Travel

A Photo Tour

Posted on by Amy
We’re home. The trip was tiring, but fun. Here’s a photo tour of the week.
Baby girl – sweaty, but still oh-so-cute.

After attending a few wedding-related events, we went to my in-laws’ to spend most of the rest of our trip with them. My girls loved this little table there. Lass sure thought she was a big deal.

We need to get a little girl sized table, I think.

We traveled all over the state of Florida during the week, from the Gulf coast to the Atlantic and back again.

The girls did a great job.

The crazy traveling was for the purpose of seeing my Grandma and Grandpa.

The girls had a fun visit with their Great-Grandma. She pulled out all sorts of fun stuff for them, from a bin of Easter decorations

to hats and colorful golf balls,

and of course the musical instruments. There’s always music at Grandma’s house.

Somehow I didn’t get any photos when we visited my Grandpa this time, about which I’m quite disappointed. I think it must have been because it was pouring when we got to his place, and we just ran in with the girls, forgetting the camera. I hate forgetting my camera.
Miss really worked on her swimming this week,

and her, eh, use of multiple floatation devices.

She thought this raft was the coolest thing ever, and spent a good bit of time “sleeping” on it,

and sleeping,

and then…

“Tickle me, Daddy!”

Looking for lizards.

No trip to Florida would be complete without a day on the beach

with shelling and playing in the sand.

She loved the sand but longed to try out the water.

It was fun to watch my little one showing her fearlessness in the water,

and my big girl overcoming her initial fear of the crashing waves.

I used a new sunscreen that didn’t absorb into my skin very well and left me looking more pasty white than usual. I had to chuckle when a man and woman walked by Lass and me playing in the sand, and the man said, “From how far North do you come?” That obvious, huh?

The plane rides to and from the sunny state were pretty uneventful. Snacks, coloring books, an Ergo carrier, an iPad, and the magazines and other handouts in the back seat pockets of the plane made for happy little ones.

Tonight I’m snuggled up on the couch with my hubby. He’s watching a really bad movie and I’m writing. It’s chilly here, relative to the sticky heat of Florida. It almost feels like fall is upon us. We’ve got windows open and are wearing jackets in the evenings to play outside. As always, it’s so good to be home.

Just Some Weekend Stuff

Posted on by Amy
My big girl had a big weekend with her “Kids.” This is what she calls her many cousins on my husband’s side of our family. Some of them came to visit us last Thursday in preparation for a big weekend at the Wisconsin Dells. Miss was so excited to see them. As always, she had a blast playing with them.





Her judgement of the time spent with her kids? A wink and a thumbs up! Sort of.
Another try at the wink. My girl is funny.

Friday we went to the Wisconsin Dells, where Miss and Lass saw the rest of their cousins on my husband’s side of the family. Everyone met at the Dells so that my husband, all of his siblings, and two brothers-in-law could run an event called the Tough Mudder. It’s a race about 10 miles long with several different obstacles to complete along the way. Here they are after finishing. They all completed every obstacle and finished in one piece. My hubby is the one on the far left.

While I was glad that my husband had a blast participating in the mud run with his brothers and sisters, I have to say I was really not impressed with the Dells. Though I really try to make the best of any situation and have fun wherever I go, I just didn’t have a good time there. There were too many people. The one water park I took the girls to was kind of lame for little ones (a lot of the attractions for really little kids weren’t even turned on). The food was outrageously expensive and not appetizing. And on top of the lackluster nature of the “resort” itself, my girls were super tired, Miss had a few meltdowns, I forgot to bring snacks for Miss (though I remembered tons of food for Lass) so I felt like a big Loser Mom, and Lass woke up this morning at 4:30 am. I was seriously ready to come home today. On the bright side, Miss did have a great time playing with her cousins. And that’s what really matters anyway! We have decided we might try to go back when the girls are a little older for a winter getaway weekend. An indoor water park would be a blast for them then.
In other news, someone is 11 months old today. So big!!
In the car on the way home this morning I taught her how to do “high five.”

She is such a ticklish, giggly baby.

She’s just so darned cute (even if she is sleeping like crud right now).
Today I made tacos with my homemade taco seasoning. I always use ground venison to make tacos or any other recipe that calls for ground beef. Before I added the seasoning I set some of the venison aside for Lass, who had her first taste of it at dinner tonight. She loved it!
When I was growing up, I ate venison rather than beef almost all the time, I think. I never really even notice the difference. I’m thankful that my husband hunts and that he gets at least one doe (rather than a buck, at my request) each year for us to eat so my girls will grow up knowing venison as the norm as well.
Today my hubby started the process of making sauerkraut. It takes a while to do whatever sauerkraut does while it gets made, but I’m eager to try it on some of his homemade brats when it’s done.
He’s pretty handy to have around.
Speaking of handy, my husband minded the munchkin (who napped for less than an hour this afternoon) so I could take a little nap this afternoon. I’m still pretty tired after being awakened at 4:30 though. My bed is calling me. Goodnight.

