First REAL Flight

This weekend we headed east to spend some time in Michigan.  It was good timing because we were due for some time with the grandparents and cousins.  We got up Friday and left to make the drive, arriving in time for lunch and some of grandpa's yummy cooking.  The girls were a bit hesitant around Alex and Murphy (the dogs) initially but by the time we left even Sawyer told us she likes Murphy now...which was a long time coming.  We got a quick visit in with our friends Ryan and Lisa, though may have turned them off to children due to some whiny, tired kids and then Mark and I headed off to Ann Arbor to celebrate a friend's recent wedding.  Party was lots of fun despite my only knowing Mark, Ann, Ted, and the groom.  The next day we went off to see Grandpa's plane.  Charlie was going to go for a ride, and when Sawyer heard she said she'd like to go too.  I thought she'd be too scared to go, but off we went to the "airport" anyway. I put that in quotes because this is not your typical flying experience.  Here is Grandpa's plane - a two-seater (one person in front/one in back), and the airport is a grass field.  While Sawyer has flown several commercial flights this was her first REAL flying experience...she even got a certificate from Grandpa that she's in some official log book.

Sawyer's first flight was with Charlie and Grandpa.  Charlie and her sat in the back with headsets on so they could talk to each other.  She was completely excited, waved the whole time, and just seemed to love it.  They even buzzed us a bit on one of their fly-bys and we could see more smiles/waves.  Isla loved to point out the plane on the ground, in the air, etc. but generally preferred to stay on the ground.  I don't anticipate she'll be ready for flight any time soon though she enjoyed hanging out.  Clearly I was the only one freaking out - my heart was beating a mile a minute when they pulled away. 

Sawyer asked Grandpa to take her a second time, and so she went with Daddy this time, and got to sit in the front this time.  Mark said she had a great time.  She loved pointing at the boats and waving to the people, she played I-Spy with him, they talked on the headsets, and she even stuck her hand/arm out the window.  A big thank you to Grandpa for giving her such a wonderful memory - she's already talking about going back up when we come visit in November.

 Just before take-off on the second trip...

 A little bit more of the plane visible here...

I didn't have my camera, so phone shots will have to do.  We rounded out the weekend by heading over to Howell to visit Chad, Jenny and the girls.  After some initial shyness, Sawyer became pretty fast friends with Lydia and Elsie when they showed her all their toys and dress-up clothes.  We came back to Manchester in the morning to meet Grandma and Grandpa and Maggie for breakfast before heading back to Chicago and an afternoon of rain storms. 

And now...hoping it works - a video just before takeoff:

Getting Big

Lately we've had some really well-behaved and happy girls.  It's all about the sleep in this house - if Sawyer and Isla sleep well life is good, but don't mess with them if they're not well rested.  I am pretty sure that comes from me so not something I can get too mad about.  We often struggle the most with getting Sawyer up out of bed in the morning, but the last few days she's gone to bed well and woken up on her own before we've needed to go in there.  This makes the start to our days 10 times better because she asks to go to the bathroom, and then asks me to get her dressed vs. me trying to force her.

At any rate, because we were ahead of schedule this morning and Mark wasn't in a rush for the train I decided to snap a few pictures of my growing and happy girls.  Despite the fact Mark and I each dressed one of them, and didn't see the other while doing so, they were fairly well coordinated so pictures seemed appropriate. As you can see, the weather is getting pretty chilly here in the mornings, but warming up quite a bit by afternoon so we're still in shorts weather for the most part, but often in sweatshirts in the morning/evening.  Fall is definitely on its way.

Would you believe that Isla is still rocking this size 12 months skirt?  And it still falls off her when she runs around because she's so skinny.  But our girl is getting taller and definitely wearing 18 months pants, and hopefully 2T's soon because that's what we have a lot of from Sawyer.  Girl has quite the wardrobe waiting for her come fall.  While I'm thinking of it, Isla still uses her binky at night to go to bed, but it's getting taken away soon.  So far no interest in potty training though she definitely knows when she should.  She'll often tell us "potty" at the appropriate times, but she's pretty frightened of it as well so for now we're not pushing.

