VACATION 2010

Summer vacation is one of those things we just love. This year the weather was extra hot but we still managed to get out every single day and enjoy the sun and water.

Here are some pictures that just bring a smile to my face.

This watering whole slowly filled up as the tides came in. The little ones had a blast with this one.

We jumped off the side of the pool so many times my poor arms hurt from all the catching and lifting to do it again.
Botany Bay is this beautiful run of beach that is preserved by the State of South Carolina. It is covered with lots of beautiful shells that are protected by the state. You can't take any from the beach. I think it is OK because it makes the beach so beautiful.

This child climbed every fallen try along our beach front walk.

My youngest wanted nothing more than to see Dolphins in the Ocean. Every trip to the beach the question was raised. So a trip on a boat tour was a must and yes we got to see Dolphins. See this smile, it was because he saw them.
Luke got to go fishing in the ocean with his grandpa and daddy this year.
I really don't want to say much. I think the photo's tell a great story of our vacation and all the fun we had.

A STORY FROM THE PAST

June 13, 1998 was the date that we set sail on our Caribbean cruise. It was the beginning of a whole new chapter to our lives. See this cruise wasn't just an ordinary cruise or vacation. This was our wedding. Yes, I got married on a cruise ship. We set sail from Miami on the 13th and three day's later on the 16th we got married on the Island of Saint Thomas.

We did not do this alone either. We took our parents, grandparents, siblings and some friends with us. 15 people in total went on our journey with us which made it all that much more memorable.

I remember that day so well. We ported in Saint Thomas where we had to go sign our marriage license, we then went to the beach for about and hour. Here we are getting off the ship that morning. Who would have thought we were getting married in just a couple hours.

After that we headed back to the ship where I had 45 minutes to get ready before I got married.

Nothing fancy for me.... I am a very simple gal and I just had a sun dress (custom made by my aunt) and sandles, fixed my own hair, painted my own nails... you get the idea.

Look how young we look.

We all then met in this beautiful little room on the ship set up for our wedding ceremony. We were married to wedding voes set to the sea (if I can find them I will post them sometime), very beautiful.

This was the room we married in and these are our friends that went with us. Everyone else was family.

After the ceremony we went to another room just for our reception.

I really wanted to get married on the beach and this was an option however my grandfather went with us and he was in a wheel chair so this really wasn't an option for him so we married on the ship instead.

I never had those little girl dreams of a big wedding one day. I am just not a girly, girl. I was not a Christian at this time in my life (sad to say) and I had no desire to get married in a church. I do not like lots of attention and the idea of walking down an isle with a room full of people watching me was terrifying so I opted to get married on a cruise ship. It was this or Vegas. I really didn't want to say I got married in Vegas, seems a bit cheesy to me.

It was simple, very little planning, we pretty much just had to show up. We got a full weeks vacation out of it. The cruise line upgraded our room to a fancy cabin with a balcony while all our traveling friends were down in the lower parts of the ship. It truly was a wonderful event in my life.

Hard for me to believe we will be celebrating 12 years of marriage. Where does the time go...

Funniest part was our friends that went with us said the four of us will go back on our 5 year anniversary. LOL.... we were both pregnant that year so that was out.

Then we said how about on the 10 year anniversary? LOL... again, she had just had a baby and I was pregnant again.

I am almost afraid to declare a 15 year return because a baby could magically appear. Seems to be a pattern anyway.

I know I posted this early but I have such a busy week ahead of me that I am afraid I will not get around to posting it. I didn't post it last year when I wanted to so I wasn't missing it this year.

A DAY OUT

Remember when I said we had a very buys weekend. On Saturday we did something very exciting for the little guy anyway.

What could possibly strike these expression of ahh in two little boys?

Why THOMAS THE TRAIN of course!
(Those were their expressions as they first saw Thomas pulling into the station.)

When Luke was 2 we took him to ride Thomas because he loved Thomas.
These days our Thomas has started to show interest in Thomas the Train
or "choo choo Thomas" as he calls him.
He is a little younger than Luke when we took Luke but he stilled loved it.

I got some great shots of these two on this day.

This child would not sit in his seat the entire 30 minute train ride.

Luke smiled big and enjoyed the train ride but other than that he said this was for his brother. He didn't care if he saw Thomas or not. So he say's but I am pretty sure he was having fun.

We never have entire family shots and some guy was so nice to offer to take a picture of all of us.

I will finish our day with a short video clip of the boys on the train.

Thomas and his head bobbing yes to all my questions is so cute!

END OF SUMMER

Even though school started weeks ago, this is our last summer event every summer. To me this marks the end of our summer. What am I talking about you wonder?