Visit with Great-Grandma

Posted on by Amy
Somehow I forgot to post the photos from our brief visit to my husband’s grandmother last Friday. We drove out Thursday night, stayed in a hotel, and then were able to visit for a few hours Friday morning before driving home that evening. It was a short but very fulfilling trip. Miss was a bit shy to start, but got warmed up by greeting her Great-Grandma’s leprechaun statue-doll thing.


Lass met her Great-Grandma for the first time, and was such a lover.


Miss got comfortable and had some fun chatting and showing off the books she brought along.



It was such a nice visit with my husband’s lovely grandmother. I know I’ve written about this many times before, but it’s just so important to us for our girls to get to spend time with their family. Even if our girls won’t remember this short visit, my husband will. His grandmother will. I will. And we will have these photos and others always to show our girls before future trips and also whenever we tell the girls about who they came from. Before this trip and our recent trip to Florida, during which we visited my grandparents, I showed Miss photos from her previous visits with her great grandparents and told her about who we were going to see. She probably doesn’t remember her last visit with her Great-Grandma S, but when we woke up in the hotel on Friday morning and I asked her who we were going to see that day, she knew. Our girls’ roots are spread far and wide, but they are strong and deep and thoroughly nurturing, and I want them to always be secure in this fact. Ten hours in the car and few hours of sleep for one night is a small price to pay for strengthening my girls’ connections to their family tree.

Big Fat Vacation Post

Posted on by Amy

We came home to heavily falling snow yesterday. After a week of sunshine and warmth, we are now back to over a foot of snow and temps below 20 degrees. But we had a splendid time. Now there’s a word I don’t use often enough. Splendid. Our vacation was truly splendid. It was full of everything a vacation should be. Lots of time with family. Cherished moments for my girls to spend with my grandparents, their grandparents (both my parents and my husband’s), and my aunt and uncle.




Four generations here.



And in addition to the fantastic family time, we had all the elements of the perfect vacation.
Bubbles.

Sweaty, sunscreened skin and hair curled by humidity.
Dancing and funny faces in a could-have-been-made-for-my-toddler mirror.





The beach of course, complete with shelling, relaxing, sand play, checking out the surf (Miss would not get too near the water, and kind of freaked out the one time a wave did come up over her toes), bird watching, a picnic lunch, and a nap for our littlest, experiencing her first trip to the beach.













A fun visit with close friends. Two of my good friends from graduate school live about an hour south of my in-law’s house, so I was able to visit with them and let them see the girls.

Morning walks, during which we got to walk by the harbor and see the manatees. Miss got so excited to see them poking their noses up out of the water. Okay, I got really excited to see them too, as I had never seen a manatee in person before.
Here we’re getting ready to go.
And of course, pool time.

This was our second dip in the pool for the week. Somehow we did not get any photos the first time. And unfortunately the pool heater got turned off by accident, so the water was a bit too cold for our second swimming attempt. But Miss really wanted to go in the pool, so her daddy got into the cold water and took her swimming. Reluctantly. . .
Sort of.


This dip in the pool only lasted a few minutes before we coaxed a blue-lipped, teeth-chattering Miss to get dry and blow bubbles instead of swimming.
In the evenings we had some grown up time playing cards with my in-laws. My husband and I taught them to play Euchre. I haven’t played Euchre since graduate school, and I forgot how much I enjoy it.
It was a great vacation. I almost didn’t want to come home. But now we’re here and I’m glad. We’re snuggled in and refreshed to get through the last of the cold weather. We’re looking forward to spring here. I can’t wait to see the crocuses pop up and feel the warm sun bringing everything back to life. I can’t wait to get my girls out and playing in the yard, going to the park and for walks in our new double stroller. Big things to come. Potty training. And this:
That’s avocado.
She seemed to like it at first.
And then maybe not so much.
Not sure if it was the taste or texture she was shuddering about.
We’ll try again tomorrow!

Family Fun in Florida

Posted on by Amy

We’ve had a wonderful weekend. Yesterday was full of traveling, beginning at 5am, but we were able to pack in a visit to my Grandpa C and then get to my Grandma B’s house for dinner. Lass got to meet her Great-Grandpa.