Sawyer is just about to move up to the next class in daycare - headed to Preschool-2 with her friends for the 4 year olds.  She's doing so well with writing and practices her letters a lot.  We're also starting to think about learning to read.  We skyped with Aunt Michelle the other day and were talking about some rhyming words and how to spell them.  She's got a pretty incredible memory so it will be interesting if I can get her to learn vs. memorize books.  I'm pretty sure they start working on that in her new class more heavily so hoping to get our girl reading by Kindergarten.

Not a whole lot else going on right now - we've got some travel coming up so hopefully some good pictures on the way.

Our Outdoor Paradise

The patio remodel project is officially finished, and since we had a wonderful weekend here in Chicago, with lots of time outside I thought I'd finally share some pictures.

A little view into the backyard that shows some of the landscaping we had done.

The final piece came together today with the purchase of the grill, one that would slide into the built-in that we had made.

Mark spent some time this afternoon putting it together, so you can see the old grill there off to the side.  Wouldn't you know we put it on the curb, and it was gone within about 30 minutes.

 Mark celebrated his completed project

 But then had a visitor...

 And of course, once you get one, you'll always get the other...

As you've no doubt noticed, all our pictures are from this afternoon.  We had a great weekend all around though - in addition to all you see here, we did some shopping this afternoon as well because Sawyer insists on continuing to grow and we have very limited cold-weather options for her come Fall.  She gave us a fashion show this afternoon with all her new outfits, and even does a little strut when she REALLY likes something that I pick out.  We also hit up lunch in town and for the first time ever our kids were complimented for actually behaving, and I have to say they were good.  We usually have trouble getting them to stay seated, focus on eating, and speaking at a decibel that isn't screaming, but they kept it in check on all fronts so it was actually enjoyable.  Total derail when it came to dinner at home, but I guess I should be thankful for the one good meal.

As for the rest of the weekend, Mark and I both got runs in...Mark more than doubled my mileage which kind of makes me feel like a slacker, but he's back training for some marathons coming in September so I'm not going to focus on it.  We also hit up the farmer's market, the playground, played some soccer in the yard, rode bikes, and generally just relaxed.  Sawyer is officially a good bike rider now - she'll be ready to move up to a bigger bike next summer!  Watched a movie about the effect of eating animal-based vs. plant-based diets.  It was eye-opening, and kind of scary.  Mark and I both finished the movie deciding we need to eat better as a family with more vegetarian options...essentially we'll likely be cutting down on our meat and dairy.  Meat is much easier for me but the eggs and cheese harder.  No meat Saturday or Sunday for us, but cheese and yogurt made the menu.  Tomorrow I try Almond Milk with some cereal to see if that's something I can get into.

Now that I'm thinking of it, this is actually the second in a string of good weekends.  I didn't post last weekend, but we had much of the same relaxing, playing, and enjoying the last of summer, with the highlight being a party at our friend;s house.  Mark and Leo cooked up some ribs (I know - not so vegetarian!) all day, and so the girls took the kids to the park, and to lunch, and to our house to play, while the guys were at the other house taking care of business. Was a really nice time.  The weather in Chicago is just so great these days - it's chilly at night and in the morning, but beautiful during the day.  So we're done with air conditioning and rocking open windows which just feels nice.  Feels like fall is right around the corner though, which is both exciting and sad for me.

Couple of random photos:  Sawyer hamming it up...

 Eating a snack

Isla's favorite thing to do is get a piggyback ride.  She requests it all the time - the latest during dinner, but only of Mark.  It's like their special thing.  As soon as Mark agrees to put her on his back she gets the biggest smile on her face.  While I have a picture of Isla rocking that big smile, these two pictures are actually my favorites

Looking at her Dad...

Settling In

We're not yet a week out from getting back from vacation but are pretty well settled in now.  It was a relatively quiet, if not somewhat challenging weekend.  Seems our girls were struggling a bit too.  I finally got to the grocery store Friday and so we had a pretty quiet night in.  They actually started the weekend in quite a silly mood.  Isla found some of my heels and is enthralled - she is definitely a girly girl so far - loves shoes, purses, chapstick, looking at herself in the mirror, being complimented by her Dad when she's wearing a pretty dress...she revels in it.