This would be our trip to Kings Island. This isn't just any trip to the amusement park. This is a special day for us because the park is closed to the general public. My husband's company and a couple other companies in the area reserve the park at the end of the season for employees and their guests. It is the best time to go because it is not crowded at all.

When I was younger we would go here and every ride was an hour or more wait. You spent all day waiting in lines. Not on this day! Nope, you walk up and pretty much get on almost instantly for just about every ride in the park. We love this! I am not sure I could go on any old day anymore because I have been so spoiled by this day every summer.

This summer Luke brought a friend with him. This is his best friend in the whole wide world. These two boys had a blast yesterday. The funniest part to me was they both had navy blue shirts on, one had Lego Batman on his shirt and the other had Lego Star Wars. They are nuts about Lego games. Here the boys got to go see Scooby Doo. Thomas wasn't to sure about Scooby so he wouldn't get down but mom could walk up and he gave him a high-five.


Then we road the helicopters together. If the seat doesn't have a good tight buckle this child is climbing out. Drives me nuts!


Here they all road in the cars together. I am afraid it wont be long and Luke is going to move onto bigger rides so I need to treasure this time together before we are split up in the park.


I laughed as Luke and his dad flew. His friend and his friends grandpa were right in front of them and the whole time they were flying they were shooting at each other. They play Star Wars all the time. Boys, what can I say!



Finally close to the end of the day we took the lazy train ride and it put Thomas right to sleep in grandpa's lap.

It is funny when I was a kid Kings Island's kiddy land was Hanna Barbara land. Then Paramount bought the park and it changed to Nickelodeon land. Paramount sold the park and it is now owned by the people who own Ceder Point. So I heard that Nickelodeon land will be gone next year and Snoopy will be taking its place. I just hope they still keep Scooby around as part of the original Hanna Barbara land.

If any of you know anything about Ceder Point they have some of the largest and wildest rollor costers in the US. Well our park got a new coaster this year. I will ride coasters but I hate hights and the new one is really, really tall. It had on huge hill that dropped. My husband begged and begged me to ride. I just couldn't do it! I stress when I ride another coaster called the Vortex because of the stupid hill. You look up at the top of the Vortex hill and then turn and look up much higher at the new Diamond Back hill and I just said no way. I stuck my ground on this one. I am surprised because my husband has always been able to persuade me to ride these things. Before we dated I would never ride a roller coaster.

I have way more photo's from this day but these are just a couple highlights.

I can now say, Summer is officially over.

March For Babies

This weekend we did the March of Dimes walk. My husbands work normally has about 1000 employees participate in the walk and there was about 5000 people in total that walked. This year he decided to walk and brought me in on the walking also. Between the two of us we raised about $500 for the walk. It was great to do something for such a great cause.

It is also a very humbling experience as you see so many families walking because they had their own personal experiences with children born early or with health issues. I saw one family with a wagon train, 3 toddlers each in a wagon and each wagon was labeled with a sign of born at 1 lb 2 oz, 1 lb 6 oz, 2 lbs…. it was great to see all three of them grown and healthy and beating the odds. Many groups walking with shirts about a child, sometimes you don’t know if they made it or not but still so wonderful to see them out there. I had never done the March of Dimes before but being a mom just makes me want to support something so great and now I want to do it every year.

We got up early Sunday morning and drove to Downtown Cincinnati where the walk began. We took the kids with us and made it a family event. We had beautiful weather this weekend. This is Ohio and in April it can be 80 or we could have snow, you just never know. This weekend we hit 80 and it was wonderful. It was probably in the 70’s when we walked early in the morning. It was a 6 mile walk and here are some of the highlights of our walk.

We started at the river in downtown Cincinnati. We took our large bike trailer/stroller because Luke is my lazy child and 6 miles is way too much walking for a 6 year old. We walked along the river and went around The Great American Ball Park, home to the Cincinnati Reds. Then we went around the Paul Brown stadium home to the Cincinnati Bangles. Here is a picture of the football stadium.

We walked down to the bridge shown on the other side of the football stadium (seen in the picture). We then crossed the Ohio river into Kentucky where we then walked back along the river to Newport.

I took a picture of the Reds stadium from the Kentucky side. This is zoomed in from the other side of the Ohio river.

We then crossed not this bridge but the next one down in the picture back into Ohio.

A total walk of 6 miles that was pretty tough when Thomas would not stay in the stroller and wanted to be carried 90% of the walk. Poor Eric did a lot of this for most of the walk.

We crossed the finish line where they had music and activities for the kids. Eric took Luke down along the river front to check things out. Thomas and I did some coloring at one of the kid activity tables.

Finally I took this last picture as I read the different posters about the different families with some of the stories of survival and of memories of the little ones that were lost. Those were the hard ones to read about. All I can say is how thankful and blessed I was to have two beautiful and healthy baby boys.

