Camp week

This week both boys embarked on their first camp experience together through the YMCA.  On Monday after lunches were packed, water bottles filled, sunscreen applied, swim supplies gathered, and boys dropped off, Avery came home and blessed me with a two hour nap. So magical.

 

When I went to pick the boys up, Brady hopped in the car and the counselor told me that Jackson was in the bathroom. About eight minutes later, she told me that Jackson was still sitting on the toilet. But she also wanted to tell me how Jackson have a great day and mentioned how much Jackson looked up to his older brother and how sweet they were together. Later in the week, she told me how she often has to break up siblings, and how impressed she was with these two. I see it every day, but warms my heart to hear it from others.  Anyway, back to the car where we waited for 13 minutes!! When Jackson got in the car I asked him if he had had a big poop. "Nope, just a little one!" he chirped. Let me tell you what, that kid goes in his own speed and do not try to rush him.

I asked him what his favorite part of camp was and he said "reading a book." In case there is any doubt that he is my child!

A few days I had to drag these tired boys into the house.

 

At night this week, Brady got to go to basketball camp. Ages were 6 to 9, but Brady was not intimidated to be the youngest and smallest. He loved it.

 

Avery is loving her new found freedom of walking (with assistance).  I'm so excited to see her learn to walk...it'll be the last time I see my child take their first steps!

The downside? She does not want to be constrained or contained.

 

 

The following video is Avery in a nutshell.  She is funny one, that girl.

 

 

Want to know what I'm doing right now? Coming off an seven hour painting session (with a 20 minute lunch break). Eric took the kids to his parents lakehouse for the whole day! It's weird, I can actually hear myself think. It's not for everyone, but this is my dream Saturday.

I do miss this face though.

 

Letters to Avery: Ten months

Dear Avery,

Its been quite the month...and you are quite the trooper.  We abandoned you yet again in the loving care of your grandparents.  They are too polite to say exactly this, but I think you were a bit of a problem.  The trouble is you are older, smarter, and know what you want.  Unfortunately, what you seem to want is me.  All the time.  And I'm flattered and I love you, but really, sometimes I need a break.  I think the picture below sums up how you feel about July.

You are a particular little creature and its funny getting to know you.  For instance, you LOVE the bathroom sink.  I can sit you in the sink and you'll gnaw on a toothbrush and be totally content.  If I'm holding you in a bathroom and you spy the sink, you will push away from my body so hard lunging for the sink.  But the moment I try to move you from the sink you flip out.  So...things I can do easily with you  1) Brush my teeth (though I have to spit in the other sink). 2) Put on makeup  3) Put on deodorant.  Things I can't do easily with you.  1) Everything else.  Maybe I need to extend my 3 minute makeup routine.

When you don't have your death grip on me, you're doing fun things like clapping, laughing and babbling.  You love to stand and have done it unassisted a few times for a few seconds.  You're in the stage of opening drawers and removing all contents.  Several of our toilet paper rolls have been prepare your meal at that moment.  You love fruits of all kinds...vegetables are hit or miss.  Breakfast is your biggest meal (like your brother, Brady).  You eat sausage, waffles and fruit. 
unrolled thanks to you.  You love to eat and are one of the "hangriest" babies I know.  Seriously, if its near a meal time and you've yet to be fed, watch out.  Which is hard is I'm actually trying to

You have six teeth and I'm hoping your attitude lately has been due to a few more trying to come in.  You were doing pretty good in the sleeping department, sometimes just waking up one time a night.  And last night you woke up four or five times, I lost count.  You generally wake up before 6 am, and that is usually dad duty.  I appreciate being able to go back to sleep, except I have mom ears and they are particularly sensitive to your shrieks which ring throughout our house.



Your brothers still adore you, and you love them back.  Sometimes when you're waking up from your naps and they reach your room before I do, I walk in to find three kids in one crib.  And all three of you have giant smiles on your faces.  Tonight, in a rare moment when you weren't clinging on to me, your dad walked into the room to find that your brothers were bouncing a ball off your head.  Literally.  And you just took it.

Thanks for taking it every day, all of us.  We are so glad you're in our family.

Love,

Mom

Real life

After many days of vacation, real life came pretty quick. Pretty amazing that one evening I'm watching the most beautiful sunset sipping an amazingly delicious mojito in an exotic country and the next time....well, I'm noticibly not doing that.  But as unexciting as real life is, it is good to be back with the routine with my kids.

So what's new in real life?  Well, after I returned home, Avery was sure that I pay all debts accrued in my absence.  She was Clingy with a capital C. Not only could I not go out of the room, I could not go beyond her touch her she would flip. She is definitely still going through a clingy stage, but it is not quite as severe as the first few days. 