And she loves walking around in these heels...and is surprisingly good at it.

Sawyer did a little posing of her own, first in her "Fancy Nancy" outfit.  Not really - but she was supposed to dress up as her favorite book character for school, and Aunt Jennifer gave her this pretty dress as an early birthday present, so she wore that and a fancy bow in her hair, and brought her favorite book.  She's holding on to her candy necklace as well, a treat from our vacation.

When it came time for bed, she managed to pull this outfit together.  Sun hat...check, Sleeping Beauty dress....check, snow boots...check, and wand....check.  A perfect outfit and great way to stall bedtime.  

I was clearly getting ahead of myself thinking they'd be perfectly behaved this weekend.  On Saturday, Sawyer got up early and went with me to the farmer's market.  She was in her pajamas, and her hair wasn't combed but all in all, she was good.  We came home and got ready for the pool and the wheels started to come off the track.  Once at the pool Sawyer refused to go to her swim lesson and cried for a good 15-20 minutes.  After 20 minutes, Isla and Mark could get in the pool, so her crying stopped and it became pleading to go swimming.  Perhaps I shouldn't have picked this battle, but I made her sit on the side of the pool until her lesson was over (10 minutes) - if she wasn't going to go to the lesson, she wasn't going to just swim on her own.  Once I did let her in, the crying started up again after about a minute.  Nothing Mark or I did was right, and Isla started to get in on the action.  Thankfully the pool had like 10 people there because we had two bratty babies.  We lasted 30 minutes in the pool, about 5 minutes at the picnic area where they cried over everything I brought, and we were back in the car headed home.

Thankfully, they each took 3 1/2 hour naps and emerged better people because we had a birthday party to go to....a 5th birthday party for our friend's daughter.  Was a lot of fun and they had a bounce house which provided lots of entertainment.  Mark literally dragged each of them out when it was time to go. Sunday emerged much nicer and we just had a relaxing day.  Mark and I both got runs in, we went out and bought some new patio furniture for the backyard, and even took the girls to play tennis before bed.  Mark and I enjoyed playing a little on vacation, and so we let them run around a bit while we hit.  We probably only got 30 shots in and then spent time throwing the ball to Isla and letting her chase it, and letting Sawyer try to hit the ball.  I think we all had a good time despite the lack of real tennis.

A random pic of Isla eating a gummy worm - girl has a sweet tooth.

And because I found a random post I'd started, but never finished, some random thoughts/stories about Sawyer and Isla:

• I recently took Sawyer and Isla to church by myself.  I'm not the best at going every week, but I do still like to go and want our kids to attend as well.  However, they are just not at an age where it's at all enjoyable.  On this occasion, Sawyer had me laughing pretty hard in church and totally at a loss for words.  As soon as we sat down she kept asking me "when is God going to get here?"  Trying to explain that God is a spirit is a bit tough, especially when we shouldn't have been talking.  Isla was being pretty good, but mid-way through found the holy water, which at our church is a giant marble bowl.  She walked over to it, lifted herself up so she was balancing on her arms on the edge, and started flicking the water with her hands like it was her own personal water table.  As soon as I grabbed her she started to scream, so I quickly grabbed Sawyer and we were out of church just before communion, which proceeded to make Sawyer cry because she wanted to stay till the end of church.  Super.
• Sawyer told me she wants to go to outer space the other day, but that first we need to get some superpowers so we can fly there
• Sawyer's been practicing writing her name, but has started writing S's as backwards 3's.
• Isla is starting to talk up a storm, often repeating whatever we say, or at the very least the last word we say.  She likes to sing her ABC's, and anytime you ask her to sing a song she goes there, but also pretty much anytime she feels like singing - whether we're in the car, at a restaurant, etc.  She also likes to count.  She will count with us up to 10, but can't do it on her own.  She likes when we say 1, because 2 is her absolute favorite number right now.  She also likes to say 1,2,3, GOOO!!
• Sawyer continues to be our little singer, memorizing songs like I can hardly believe.  Isla seems to be more into the dance.  I will catch her in her car seat start to wave her arms and shimmy in her seat if she likes a song that comes on the radio, and she'll do the same wherever she's at if she hears a tune she likes.
• We are starting to take Isla's binky away from her.  She is highly attached, and we let her have it on vacation so as not to disturb the rest of the family, but at home she's now only allowed to have it when she's in bed for a nap or for the night.  We're hoping that in about 2 months or so we'll cut the cord entirely and get rid of it for good.
• Isla is also starting to show us that she's ready to be potty trained.  She tells me when she's gone to the bathroom and will sometimes even say she wants to go to the potty - usually after she's gone in her diaper.  So far, the closest we've gotten her is sitting on the toilet with all her clothes and diaper on.  We're not pushing it, but are watching her pretty closely because no diapers would be pretty cool!