Have you ever done a charitable walk like this?

Another Year....

Well today I get to notch another year of my life under my belt. Looking back at this past year I had some really great things happen and some very sad things happen and I felt I would share some of those things that have happened in my life this past year.

Not much after my birthday last year my son Thomas was born October 26th. I can’t believe he is going to turn one real soon. This year has gone so fast. I got to enjoy 4 months of maternity leave last year and that was wonderful and I will forever be grateful for such a great employer for giving me that time off and paying me also.

March first I returned to work and that was really hard to do especially after having all that great bonding time with Thomas.

In June my husband and I celebrated 10 years of marriage. That was amazing and we dated for 5 years before we got married so we have been together a really long time. I pick on him a lot but we get along so well I couldn't imagine life with out him.

We also took an amazing summer vacation to Destin Florida. My son Luke loved it and would spend all day at the beach if he could. The kid doesn’t want to learn to swim and yet he is like a fish that doesn’t want out of the water. Go figure…

A couple sad things happened where my cousin’s husband died in an auto accident and he left behind his wife, three kids and one on the way. She has tough times ahead for her but she is such an amazing person and seems to be doing well. Another cousin of mine died from bone cancer and this was also tragic. Both of these young men were in their 30’s and that is just too young to die.

My son Luke started kindergarten this year. I am just blown away that he is already five and will be turning six soon. He is learning so much so fast in school. Already writing sentences and reading a little bit. My first baby has grown up so much….

I recently got to change my work schedule and cut out 10 hours a week. I really want to be a SAHM but it just isn’t going to happen so I am hoping this reduced work schedule will give me more time with my boys.

A wonderful friend of mine called to have the radio announce my birthday and they did it yesterday by mistake. She was so mad but then they corrected it today. It was pretty funny!

I have to say it has been one really amazing year and a lot of really good things have happened this past year. I hope between now and my next birthday I will have another great list.

As for today I work until noon, off to play with Luke for a bit then I will pick up Thomas at the sitter. Eric is bringing home take out for dinner so I don't have to cook. Something tells me it is going to be a good day.

Ramblings of a Good/Bad Day

Today I am just frustrated and feel the need to vent. I will start with yesterday. It was the first day of my new reduced work schedule. I was so excited to start this new schedule. It started with a mad dash before noon to go pick up Luke at his school so we could spend some time together.

He is not a kid who likes change so I need to make small changes at a time. The first change was switching to morning latch-key. That has gone very well this week. The second step is to get him to ride the school bus home on my half days so that I don’t have to do this mad dash out of work a little early to pick him up. The bus will make it less stressful on me since he will be on it for a little while.

Anyway I picked him up and I wanted to show him that the bus isn’t scary so we followed it for a while making a game out of it. Plus I wanted to see the type of route it took to know if he would be one of the first off or one of the last. He had so much fun with me chasing the bus that he was all excited to start riding it. I was so happy that my little game worked. Pretty clever on my part!

We get home and I call the transportation department to see about adding him to the bus. Oh no…. he has to ride 5 days a week or we won’t take him. Why? Well if they have a sub they won’t know. Ok he will ride the same days of the week every week. They won’t change so WTH…. Now I am mad because I was counting on the bus just to relieve the stress of the mad dash from work. Don’t I pay taxes and shouldn’t all students have the right to ride the bus? It is public school for crying out load. What I find most funny is a flyer went around for the school district and it said driving to school is a privilege and a parent’s choice but the bus is still an option on days when the weather is bad and parents don’t want their child to drive. How is this any different???? Heck mine is better because it is two set days a week. I am getting mad again and I am starting to think I am going to right a nasty letter to the school board because this is wrong.

I decided to use these half days off to spend more time with Luke. He told me a couple weeks ago that he wanted to be little again. I didn’t understand and asked why… and it was because he got to spend more time with me. This just crushed me and broke my heart. The poor kid went from being my whole world to sharing me with his baby brother. I now feel awful. So two days a week I will pick him up from school and we will leave the baby at the sitters and we will spend 2 hours with just him and me. Yesterday we played games on the computer and made brownies. It was really nice!

Finally my day ends and I am ready for a good nights sleep. Ha...in my dreams maybe. Of course I have to sleep to dream...hehe.

Thomas and I both have these awful head colds. He obviously was having issues with it last night and he was up every hour. I am exhausted today with a head that feels like it is going to burst from the sinus pressure. I kicked my husband out of bed one time to take care of him. He sucks at this by the way and eventually he looses patience and passes him off to me. Hello… I have already been up five times while you are in peaceful dreamland. One of these nights I am going to take my feet and push him right off the bed. That’s not nice but it might make a point with him. Now Thomas is wide awake and I can’t get him back to sleep. I take him for a while and then I put him in his crib. He is in our room so it is impossible to go back to sleep when you know he is awake. He also has an Ocean Wonders toy in his crib and he just kept turning it on and off, on and off. I was ready to scream between the lights popping and the music playing at random. Eventually he went back to sleep but it did take an hour.