Miss got to show off for her Great-Grandpa, counting and dancing and playing. I could not get her to say “Arrivederci” though. My Grandpa always ends a phone call with, “As they say in the homeland, arrivederci!” and we have been working on it for weeks. She says, “Ayovechi.” But of course she got shy when we tried to get her to say it for him and she wouldn’t do it. It was so great to see him and spend some time visiting though.
We got to my Grandma B’s house last night. My parents are also here visiting my Grandma (and my mom was at my Grandpa’s when we got there yesterday). Today Miss had a big day playing with family. My mom, ever the children’s librarian, has held storytime several times today.

Great-Grammy has made paper doll chains for Miss over and over.
Miss loved them, but kept pulling them apart and then dismembering the dolls. I managed to save the last set my Grandma made for her. I put them away so I can put them in Miss’s baby book for her.
My Grandma is a wonderful musician, and at her house there is always music. Miss loved playing the piano.

She also had a lot of fun with this very old ukulele, which I remember from when I was little.
Then we checked out some quilts my Grandma is making. Miss kept asking to “wrap up” in the quilt tops my Grandma is working on, but was very happy with this old quilt instead. This quilt was pieced by my great grandmother, and then finished by my Grandma. Miss loved playing in it.
It was perfect for playing some hide and seek.
Peek!!
She enjoyed playing with the many golf balls my Grandma has around, which made for an interesting experiment with her shirt.
31 golf balls was the breaking point where her shirt came untucked and they spilled all over the floor. She thought that was pretty funny.
Here’s a shout out to one of my most faithful readers!!
Snuggles with Grandma.

Lass loves sucking on her bottom lip. Her first tooth broke through today, the left-middle bottom tooth.
Miss spent some time hanging out with my dad, surfing the web. Here they were looking at this blog.
She was really enjoying wearing her sunglasses at night, but as she was looking at photos from her birthday post, she realized she needed some more accessories.

She finished up the evening singing a fun new song she learned from my aunt.
She kept begging my aunt to sing this funny little song with her. It’s about chewing gum. She doesn’t even know what chewing gum is, but this is definitely her new favorite song. So. Fun.
P.S. Happy Birthday to my brother and my brother-in-law!!

Arizona

Posted on by Amy
We got back late last night from our trip to Arizona. It was a very good trip. The girls were fantastic on the planes rides going and coming. Our flight was so late last night that Miss stretched out on the floor of the plane to go to sleep. We didn’t have reliable wireless while we were there. So though I had intended to post once or twice during the week, here’s one big fat post to tell you all about the trip.
Our first morning there, Miss was ecstatic about the sun and warm weather. I chose this house to rent specifically because of the large grassy area where she could play and the fence around the pool. Here she is marveling at the wonderful weather.

It wasnt quite as warm as I thought it would be but the weather was the same every day. Sun. 70-ish degrees. Almost no clouds. Not warm enough to swim, but warm enough to play outside a lot. And my big girl loves to play outside.
It was the first thing she asked her daddy to do every morning. With the time change she was getting up a bit earlier than usual, and my generous husband got up with her every morning to let me sleep in a little bit. And every morning, even though it was still pretty chilly early on, she asked right away to go outside. They had tons of fun just playing in the yard.
We got out and about quite a bit as well. We went to the Phoenix Zoo.
Miss got to feed a giraffe. The first time she tried to feed him the lettuce leaf his crazy-long tongue kind of freaked her out and she dropped it.
So the she watched her daddy do it
and gave it another try.
Watching the cheetahs.
Lunch time.
Lass was a superstar, just hanging out in the stroller we rented or in her Ergo carrier.
Miss asked all day to see the monkeys. They had a nice “Monkey Village” where we could go in and walk around with the monkeys on the loose all around us. Miss got a kick out of looking for them up in the trees.
“Where’d he go?”
We took a nice walk in Papago Park.


We went to a playground near our rental house.

That’s my girl!!

One afternoon my hubby gave me a break to go to a local spa for a treatment. It was amazing and such a nice treat for Mama!!
We all enjoyed our break from the cold and snow. It was nice to just be outside and play without being crazy bundled up and freezing. It was also cool to see all the flora of such a different climate. I had never been to Arizona or any place like it before, so it was fun for me to see all the different cacti and other plants and to show them to Miss.



We also had fun looking at ants. Fortunately, this time of year there aren’t many other bugs or creepy critters in Arizona.


