We've been pretty busy over the last week. Last Thursday, Aunt Lori, Kelly, and Caleb came to visit us for a few hours before Kelly and Caleb departed for home. They had spent the week down at Bonnet Creek Resort. Not exactly the warmest weather for hanging out a resort but I suppose what we have down here these days is still much nicer than the temps up north. They ate lunch with us and Aunt Lori brought some chocolate covered bananas for a dessert. I have never had one of those and I must say it was quite delightful. Before they left, they went on a (chilly) walk with the kids save Brady who was down for his nap. Upon their return, Colby took a two hour nap which I was so excited about. If only I could somehow duplicate the exact circumstances that precipitated that.
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On Friday we went to one yard sale. January is the slowest month of the year for yard sales, unfortunately. I guess it does give us an extra day to get other stuff done like go to Costco. Incidentally, if you ever ask Brady what we did that day, he will pretty much always answer "We went to Costco." And sometimes he'll add in "And got samples" for good measure. He seems to have a special affinity for going there or something.
Sabbath was as usual. Saturday night we went Family Fun Night for the Adventurers at the church. The girls had been looking forward to it since the announcement was given at Adventurers the week before and the words "outdoor scavenger hunt" were used. However, I wasn't as excited because Saturday was a cold day and as the evening hours neared, the temperatures were down in the 40's with a little wind. It was cold! Thus began my frantic search for jackets, hats, mittens, etc. I was thinking that perhaps the scavenger hunt wasn't going to happen but if it was, I needed to be prepared. I had figured that we weren't going to be needing that kind of stuff back here at home so I hadn't been really careful where I had put stuff upon our return from Boston. I knew I had washed Aubree and Brady's coats but for the life of me, I could not remember where I had put them. I looked everywhere and could not find them. So frustrating! While I was upstairs looking for all this stuff, the kids were outside and Duncan was in the kitchen. Suddenly, I hear Brady crying and it sounds like a more serious cry. I ran downstairs and sure enough, there was Duncan with his hand full of paper towels up against Brady's eye (same one that had the stitches) and he's muttering, "We might have to go somewhere." Ughh! I mean, really. How can one kid get so many injuries? Neither of the girls had seen what had happened and Brady was too upset to tell us. The girls were going bonkers. They were wailing and hugging me as if he was dying. I think they were worried his eyeball had popped out or something since they have an obsession with that. At this point, I'm going out on a limb and saying that the girls do not have careers in patient care ahead of them.
Duncan investigated closer and determined that it wasn't deep enough for stitches. Sigh of relief. Eventually we figured out that the injury had something to do with going down the slide. It's pretty fast and we think maybe his face hit into the ground or something. Who knows. However it happened, he's been sporting a pretty nasty shiner.
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| The band-aid covered most of the damage. |
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| Putting frozen peas on it the next morning. |
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| How it looked two days later. |
We did make it to the fun night and it was indeed very fun. The scavenger hunt ended up being indoors, glow in the dark, and was a blast. All my efforts to find warm clothing were for naught. Incidentally, I found the jackets a couple of days later. I had put them in Brady's empty laundry bin to take upstairs. Duncan had taken it up and didn't remove the jackets and then dirty clothes got thrown on top. Mystery solved.
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| Getting their scavenger hunt instructions. Aubree told me Jennifer's team won but that her team was the "second winners." I guess that's what we say these days instead of "losers." |
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| They made marshmallow shooters. |
Sunday was the big day. The Patriots vs. Denver Broncos for the AFC Championship. I surprised myself by agreeing to have non-Patriots fans over for the game. Namely, the Isidros and Bergherms. The Isidros being Denver fans, of course. The game was at 3:00 so up until then we got a few errands done (Brady got a haircut) and prepared some food and then it was game on. Now, I will say that I had low expectations for the game because the Patriots have had a slew of injuries this year and that they even got this far, was really remarkable. So I really didn't have any big illusions that they would win this game. Good thing because it basically wasn't even close. They lost 26-16. We did have yummy food and thankfully Allen was a good sport about it all and didn't rub it in our faces! But that said, go Seahawks! I really have no interest in watching the Super Bowl now but I will admit that I'm partially intrigued to see how Richard Sherman does. He had that crazy interview after the Seahawks victory over the 49'ers and now people are making him out to be this horrible thug and villain...which I don't agree with at all (although obviously he needs to work on him public humility). Check out my brother's blog
here to see his perspective on it.