More to come later in the week once our patio furniture gets delivered - our backyard is so wonderfully comfortable to hang out in now, we love it!

A Little Taste of Freedom

Planes, trains, and automobiles...that's what it took for us to get to our few days of freedom.  After flying to Baltimore, and driving to our Bethany vacation, we drove the girls back to Baltimore and got them settled, and then headed out the next day via Amtrak to NYC.  The send off went surprisingly well.  Both girls were in the car as my parents were taking them to the harbor and the aquarium after dropping us, and we didn't have any tears which was nice.  Mark and I hopped on the train and a little more than 2 hours later pulled right into Penn Station.  Vacation take 2!

We don't get a lot of time away so when we do we savor it.  I think our kids are still too young to leave them for any significant amount of time, hence we won't be having any big European trips any time soon.  Therefore two nights in NY would be perfect, and it definitely called for a little splurge on the hotel.  By splurge, I mean we used more hotel points than we normally would.  So we stayed in midtown which put us in a good location to explore the city like we wanted...and explore we did.

When we arrived, we headed down to the bar in our hotel - the Old King Cole, which is fairly well known and is apparently where the bloody mary was first invented.  As some of you may know, I am a fan of the bloody mary and so off we went to sample and have a bite to eat.  That was our first reminder of NY prices.  One appetizer, one sandwich, and a drink (b/c we got one for free) were $100.    But you know what - you don't care about that when you're on vacation.  We sat and relaxed on our first kid-free meal of the vaca before heading out to my (our? - Mark can't remember) first Broadway show.  A friend got us a hook up for seats to the Book of Mormon.  We were first row balcony which were awesome seats, and the show was great.  It was very entertaining and funny, and I'm so glad we went.

After the show we just started walking south, thinking we'd head down towards the 9/11 memorial.  We walked from 55th st down to 9/11 which i think is about 4-5 miles, and zigzagged in between to visit different neighborhoods - Chelsea, Greenwich Village, East Village, SoHo, TriBeca...we enjoyed it all.  We stopped off for a few drinks along the way -grabbing a beer or a bite to eat in a few different locations.  It made it all fun.  I love the neighborhood feel of some of the areas down south, and all the restaurants and bars and places to stop.  We both said, it'd be great to live in new york for a few months to really get into it all...

We did not see the 9/11 memorial as i'm pretty sure it was closed when we arrived later in the evening, and the entrance was hard to find, and we didn't have tickets, but we saw the gist of it, and the rebuilding of the Tower as we walked around the building fences.  I'm glad we made time to head down there...it is a day I'll never forget.

The next day we had more of the same on tap...more walking of the city.  Grand Central Terminal and the Empire State Building were first.  My goodness the line for Empire State was long, and once we were committed there was no turning back.  I'm happy to say it was worth it (though perhaps not every trip) and the skies were clear so we got great views of the city:

Here's one pic of the Chrysler Building

Once we headed down it was off to find the High Line, and perhaps another quick beer in between.  The High Line is this really cool walkway that is basically a repurposed raised railroad.  It's west of the city in Chelsea and there were all sorts of people up there walking, relaxing, painting, having lunch, etc.  A really cool spot to check out I thought.

My favorite spot on the High Line was the makeshift graffiti zoo.  The animals are made out of styrofoam or cardboard or something - seriously creative.

