Saturday Mornings

1. The playground

I am not sure why we don't frequent the playground every freaking night.  This place is heavenly.  They boys love it, it's free, tons of energy is left behind, they make new friends and everyone can play for hours.  This place is the best.

2. Melissa had her baby
On Wednesday night Mike and I made a short trip to the hospital to see Melissa and hold her sweet little hours old baby girl.  Oh --- she was beautiful.

3. Clean House
Yesterday afternoon Rouzer cleaned the entire house and did lots of errands.  Oh. My. Gosh. it makes my soul happy to have everything clean.  Even if it's only for a few hours.  I will need to invest in some xanax when we are redoing the floors and the kitchen.  Holy it is going to be a mess.

4. Jack's daycare
Sending your children to daycare is HARD.  I am grateful that SBJ seems to love going, loves playing with his friends and loves most of the teachers.

5. Sweet brotherly love
I think that the boys only want to come back from Greg's house so they can play with SBJ.  Hopefully this love lasts FOREVER.

No 5 -- just an update on our pictures.

Ohhhh so much change and so much crazy.  I got up early this morning to work on my paper for school.  It has been a little bit of a struggle to find the information that I needed so I decided to do a LONG overdue blog post instead.   I think I am just going to put some captions under the pictures and go from there.  

My last day at CHN was wonderful.  People actually came into work at 3 AM (WTF) to say goodbye.  It was impressive.  The night shift threw me a huge pitch in and I was able to sit around for awhile and talk.  As I am typing this out I have been at CHVH for a full week.  It is interesting.  I completely forgot about how DIFFERENT ambulatory was from the acute setting.  My orientation has been overwhelmingly boring but I have hopes that in a few months my position will get into full swing.  Right now I have to give myself daily pep talks and see the long term gain in my day to day activities. 

Dinner with Emily and Holli is one of the absolute best things in the world.  I always laugh so hard that I am crying.  I need to make this a habit but in all actuality -- with all of our children and responsibilities it will probably be Christmas until I see these two together again.  Sad.

This is what adults do with shot glasses.

This child of mine.  Wowzers he is a piece of work.  He is wild, crazy, intense, LOVES to be the center of attention and fully hilarious all at the same time.  It is extremely hard to discipline him because he is working so hard to make you laugh and being completely successful at it.  Holy we have our hands full with him.  

 They hate each other, love each other .....the full gamut of feelings.  I am so grateful that they have each other.  Oh -- and grateful that they have grandparents who feed us dinner and don't expect us to do any dishes.  

Cameron had his first performance with YATS.  He was shy at first but then really opened up and had a blast.  It was great to go see him on stage Friday afternoon.

And holy this picture makes him look like a giant!

My first week of work, Rouzer made me a card (with a hand drawn picture of me), bought me some fabulous candy AND these beautiful flowers.  This man knows when I need a little extra boost and encouragement.  Thank you for being wonderful.

Water ballon fights, dinners, late night drinks (830 is late night to us)......we love our neighbors.

I started selling toothpaste.  It won't last long but I have earned a few hundred dollars so I want to see how long this run can last.  When I add that on top of my school, 40 hour a week job, and family....I don't have much time for anything else.  At all.  

One last thing that I want to mention -- grateful for the monthly dates with my husband when our kids go with the Abel family.  On Saturday we had drinks at Bier, made homemade stuffed mushrooms (AMAZING), watched BigBrother and had drinks with the neighbors.  It was wonderful to sleep in and feel like we had no responsibilities.  So grateful for these few hours with him.

Weekend Review

1.  A successful weekend away

For Father's Day I surprised Mike with a weekend trip to Key West.  I knew that it would be blazing hot but I wanted to see what all the hype was about and a few days of exploring the city and drinking sounded just like what we needed.  It turned out to be perfect.  Though our travel was a bit rough and we were a day late --- the trip was a success!  I am already looking forward to our next adventure though it will be awhile since I am actually scared to look at our bank account to view the actual damage.

 2. Pat Moller --- our official travel agent
It was a rough trip down.  I had been up since 2am for my last day of MRO.  Mike had been working on a project at East and was also behind on sleep.  To make a long story short we didn't make our connection from Miami to Key West AND didn't get to our hotel until 130am.  Miami had huge storms and when we finally got off of our flight there were LONG LONG lines of people waiting to talk to customer service.  We were able to go straight to our hotel (it seemed to be the last available one in the area).  Though we were insanely disappointed, frustrated and EXHAUSTED we would not of been successful without Pat.  While we were stuck in Indy, Tampa, the air....never getting to Miami....she booked our flight from the morning and was able to secure us a hotel room.  When we finally landed when didn't have to stay at the airport or stand in line.  This was a huge deal for us.  We were both on the verge of meltdowns.  Grateful grateful grateful for her help.

our morning in Miami waiting for the next flight to Key West

3. Yummy Food
Holy did we eat our way through Key West.  We would order and order and then sufficiently stuff our faces.  My favorite meal was the lobster rolls when we first landed.  After I finished mine, I proceeded to eat Mike's.

4. Live music
My favorite part of the trip (besides spending HOURS alone with my husband) was listening to live music at the bars.  It was great to sit outside, drink a beer and dance.  I could do that every single night.

5. The views
I am obsessed with water.  I would love to live on the beach and own a boat.  I could enjoy water views for days and days.  Since the island is so small it is easy to enjoy the views.  Here is the view from my pool chair.

5. The moped
We rented a moped for 24 hours and this was the best decision that we made all trip.  We were able to explore the island and find little hole in the wall bars.  It made our trip so much more enjoyable.

All the sunscreen near our hotel was $20!!!  We could not fathom spending that type of money so we drove around until we found a tiny little grocery store.  We bought beers and a tiny tube of sunscreen.   It was a perfect little place.

...When we went to the bars in our bathing suits in order to take advantage of happy hour...... I ended up on stage looking like this.  It was a bit rough.

In reverse order

1. Our trip to NC

In full honesty and transparency we tackled the trip to NC as a job.  Taking the kids on a 48 trip via plane (one that was delayed for 4 hours) is not fun.  It seemed a bit silly and slightly frustrating to board our dog, pack our kids and do the journey for less than a 48 hour stay.

That being said ---  it was still wonderful to spend time with family.  The twins were gone the whole week before so I was able to spend hours with them lounging around and doing nothing.  Pat always goes above and beyond and makes the BEST food for us.  It was great to see her and Michael though it was a whirlwind of a trip.  Enjoy the bazillions of pictures.

lots of hours waiting for our flight to go home......this is what we did for hours.

AND we saw SHEP from Southern Charm.  It was my first random celebrity sighting. 

grilling in the rain

They are constantly in sometime of pretend game.  Constantly.  That's what they were doing here.

2.  The twins are back from Chicago
We have missed these crazies and it's only been a week.  Jack is obsessed with having them back.

3. Sleeping pictures
I have said it many times before......the most peaceful, soul filled time of day is early in the morning or at night after the littles are asleep.  They are just so. stinking. sweet. at night.

4. My new iPhone, Pandora
When I pulled up pandora on my new iPhone it has a channel titled,  "My Thumbs Up."  All morning at work I have been listening to all of my favorite hits.  Yes...I have been singing in my office.

5.  The MRO night shift team

This group of people have really been the absolute best.  I am a tad bit nervous to leave.  I hope that my next team embraces, encourages and supports me like these do.