Jamaica!  Hopefully I'll be back soon, but these days I'm learning not to promise that...