We kept walking till the end - the Meatpacking District and had lunch down there at this great Italian restaurant.  Seriously - I'm going to try and recreate the salad Mark had it was so good.  Loved this area - it felt so European.  Must go back next trip.  So by now we've walked another 3-4+ miles, and so heading back North decided to treat ourselves to a cab because it was off to the MoMA, Museum of Modern Art.  I have been to the Met before, but not this museum so was happy to see something new. I can't say I'm huge into all forms of Modern Art, but it was a nice way to spend an hour or two.  We took a few pictures of some paintings we liked.  Mark and I both liked this, though Mark contends he has a picture from elementary school where he did basically the same thing.  Clearly he's missed his calling as an artist.

 Back to the hotel for a quick rest, but then it was off to Brooklyn!  One of the things we wanted to do was walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, so we took a cab down to lower Manhattan, hopped out, and trekked across.  Would be a cool way to commute to work in the summer, perhaps less so in the winter.

 It was under construction but I got a good picture of Mark with the skyline

 And another showing Freedom tower in the background

Once across the bridge we found ourselves a restaurant for some amazing Mexican food.  My goodness this food was good.  But it was just a quick stop before heading over to meet up with Mark's  friend Andy.  Always have a good time with him, and that night was no exception.  We hung out on their roof for a bit and hit up a few bars...all in all a good visit.

Needless to say, the following morning my feet were aching.  But we had one more thing on the docket - Central Park.  All of our time thus far had been spent south of the park, which we loved, but we wanted to walk the park as well.  So...that's what we did.  We walked around the entire park, running the last 1.5-2miles of it, and emerging utterly exhausted, but happy that we had indeed seen a large majority of Manhattan on this trip.  We headed out for a quick bite to eat before walking ourselves back to Penn Station and our train home to Baltimore.  Two happy kids greeted us, and stayed attached for the rest of the night, afraid we might be leaving them again I think...and the next day we packed up and flew back to Chicago.  With the laundry done and clothes and suitcases all put away, it's crazy that this vacation is over, but it was a good one and just what the doctor ordered.

Kickball...the New Olympic Sport

On several nights of our vacation one of the houses would take the responsibility for cooking dinner for the big group.  Those usually ended with the kids playing in the back to some extent.  On one night they played tag, rolled down mini-hills, and just generally ran...on another my mom brought water balloons and Kate did a scavenger hunt with silly string as one of their prizes...and on another there ended up being a kickball game...only some of the adults also got involved.  Aidan was trying to stack his team and kept going up to all the men asking to join his team - smart boy.  I'm not sure how he convinced everyone to get in on the action, but almost everyone played for a few minutes.  Some of my favorite pictures from that night are:

Mark trying to corral the girls, and convince Sawyer to kick the ball.  You can see Alexa just coming into the shot.  She ran in front of Sawyer each time and kicked the ball b/c Sawyer was too slow.  

My cropping function wasn't working or this would be better - but the shot is of Aidan running the bases.

 Lauren was a star pitcher, at least for one of the innings.

 Recorded for posterity...Mark smiling.  No really, he laughed a lot during this game.

And, another cropping fail - Ryan running the bases.  Ignore the rest of us and focus on his intense, streamlined running capability

Finally, Mark helping Sawyer to run the bases.  This was the first time she had ever seen/played a game of kickball...i know - it's a shame...so she required some coaxing.

As for the rest of the night, there were also just some random cute shots taken.  Isla hanging by the door

 Mark and Aidan watching what was left of the game.

Lauren giving Maeve a hug.  I actually feel bad because all Lauren wanted was to hold babies.  Maeve let her, but Isla was having no part.  What can I say, the girl rarely leaves my side, and certainly not to be held by other people.  Grandma and Grandpa have a shot, but even they got shut down a few times. You're a stubborn girl Isla!

 Grandpa and Isla playing with one of the balls on the sidelines of the big game.

 And Isla trying to get in on the big game with Dad.  

Was all in good fun...Give it a few years and they'll be playing Ghost in the Graveyard too like we did when we were kids.