If I survive today it will be a miracle.

Taking Back 10 Hours of My Life, One Week at a Time

Today I have great news to share…. If you have been following my blog you know that I am often frustrated that my husband will not let me give up my career so that I can stay home with my kids. This is something I want so much. Part of it is because I just don’t spend enough time with my kids, I am exhausted all the time from cleaning, cooking, raising kids, being the taxi driver, getting no sleep because of the baby and being away from home 50 hours a week for work.

Wednesday, Thomas became ill again. Once again I have missed another day of work because once again my husband can’t stay home so it falls on me. He expects me to work, but to also pick up all parenting duties. This is BS…Frustrated and ready to snap I had a meltdown.

I looked at my calendar and in the past three months I have worked one full week and all the rest I have been out a day here or their for various reasons. Now this year has been exceptionally bad for funerals in my family. I had one cousin die in a motorcycle accident and the other died of bone cancer. Both of them were in their 30’s. Tragic!

I feel so bad every time I leave early, call in sick or what not and I have just had it. When I am deathly ill I drag my a@# in to work because of all the other days I end up missing. Now when I am sick I end up working and going home and taking care of my kids. I just don’t get to rest like I should when I am sick. It Sucks!

Anyway, back to the whole meltdown and work thing. The next day when I returned to work I sat down with my boss. Let me just say I work for the best employer on the planet. I was upset because once again I have missed a day of work. He points out to me that I don’t need to worry about it and it happens. They never say anything and it just drives me crazy. Not that I want to get in trouble but it just doesn’t seem right.

I am so frustrated over all this so I ask if it is possible to reduce my hours to 32 per week. I am stressed, managing way too much and I just need to cut back on something. To my amazement they said yes. I was so thrilled.

First I am thrilled because I will now have 10 (8 work hours and 2 lunch hours) additional hours a week with my kids. Time I can play with them or do something else that needs done. Heck I might even find a little time for me.

Second I am thrilled because I can change my schedule so that I can cut out the over priced daycare that my son goes to each day after he gets out of kindergarten. (I will blog on this later, come back for this one because it will be good)

Third my husband isn’t happy about the pay cut but I am keeping my career as he insists and still taking back some of my time. So I don’t care how he feels about this change. I am taking it!

What would you do if you had ten additional hours a week that are now yours to do with as you wish? (sleep, play, drink your self stupid, I want to know)

His Naked Little Feet

Last weekend we visited a local amusement park for the day. We take the kids every year around this time and it is always really fun.

While at the park I encountered a situation over a park rule that really got me all worked up. Just thinking about it now gets me all worked up.

We stood in line for 30+ minutes to get on a kiddy ride. It was one where parents can take the kids on. I decided to take Thomas because he is 10 months old and he shouldn’t have to sit in the stroller all day especially if I can take him on something.

Anyway we get to where we are next to get on the ride and the girl working the ride looks at me and says “do you have shoes or socks for his feet” pointing at Thomas’s feet. I say no, he is a baby and he doesn’t walk. She says to me “it is park policy they must have something on their feet.” “But he is a baby and he doesn’t walk so what is the problem”. She continues…”these are the park rules and this is what distinguishes this side of the park from the water park side of the park”.

OK, I know I am arguing with an 18 or 19 year old girl that obviously doesn’t have a clue about babies but I was mad so I had to argue with her.

Now seriously, am I crazy here because he isn’t walking, he is going to sit on my lap and his feet aren’t going to touch anything?

His hands are bare and more likely to touch things before his little feet will. Does this mean he needs gloves on? I mean come on, it is summer time, hot outside, and he does not walk so why does he need shoes or socks on his feet. Seriously! His feet are not going to touch anything.

She finally let us on the ride but we had to put his feet in my husband’s hat. How stupid is that! Oh, and the minute we pulled away from the ride platform I took his feet out of the hat and made a point to not put them back in when I got off the ride. Sham one me I know but seriously….

Luckily I found a pair of socks in my diaper bag and put them on him after we got off the ride. It saved me the hassle of arguing with more teenagers.

I guess I am a redneck mom because I am one of those moms that doesn’t introduce shoes to my kids until they start walking. I don’t see the point especially when it is hot outside.

All day long I observed baby after baby with bare little feet and kept wondering if they were lectured like I was.

I respect rules and I understand this rule but in this case I would think the rules should not apply until he is walking. Do you think I am in the wrong for getting mad? What would you have done?