When I'm not attached to Avery, I'm painting.  Business is good and I've been trying to catch up/keep up with orders.  I just received my 100th sale on Etsy yesterday! When I opened my Etsy store less than one year ago, I couldn't have fathomed that. I probably would have taken more than 5 minutes it took to whip up my logo.  As always, time is my enemy, but I'm so thankful to have found a creative outlet that I love. Here are a few of my favorites lately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In other news, Jackson is paci-free!!  It started two days ago at breakfast when he asked to go to Chuck E Cheese (because what else do you do on a Sunday morning).  I knew it was time to give up the pacis, so I suggested we gather all of them to give to babies who didn't have them, and after he gave up all the pacis, we could go to Chuck E Cheese. We put them in the mailbox for the mailman to deliver to the babies.  We had some major rough spots before church and after lunch...and I realized skipping the nap would work to my advantage now and later. I braced myself for bedtime, but he didn't even ask for it. I was blown away.

Jackson came running downstairs yesterday afternoon because he found a paci on our third floor. He didn't pop it in his mouth as I would have predicted, but handed it to me and told me I should call the mailman.

Have I mentioned how much I love this kid?

Other than that, just enjoying summer!  We did backyard baseball today.

 

 

That's Avery and Jackson lapping up the water.

We've done some swimming!

 

 

Some sleeping.

 

Some hanging out with friends.

 

Yes, real life is good.

Pictures in Paradise

Um, have I mentioned how amazing our trip was?   I'm just going to let the pictures do most of the talking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eric and I attempted to surf. We paddled for about 10 minutes and turned around to discover we were the same distance from the beach as when we started. The waves were wicked and we like to think we just went at a bad time, rather than the other option that we're just really bad/weak.

 

Yes, even in Costa Rica Eric waves to strangers.

 

Since we weren't able to take the helicopter into Florblanca, our kind friend set it up so that we would take a chopper into the airport. Let's start by saying that this was the most convenient thing imaginable. It was a 5 minute drive followed by a 40 minute helicopter ride to San Jose. By land, it would take over 5 hours, two of those hours being on a ferry and the other ones being on roads that made me very happy I don't get carsick.  Even via the charter flight we had planned on taking would have required a 45 minute drive. But beyond convenience, it was the most breathtaking experience. I mean, check out our takeoff.

 

 

The bigger island used to home to a prison similar to Alcatraz.  Yes, sir, if you kill that guy, we will ship you off to the most beautiful island you've ever seen and you will live there forever.

Talk about checking things off of my bucket list. I got to check things that I didn't even know were on the list including staying in a villa, riding on a helicopter, ziplining through the jungle, horseback riding on the beach. It was a trip of a lifetime and I have only three reasons why I'm not totally depressed to return home.

 

Sure did miss these rascals.

A (bumpy) trip to paradise

You know those places that you research online and they look awesome, but then you get there and you realize that the right angles and a good camera can make a place look better than it actually is?  Flor Blanca, in Costa Rica, is not that place. Pictures can't do it justice, though they are pretty cool too.

I'll start at the beginning. We arrived in San Jose on Thursday afternoon and met some friends from Trinity, Annie and David, who flew in from Austin.  

Costa Rica is a difficult country to get around and if we wanted to take the land option to get to our resort it would've taken us five hours. No thanks. So we had a charter prop plane scheduled. A driver picked us up to take us to our plane, and we were told us that there was a surprise waiting for us. What our driver did not seem to know was that we had no idea what we were getting into and everything was one big surprise. 

So we go through a small security screening again (old school style) and after they determined my breast pump was not a bomb, (it took a while, but I saw the look of recognition in the guy's eyes and he said, "Ooh, el leche por un bebe.") we were driven out to an undisclosed location where a helicopter was waiting.

 

 

Annie was much more excited about the chopper than my husband. He was a bit skittish about the whole idea of flying in small objects. But he enjoyed the ride.

 

Some background: a friend of ours (and of the UNC basketball program) owns Florblanca where we are staying at. So as a surprise, he sent a helicopter to take us there. So nice. Unfortunately, the weather conditions prevented the chopper from being able to make the flight, so we took a 10 minute helicopter ride to our plane.  If I could have drugged Eric and then drug him on the plane, I would have.  I had to be the cool calm and collected one in the bunch because let me tell you who wasn't....

 

Clearly this was taken early in the trip, because David is smiling. I took a video of these two during some of the roughest parts, but it may not be family friendly to share.

 

Yeah see those clouds? We flew threw them. I'm not scared of flying on small planes, but flying through lots of turbulence in the pouring rain with no land in sight was a touch unsettling. 

But then we saw this out our window, which was pretty amazing. 

 

After the flight, Eric asked the pilot, "Have you ever flown in conditions that bad?"  Nope.  "So that's the worst flight you've had?" Yup.  So yeah, there's that.

Then we had an SUV take us on a 45 minute drive to Flor Blanca.  It certainly made me appreciate the paved roads of the USA. I'm glad we got the whole experience and were able to see more of Costa Rica, but taking a chopper and landing right next door to the resort would not have sucked.

We arrived and even the monsoon that surrounded us could not dampen our spirits.  This place is just amazing. There are less than 8 villas and if I had to guess I'd say 20 people are staying here right now. It feels like a private resort. Everything is open air here (except air conditioned bedrooms) and our villa is amazing.  

 

 

 

Annie and David enjoying all that Costa Rica has to offer.  Including wheat thins and champagne.

 

And you know how excited I am about this friend right here.

 

So many more pictures to share but if you'll excuse me, I have a vacation to enjoy.