Our Memorial Day Weekend

May 24th, 2008

Since Andrew has a little bit of job flexibility, he decided to switch his vacation day from Monday to the Friday before, so we could go stay the night at Ocean Shores. We left on Friday afternoon, and arrived in Aberdeen, WA, where we had a late lunch at Dairy Queen and hit the Walmart to get all important beach necessities: a kite, beach towels, a bucket and shovel, a helicopter toy, a boomerang, water wings, a frisbee, and cold medication for me because I hadn’t quite gotten over a cold from this past week. We then made our way down to Ocean Shores and hit the beach right away, playing with our new toys. Patrick and Sammy had a blast. Ethan didn’t seem too terribly thrilled with the beach because he also had a cold, although he enjoyed riding in the sling and then in the Bjorn, close to mommy. The weather wasn’t terribly nice, but the boys didn’t seem to mind and it was great for flying kites. After a while, we hit our hotel and took a little break before heading to dinner at Subway. After dinner we grabbed some ice cream and headed back to our hotel. We were so stuffed from all the snack foods and dinner that we could hardly eat the ice cream! After ice cream, we took the boys to the pool. Ethan was sleeping, so we didn’t try to wake him up to go swimming, but Patrick and Sammy did get to go. It was the first time Sammy has ever been in a pool, and the first time in almost 3 years that Patrick’s been in a pool… yeah, we really don’t go swimming that often… Both boys were a little intimidated by the large amount of water, but after a while they started loosening up a little bit and started enjoying themselves, just so long as mommy or daddy was holding on to them. I really should enroll them in swimming lessons… Anyways, after swimming we went back to our room, gave the boys a bath, and tucked them into bed. It took a little while to get everyone to go to sleep, but we did manage to have a fairly restful night :o). Then, Saturday morning we woke up and Andrew took Patrick straight out for a walk on the beach while I got Sammy and Ethan ready for the day and started packing things up. When Andrew returned, we went to breakfast and then came back and finished packing up all our belongings. We checked out of the hotel and headed down to the beach, where we took a little walk down to the water and watched as the tide went down and people went around trying to dig clams. After a while we went to get some salt water taffy (a little tradition we have each time we go to the beach…) and some lollipops for the boys, and came back to the beach again, where Andrew pulled out the kite once more and Sammy and Patrick had fun burying my feet. By this time the sun had actually come out and it was quite warm and pleasant, though not quite warm enough to go into the freezing cold water ;o). Finally it was time to pack up and head home. The boys had a really great time, though, and I am hoping that we can make this a yearly trip!

Here are some pictures from the beach and the day before we left:

Ethan playing with his ball the night before we leave for the beach

Patrick and Sammy playing with their bubble machine

Fun with bubbles

Daddy and Patrick try to fly the dragon kite

Fly, kite, fly!

Patrick and Sammy help Daddy make a sand castle ruin

Ethan likes snuggling close to Mommy

Sammy liked filling the bucket with sand

Patrick and Sammy had so much fun together!

Ethan decided he wanted to start taking in the view and was flipped around… and yeah, he likes to spit… sorry

Sammy and his shovel

They had to wear the appropriate Pj’s for a trip to the beach: Patrick had sharks, Sammy  had a crab, and Ethan had whales :o)

Peek a boo!

Early morning walk on the beach

My little man… yes, he does put his pants on backwards quite frequently!

The sun is out. Yay! (And no, he did not wet his pants… he had spilled his cereal into his lap!)

The boys help Daddy fly the kite one more time!

This One’s for Andrew- UPDATED!!!!!!

May 16th, 2008

Andrew listed 7 odd things about himself on his blog, and one of the things that he mentioned was that he really likes ABBA. Since Andrew apparently loves ABBA so much, I was thinking I should take him to see Mama Mia, but for now he can watch this:

In addition to liking ABBA, he even dances like them! That’s where Patrick got it…

Boy, the 70’s were scary…

Yummy Yummy Yummy!

May 13th, 2008

I have been really bad about keeping up on things… it’s been quite a busy month. On Saturday I almost resolved to never go to another store again. After searching Walmart for 20 minutes for an item I couldn’t find, I came home and ordered it online from drugstore.com… no sales tax… free shipping… along with some more GNC vitamins that I’ve been putting off purchasing because it’s a hassle to go to the GNC store in the mall. Then, yesterday, I went to Joann’s to find cute fabric for making totes and I didn’t see a ton of selection. I went to fabric.com, where I found so much selection that I had the hardest time deciding what to buy, and had to sadly delete a ton of cute prints from my cart, telling myself that I could get them next time… If it weren’t for the fact that there are certain things you simply cannot get online, I’d be content to do all my shopping in my pj’s. I can even get my groceries, and I love that. It’s really not easy at all to drag three boys through shops all the time, and it’s very stressful as well.

Now that I’ve gone on and ranted about how I’m an online junkie, I guess I should share the big news going around our house. We’re planning to go to Europe next summer! Whoo hoo! (That’s for Derek… I hear they like to say that at WAMU!) But that’s not the most exciting thing I wanted to share. What I wanted to say is that Ethan ate solids for the first time today! This morning, on a whim, I broke out a little jar of applesauce that I had sitting around, and gave him maybe about an eighth of it. It was a messy experience… several times he spit it back in my face, but for the first time, it mostly went down. Mostly. Now that I know that he is finally willing to take a stab at solids, I can now start a new project I’ve been planning to do since Ethan was born: learn how to make baby food. I ordered special baby food freezer trays off of Target.com last week, and a great baby food book off Amazon this morning (there’s the ordering things online again!), and now I just need to pull out the blender and food processor, and get to work! I can’t wait!

Sorry for the strange ramblings on this blog… it’s been a long day, and I’m feeling like I’ve been inside a little too long! I’m hoping the weather clears up by the end of the week because today was yucky. They say that Thursday will be nice, which is good because we have a play date scheduled. Yay for friends!

Vocalizations

May 5th, 2008

Today Andrew taught Sammy how to say, “Mama”. While Sammy was learning this new word to please his mommy, Patrick learned a new phrase. It just so happened to be “Sammy’s weird”. There’s never a dull moment in our house!!!!

Ethan Goes A-Courtin’

May 4th, 2008

On Saturday night Ethan and Kaiya were able to spend some quality time together, being of course supervised by both sets of parents. Here are some pictures from their little “date”.

Ugh, Mommy, I hate my tummy time and Kaiya just tried to roll over me

Hey, Kaiya, look at my strange brothers over there on the couch.

Akkk! You’re choking me!

Waaaaaah! That was my face!

You know, Kaiya, despite the ear pulling, the punching, the choking, and trying to roll over me, I really like spending time with you…

… and you must think I’m pretty fun to be with, too ;o)

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