Nothing is Sweeter than a little Vacation

Well, it's back to reality for this family.  We left on Friday the 20th and arrived home yesterday on the 1st.  We went to Baltimore, the Delaware Shore, back to Baltimore, and then Mark and I escaped for a quick visit to NYC.  I've been waiting for this vacation to come for so long that I can hardly believe it's over now.  I'm both sad, and happy.  We had a great time seeing the family, though it's amazing how quickly each vacation goes.

I have far too many pictures to post, and even narrowing them down will have to separate this into three posts I think.  I'm going to do a marathon update now because I hope to have different pictures to post later in the weekend.  One thing that vacation was great for was getting us outside more.  Sometimes I think we get in a rut of going to/from work and daycare that we forget to have fun outside.  For some reason I'm already excited for this weekend's trip to the farmer's market and bike riding, and the pool, etc. so I am thanking vacation for reminding me about what's important.

So now, let's see.  This vacation was one of those where we did a lot and nothing all at the same time. Just having the whole family together in one place was a feat - surprisingly it only happens once every few years.  Someone is ALWAYS missing, but not this trip.  We had three houses in Bethany, DE situated all within about 50 ft of each other, and it perfectly spread us apart and kept us together.  Most of our days were spent either at the pool or the beach, or both.  Our girls still take naps so we usually did something in the am, had lunch/naps, and then hit the pool in the pm as well.  Throw in some dinners, ice cream, a little tennis, golf, and just general playtime and that pretty much sums up the vacation, but with some fun stories in between.

I'm going to do my best to tell the story using the pictures.  We knew coming into this trip we wanted to try and get a picture of the cousins with grandma and grandpa.  Since their last picture (when Sawyer was 18 months) we have added Isla and Maeve to the bunch and the kids have grown up quite a bit.  I could have guessed this would be difficult, but my kids turned out to be the serious bummers of the group.  As you can see, there was a cute picture of the kids taken with mom and dad, but Sawyer isn't in it at all, and Isla is crying.  The rest of the kids are all good, with our models of the group (Luke and Aidan) in perfect pose.

We ended up bringing bathing suits to the beach and staying, and truth be told, once the picture taking was over the kids settled down.  They played in the ocean a bit with grandpa, with all the kids getting their real clothes wet.

I tried to snap some good pics, but here's a few of my favorites - Alexa was soaked, but honestly the look on her face is pure joy running in and out of the water.

 Sawyer finally stopped being a sour puss and actually enjoyed dipping her toes in.

Maeve hanging out in her diaper totally covered in sand and loving it, and about to shove a handful in her mouth.

And Sawyer being taken for a walk with Grandma to calm down after her utter refusal to take pictures

Not sure how many days we actually went to the beach, but it got better as the week progressed.  Isla was not digging the water at first but eventually walked herself in and would play in the water.  Totally strange since she was more comfortable with the ocean when we went to Florida in March, but it was like the sound of the waves (which were pretty big) scared her from the start.  We never actually stayed too long because despite having an umbrella Isla always seemed to get really affected by the heat and turn a nice shade of pink despite multiple applications of 55 SPF.  I did capture a few pictures of Sawyer and Aidan the one day that I absolutely love.  If this isn't the essence of being a kid, I don't know what is.

We had a really nice mix of dinners together as a big group, and dinners solo with just our family.  On one night we took the girls out to a seafood restaurant.  I'm not sure they were all that jazzed about the restaurant other than by the fact that you could color on the table, but we did hit up ice cream and the playground after which was more their speed.  Took a few pics while we were there.

 A bit blurry, but Sawyer was doing a happy dance for me.  I don't remember why.

 But I love the personality.

 Hanging in the swings

 Pure concentration on the slide

And my last picture for the first installment of vacation posts is the girls in their fun red bathing suits.  I don't love to do 100% matching, but prefer to find them things that are more coordinated, like the red in this case.  I think they looked so cute together.  Only mishap - I forgot to bring Sawyer's big sunhat.  I bought a size 6, so clearly I'm going to be shopping for a lot of red bathing suits over the next two years to get our use out of it.