Walk of shame

It's so fun every summer (in my world of make-believe when I once again pretend to be a stay-at-home mom) to take the boys to go have lunch with Justin at work. Nolan sees the volleyball and basketball courts outside along with their ponds and fully loaded gym and thinks we're having lunch at Chuck E. Cheese. I can't blame him.

At first the boys are timid and shy, but after one second, they were done with that. Nolan made himself right at home at his daddy's desk.

We went around to say hi to some of Justin's co-workers which soon lead into a game…a very loud, embarrassing one. Two seconds after this picture was taken, Campbell headed the other way down the hall cackling and giggling. He helped himself to some pens off of someone's desk. Trying to find him the corn cube maze proved to be challenging.



Once we played our game of hide-and-seek, we made the quickest exit to the cafeteria, or as we call it often times in our house, the "walk of shame".

All that playing and running stirred up Nolan's eczema and apparently he had scabs on his ankles and they came off. So never-mind the blood trail that we made as we walked to the cafeteria. I'm not kidding when I say walk of shame, people.

Next, we stopped to look at the pond and saw koi that could easily weigh as much as Campbell. I was lucky enough to catch these great shots of Nolan but had to do some editing to crop out the bloody ankles. When I asked Nolan is I should get a picture of his ankle, he replied, "No mommy, that would be weird."

Will embarrassing games of hide-and-seek and bloody ankles keep us away?

No way.

Meet me in St. Louis

I can't believe that I actually did it...I extended our already long road trip with two kids 4 and under. I guess you could say that I had cabin fever, or that I was not thinking clearly. After I said, "Let's do it," I already had that oh my goodness what did I just say feeling. But now that Campbell's two, it looks like we're be roadtrippin' it a lot. Airfare is insane for a family of four. So we went from a 3 state road trip to an 8 state road trip. Wow.

After our stay at the lake house in Missouri, we packed up and headed to Kentucky so Justin and I could have a delayed anniversary night. So, yes, essentially we drove 8 hours to have a date night. How sad is that? But for any of you parents out there, I think you can relate. It wasn't just for a date night, we wanted to be able to see more of Justin's family and we pretty much fit them all in.

St. Louis was three hours from the lake house, a perfect stopping point for the boys (and me). None of us had ever been there, and I couldn't drive through St. Louis without getting some photos of the arch.

So we made our little pit stop. What a fun town. I really would love to go back BUT not in the summer. Holy smokes, I felt like I was in the swamps of Louisiana. I've never felt humidity like that in my life. We were all completely "glistening" after five minutes outside the car.

We asked a lady to take our picture and she pulled one of those take the camera and run jokes on us. I've never seen Justin so panicked. We actually touched the bottom of the arch!



Even though it felt like we were in a sauna, the best part was just letting the boys get energy out on the huge lawn. We let them run and play enough to break a sweat (which wasn't very hard).

We managed to get a couple of shots before Nolan complained about the heat.

The chances of us getting this photo with no one else around was pretty hard to believe. I think this shot might just have made all the sweat worth it. It's one of my new favs.

St. Louis, I'll meet you again, but maybe in the fall.

Family Vacation

All year you yearn for the summer getaway where you can get away from schedules, your home, your familiarity with just your family. Growing up we never went on trips much. My parents just couldn't afford it. I want our kids to have that experience and those memories of traveling. I figure one of these days, traveling will finally become easier. Although this time, it was worlds better than anything we've ever experienced before, especially with our luck of traveling.

The plan this year was to meet Justin's side of the family in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Then this tiny little thing called a massive oil spill happened and there went that idea. Bummer. So Plan B was to meet in Missouri for a lake trip. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised that it was great.

For any of you living in the central part of the US, you know how much rain we got the first week or two of July. Thankful for the rain but was seriously feeling like I lived in Seattle with all the rain. We loaded up the boys and road tripped it to Oklahoma. You know it's a bad sign when you leave your house for a 9 hour trip and it looks like a monsoon and you're already stuck in traffic. The boys (thank goodness) were fabulous (compliments of the handy dandy DVD player) and the only stress was the downpour and getting lost in Oklahoma for an hour.

Justin's brother and sister-in-law have two girls and they are so close in age with our boys. There were hours of swimming, coloring, baking, cooking and playing Wii in the "wee" hours of the night had by all. I love this quality family time that we get to have and with our extended family.

 

 My mother-in-law, Julie and my sister-in-law, Melissa

I love how we all just pick up right where we left off even if we live over 900 miles away from each other. 

All-American 4th

I don't know what it is but when I see holiday items in the store I get this excitement in me like a kid in a candy store. I'm a sucker for holidays. I think it's because I love color so much and seeing all that color just gets me all warm and fuzzy. Fall could be months away but seeing that orange, brown, and yellow just makes me yearn for cooler weather, football games, and yellow and orange trees.

It's doesn't matter what holiday it is, but I have to refrain myself from buying ridiculous amounts of decorations that I probably won't ever use.

Don't even get me started on Christmas.

So once I settle my hyper-hypo holiday self down, I allow myself to buy a few staples. Then I get my little holiday fix and Justin isn't annoyed by all the holiday "junk". This year? I kept it simple with some 4th of July shirts. 

 This is why God gave me boys because I might just have to be put on Ritalin if I had a girl with all the holiday attire.

And the 4th just wouldn't feel like the 4th without some pool time and grilling out.  It felt like a rain cloud literally followed us around on our 8 state road trip but I had a pretty stern talk with Mr. Weather and told him to give us a break...and it looks like he did even if for just a little bit.

There were some major calories being burned in that pool.

And plenty of boo boos kissed.

Let's say that those kids crashed hard during nap time. It gave me that extra time to prepare the cupcakes. Energy was quickly revived and there was plenty of time to be silly…

You know you've stuffed in as much fun as you possibly can in one day when the kids can't even stay up to watch fireworks. But I would say that's a good thing with the our recent firework encounters. So the grown ups just watched them off the deck of the lake house. Beats last year and waiting in a parking lot way too late and never seeing them after a baseball game went into extra innings.

And once again, this is why I love holidays. Looks like my obsession with them won't stop anytime soon.