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| Trying out a new bike which Daddy didn't buy. I guess two new bikes in one week was enough. |
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| Strolling through Publix |
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| I actually bought a Denver balloon to be fair. It disappeared during the game or else I probably would have stabbed it with a knife afterwards! |
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| Allen bought face paint and was really, really good at it. I love Calleigh here. Perhaps praying about the Pats, who knows? |
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| And how about Aubree here. I guess she was getting tired of waiting! |
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| The finished product. |
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| I forgot to mention that the Hazens also came over. But they're Pats fans so we welcomed them with open arms. Calleigh was happy because Lindsey Hazen is the one who inspired her to get the American Girl doll and she wanted to show Lindsey hers. And then we found out that Lindsey has eight of them. Yes, eight!! Great. Just great. |
Monday was Martin Luther King Day so Duncan was off work. And so was I! That was always the busiest day of the year for me when I was working because we have audit during the month of January and it's crazy. I seriously keep thinking every day "Thank goodness I'm not working any more!" It is such a good feeling. Since Sea World/Busch Gardens was having their "Annual pass holders get a guest in free" thing going on, we decided to go to Busch Gardens. Duncan and I actually have passes to both although the girls don't (Sidebar: we do the Easy Pay which is a monthly fee. The price never changes even as the cost of a ticket goes up so when I called to cancel the Busch Gardens portion, the price was almost the same as just having Sea World because the cost had gone up so much since we signed up). We haven't been in almost two years so I must say I was excited about it even though I'm generally not a big theme park person.
Ricky and Ana have passes too so they met us down there and we went in a little after 11:00. It was a truly gorgeous day with a temp in the mid 60's and no clouds at all. The park was a little more crowded than I would have preferred and the waits for some of the coasters were over an hour. Unfortunately, I had made the blunder of telling Calleigh that she was tall enough to ride the Cheetah Chase roller coaster and she become obsessed with it. The wait was 95 minutes when we first got in so obviously we weren't about to wait. At the end of the day, it was still 55 minutes and there was no way I was doing that. She was so disappointed though and kept talking about it all the way home. Despite that, we had a great day looking at all the animals and going on all the rides in the Sesame Street kid area. The girls went on the roller coaster there several times. During that time, we took Brady to see a little bit of the Sesame Street show and to meet Big Bird. He was completely freaked out about Big Bird but has kept asking me if I remember all the other characters...over and over again.
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| This was as close as Brady would get. |
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| Brady loved the swing. Aubree was just a little too big to ride it. I thought she would be upset but she seemed pleased that she had to wait on the sidelines with Calleigh. |
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| The skyride. |
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| I don't think we had been into the bird habitat before. Birds would just fly all around and land on you. It was really quite something. |
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| Calleigh really wanted to hold one. |
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| Success! |
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| Aubree was a little less than thrilled. |
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| Last ride of the day and the binky is out. |
We took in a few sandwiches for the kids for lunch but they since they were having a special of 30% off all food for pass holders, we bought lunch for Duncan and me which was actually pretty tasty. We started rolling out of the park around 5:30 and I told Duncan that it would probably behoove us to leave for home when it was Colby's bedtime so we didn't have to listen to him cry the whole way home (we made sure it was his nap time on the way there which worked out perfectly). The trip is about an hour and fifteen minutes. So we ended up stopping a nearby Chick-fil-A for supper and then leaving about 7:00 for home. It worked out as planned and we didn't hear a peep from the back seat. All in all, it was a great day. I must say that Busch Gardens seems to have a lot more to offer than Sea World but maybe that's just because we've been to Sea World so much.