Interestingly, one of my favorite outings of the whole trip was to a bunch of Main Street art galleries. They have amazing galleries in Scottsdale and we spent one morning sampling many of them. Miss seemed to have as much fun (if not more) looking at the art as she did at the zoo. She “oohed” and “aahed” and pointed out all the things she recognized. At the first gallery we went into she saw some large cartoon-like female statues and she pointed to them and said “Oh, Big Mama!” We all cracked up, including the woman working at the gallery. Miss is still talking about the “Big Mama” statue.
Overall, we were pleasantly surprised by how friendly the people are in Scottsdale and how much fun we had. I had never really thought of Arizona as a place high on my list of places I wanted to visit (other than to the Grand Canyon), but it is definitely a place we will likely go again. It’s nice to have a break from the cold, and we will have some great friends moving there we would love to visit. And I want to spend some more time browsing the art galleries as we barely scratched the surface this time.
It’s snowing here as I type this. Fortunately it is a bit warmer than when we left last week (think 20 degrees versus zero). Of course, even though it’s snowy and cold here, we are very happy to be home.

Christmas with the Fam

Posted on by Amy
We just got back from our Christmas trip to visit my family (in the land where the internet still does not go, so no posts from me for over a week. . .) We had a fabulous time. I have so many pictures and things I could blog about. But for tonight, I’ll just share some photos of our celebration with my brother and his family.
To start the festivities, all the kids got Santa hats.

Miss’s was a little bit too big.
Lass’s fit perfectly and she wore it without complaint. My little elf. . .


Miss had a great time opening her gifts this year.

She also had a great time checking out everyone else’s loot. From her cousin’s Elmo toy,
to my sister-in-law’s new silverware,
and her slippers,
to my coffee mug, and everything else she could get into.
The next day she had a blast prancing around in my beautiful new boots (Did I mention before that I have a thing for shoes? My girl has it too).

We had lots of fun during the week. Miss had another encounter with Santa too, but I’m going to try to get a couple more photos before I blog about that. Over all, the trip was really, really wonderful. And we made it home last night with only one stop during a 10-hour drive. My girls are road warriors! More soon.

Fun on the Farm

Posted on by Amy
We had a nice week at the farm. The girls were fantastic during the road trip, both ways. It’s a seven-hour trip without having to stop for feedings and diaper changes. With those it took us about 9 hours each way. We had a few moments of unhappiness, but overall the travel was great. My girls are road warriors.
We tried to be as prepared as possible, with as many of the comforts of home as we could bring in our huge vehicle (but not quite so huge when you remember we had two dogs in the back). Lass absolutely loves her swing, and it is a lifesaver for getting her to sleep at night. But it would have been very tricky to try to bring it along. Though my husband swore he would fit it in so we could have it, I managed to find a small travel swing at the last minute at our local Babies’R’Us. Literally, I was there last Saturday afternoon picking it up just hours before we hit the road. It wasn’t quite as good as the big swing, but she seemed to enjoy it pretty well.

So Lass spent the week swinging, and growing, and being adorable. She is such a good baby, she made it easy on me.

Miss had fun going outside with her Daddy and Baba. Here she is all ready to head out.

Over the weekend she got to see all of her cousins. Miss has nine boy cousins and two girl cousins in my husband’s family, so the play amongst the boys can sometimes get a bit loud and rowdy. They like to have my hubby be the “monster” and chase them around. This game comes complete with the scary monster noises from my hubby and screams of terror from the kids as they flee from him, so Miss was a bit overwhelmed and freaked out by it at first. She got really upset when the boys all ganged up on the monster and started jumping on and kicking my hubby. I kept telling her “It’s okay,” and she got to the point where she would run away from them while saying over and over “it’s okay, it’s okay” as she high-tailed it towards me to grab my legs and beg to be picked up. But she got over her fear and ended up having a great time.
They went on a few “treasure hunts” where the kids pile on the Ranger and ride around the farm searching for interesting things in nature. I have been on many of these and thoroughly enjoyed them myself, and I was kind of bummed that I didn’t get to go with Miss for her first one. But I know she had a great time. Here is what she found on her first treasure hunt.
I have never seen something like that before. Anyone know what the heck it is???
After she warmed up to them, Miss had lots of fun playing with her cousins of all ages. She had her 11- and 13-year-old boy cousins playing with her baby dolls and dancing with her and spinning her around so she could get dizzy and fall down. She played hide-and-go-seek with them too. She also learned some wrestling moves from one of her younger cousins a bit closer to her size.

She had to be reminded a few times about sharing.
The last night we were there, three of the small boys were taking a bath in one of the bathrooms and she wandered in there to see what was up. My sister-in-law who was bathing them asked her if she wanted to take a bath. Miss loves the bath, so she enthusiastically nodded her head. My sister-in-law started stripping her clothes off to put her in the bath and about the time she got to her diaper, Miss seemed to realize that my SIL intended to put her in the bathtub with the three boys. She quickly turned to me with a panicked look on her face and begged me to pick her up, saying and signing “All done! All done!!” I took her to the other bathroom for a solo bath 🙂
We had a good time, but as always, it’s so good to be home. Time for bed.