One Crazy Summer

That is the title of a movie my little brother and I watched when we were kids. Thinking back, it was really a silly movie, but the title seems to aptly describe our summer this year! We can't seem to stay home for more than a week at a time.

We were gone for almost two weeks beginning mid-July, were home for a week, have been gone for the last week, will be home for two days, gone for another four days, home for almost a week, then finally gone for a few more days! Whew, what a whirlwind summer.

I am glad that any travel we are doing from this point forward will not involve one or the other of us working/volunteering. Being a solo parent for days on end in an unfamiliar place, possibly confined to a hotel room, is no fun at all! We both had our turn to experience that kind of fun.

I will post more photos over at the Kanary Nest, but here are a couple of photos from the road...
We ended up switching Jack to the Britax Marathon carseat between our trip to St. Louis/Kansas City and our trip to Memphis. We didn't really take the infant carseat out of the car much and we hope that the convertible one puts him in a slightly more comfortable position, minimizing the pressure on his tummy, thus reducing the impact on his reflux. He did seem less fussy when in the car for long periods of time the second trip.

On the road...again

So, all of the catching up I intended to do after our first marathon trip didn't happen and here we are ready to leave again in a couple of days! I'll have to post about our travels sometime soon. This next trip I won't personally be so busy above and beyond the normal craziness that is being a SAHM of a dramatically precocious 2 1/2 year old and an adorable 3 month old. So, if the place we are staying has wireless internet I hope to get some blogging done during naptime, etc.



We haven't even really unpacked from the first trip and I now have two days to unpack, launder, and repack our stuff for this next trip. Fun stuff!



On a side note, our cute little Jack has already begun a modeling career. Not really, but a friend of ours is launching a website to sell these adorable hats that she knits and Jack is one of her models. She has one pic up of him that I took a few weeks ago and she came over today and took a few more. Katherine may get in on the action at some point too. Her shop is called Buttons and Bows and the hats are just too cute! The website is under construction as she has only done these locally so far (the one Jack is wearing below was a gift from her when he was born), but she hopes to have a much more extensive gallery soon.

The look on his face in this pic is hysterical. She used a different one of him in this hat on her site.

Whew...too much time on the road.

Wow, we have tried to cram an aweful lot of travel into a short couple of weeks. Amazingly, K did quite well with all of the time in the car. We can all recite the words to Finding Nemo from memory at this point and the car is in need of a serious bath, but we had a great time!

K learned to play kickball with cousins, aunts, uncles, great aunts/uncles, second cousins, etc. We had four generations together for a wonderful day Labor Day weekend. We met some distant relatives and the entire family was introduced to a newly-adopted little girl from China.

That short trip was followed by a 12-hour drive to the coast for a week of relaxation. K LOVED the sand, but wasn't a fan of the ocean. The waves coming in scared her a bit. We did have a breakthrough in the pool - she had a blast! It was a great trip and we got to spend some quality time together and with our friends.

A few days later we took off for a short trip to visit friends in St. Louis. Six more hours in the car each way, but it was definitely worth it! It was great to meet my friend's daughter and for her to meet K. Two years is way too long to go between visits to close friends!

Finally we're home for a few weeks! Sometimes I feel like I need a vacation after our vacations just to rest up. For now I think a nap will do...hopefully K will sleep well this afternoon!

In the holiday mood

It seems like our family is in the holiday mood. My little one has been securely attached to a Christmas teddy bear all day today, she insisted on reading a Christmas board book several times today (although she kept calling it the Baa Baa Black Sheep book since there were sheep on the cover), and we bit the bullet and bought our plane tickets to go see my mom for Christmas.

Speaking of buying plane tickets - let me digress and rant a bit about an online booking site which I will not name...the fare on EVERY single flight I chose suddenly increased between the time I put in the search parameters, chose the times, and clicked "continue." Every fare went up at least $20 in the mere seconds it took to click a few buttons! How terribly frustrating. Contrast that experience with my wonderful experience with Travelocity 5 minutes later...not only did they have better search parameters, but somehow the fares DECREASED in the same few clicks! Not only that, but they actually took my daughter's age into account and booked a child's fare. Wouldn't it be nice if you got that kind of service everywhere?

I guess "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" in August! Now, if the Reds could just beat the Cubs tonight...