On Wednesday the girls had a dentist appointment. I walked in and the waiting room had one mother in it. Apparently this is a slow time for going to the dentist. The girls waited about two minutes to go back. But then when they called them, Aubree started fussing that she was too tired and didn't want to go. That's her usual excuse when she doesn't want to go somewhere without Duncan or me. I pushed her out the door though and it went fine. The great news is that the girls are still cavity free. When the hygienist called us back, she started talking about the status of their teeth and turned to Calleigh and said "Really great job with the brushing. We didn't find any plaque." And then to Aubree "We found just a little plaque in the back." I piped up and said "So, I guess that means I do a better job brushing Calleigh's teeth than Aubree's." I thought it was a bit odd that she was talking to them as if they brush their own teeth considering they say for an adult to brush until age eight. At any rate, it made me feel good that their teeth are in such good shape. And truth be told, I only brush their teeth before bed and I don't even use toothpaste. We tried that for a little bit but then they would spit like every two seconds and brushing would last for 10 minutes, each kid, so I said enough of that. As we loaded into the van, I expressed my pleasure to the girls with how things went and that they didn't have cavities and Calleigh says "Well, it's a good thing Aunt Toni doesn't brush our teeth or we would." Apparently Aunt Toni had attempted to brush Calleigh's teeth when they had been here a week or two ago and it was not the effort that Calleigh was accustomed to. Sorry Aunt Toni!
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| Brady playing on the iPad at the dentist. With his luck, I was worried he would fall off the chair. |
On to my problem baby...Colby has been making some improvements. Of course, as I write this at 12:08 am, I hear him crying through the monitor. So there is still some work to be done, clearly. Last Thursday night was my first night with the sleep sack rather than the swaddle. It actually improved things somewhat. Then, Friday night I had Duncan do a shift in the guest room. He had the monitor so I was able to close myself off from everything down in our room and just sleep. Heavenly. Duncan brought Colby into the room at 7:25 to eat and I asked how it went. He says, "It was a little rough. I had a tough time getting comfortable in the bed for some reason." And the kid? "Oh, I didn't hear a thing until I just brought him into you now." Son of a gun. So now Duncan thinks I'm making the whole thing up! As you can probably guess, this phenomenon of sleeping the entire night has not been repeated. On the plus side, for the most part he's sleeping all the way until about 5:00. I let him cry for a bit and then eventually put the binky in and then he'll sleep until 6:15 - 7:00. I don't feed him though until close to 7:00 so that he doesn't get used to eating earlier than that. I'm still swaddling him for his naps.
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| Aubree's still pretty crazy about him. |
School is...going. It definitely has its ups and downs and times when I question whether I'm doing a good job. I suppose that's normal. We are in Week 15 and it's becoming apparent what the favorite and least favorite things are. The top of the lease favorite list would be writing followed by subtraction. Each week we have a memory verse to learn and she has to copy the memory verse onto a lined page. Watching it can be described as torturous. After some complaining, she'll finally start to write. She'll write two letters, stare off into space, write one more letter, twirl around in her chair a few times, write another letter or two, stretch her legs and pick her toes, and so on it goes. Of course, I keep reminding her to just concentrate and get it done and so I start feeling like I'm just nagging her. Yesterday we seemed to make a little breakthrough when she kept complaining that she didn't like how the pencil felt (she's said this before). I had an epiphany and I got out some mechanical pencils (which I personally hate because I'm always breaking the lead) and that has been much better. Things that she enjoys are science, learning the books of the Bible, and anything that has an activity to it. She does like math to an extent but not the subtraction piece. During supper, I typically try to get her to go over things she has learned for Duncan. The other day he started asking her math problems like 20 + 5, 10 - 5, etc. I told Duncan that we hadn't gotten to double digit problems yet (beyond 12) but she still knew some of them and was answering correctly. But then he asked "25 - 6" and she responded "That, my friend, I do not know." It was just so funny the way she said it.
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| They like to do each other's hair. |
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| Brady hiding in the closet so he wouldn't have to take a nap. Of course, when he does get into his crib for his nap, he's asleep in like a minute so I don't know what the fuss was about. |
