Vacation Quotes

This post is mainly so I can remember all the funny things our kids said/ did that pictures don't show.

Background: Trey has been obsessed with reading The Berenstein Bears books, which were favorites of both Jay and I.  We read The Berenstein Bears Go on Vacation before our trip. 

Charlotte did really good on the long car ride but she was done riding in the car the last 30 minutes and pretty much screamed until we got to the house. While Charlotte is screaming, Trey kept asking over top of her, "ARE WE ON VACATION YET?"

We only had a few minutes where we had to stop on interstate 81 for traffic.  Trey called out from the backseat during the traffic jam, "Go faster Daddy!" 

Charlotte's 2 favorite things to meet are older people and animals.  Where we are staying is my Grandfather's home near Brevard, NC and the community is made up of many retirees.  At the park and pool area Charlotte keeps walking over to new people that arrive and waving to then.  If they don't notice her at first she keeps waving harder and gets closer until they wave back.  One lady was walking loops around the playground yesterday morning with her dog.  Each time Charlotte saw the dog she would yell "Doggy, ruff ruff! And wave both arms wildly attempting to get the dog's attention.

We haven't set up a tv in our house since we moved last October.  Trey and Charlotte watch tv at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  Here there is a tv next to the kitchen table and we had on Seasame Street during breakfast to which Trey said, "This is even better than Grandma and Grandpa's tv!"

I was flipping through the channels and stopped at a weather map.  Trey said,  "Oh that's what Grandma and Grandpa watch.  They watch it all the time!"

One last tv quote, I guess this is what we miss without having a tv.  A city bus came on tv and Trey asked, "Is that the church bus or the wheels on the bus bus?"

We are having a great, relaxing time together and now I need to remember to take some pictures so I have photo documentation of this trip!

Playing Catch Up

The blessing of summertime for a family with 2 school teachers is the flexiblility our schedule can have in the summer time.  Sometimes, though, things can get a little crazy with schedules and routines changing every week.  Since the great power outage I feel like we have been playing catch up every week.  Now I have finally made time to catch up on this blog!

The week after the power outage we had VBS at our church.  My niece came to stay with us and the kids had so much fun at church and playing together at home.

After VBS, a family in our church with four children who are now a little older, gave us their train table.  Trey and Charlotte have both loved playing on it! Charlotte likes to literally play on it and we keep having to stop her from climbing on top of the table.

I have no pictures of this, but Charlotte is now 18 months old! I plan to do an 18 month post someday.... She did great at her checkup and stepped up on the scale all by herself like a big girl! She weighs 22 lbs and 6 oz (25 %) and was 50% for height, but I can't remember the exact number right now.  We took her for some allergy testing because we thought she might have a peanut allergy after she broke out in hives eating one of her brother's cookies by accident.  We were right. Charlotte has a moderate peanut allergy and we have to go visit a pediatric allergist in October for a full blood work of allergy testing.  Charlotte is not a fan of the doctor's office right now, but can you blame her?

We finally finished our big summer house project! The frame project is completed and there will be a full step by step blog post in the future because this project consumed a good big of our nap times during the month of June.

Jay went out of town last week for work and I had some help in the form of my aunt, cousin, mom and Jay's parents coming to help with the kids.  The kids had fun with new people to play with and really went with the flow during a crazy week of people in and out of our house.  I started and finished summer school and I am glad to have the rest of the summer at home.

We are headed for our family trip tomorrow.  We consider a trip without a kids a vacation and a trip with kids a family trip.  It helps us not be disappointed when our vacation time isn't really our own! I plan to be back next week with pictures from the trip and Charlotte's 18 month update!

Trey-isms

Hearing about life through the filter of a three year old is often exciting, unpredictable and honest.  Trey keeps us on our toes by what comes out of his mouth.

Last night at church they had the VBS recap with about 200 kids in front to sing and parents and siblings in the audience. Trey hasn't been in the sanctuary very often in church so it was intimidating to him.  Walking into the room full of adults and noise to find a seat, he said to me, "I want you to carry me Mommy." So I picked him up so he wouldn't feel so small among all the adults walking around.  Then he said, "I don't think this is a good idea, I think we need to go back to the car."  The car is his "safe" place.

Today I gave Jay a hug in the dining room and Trey looked up from his lunch and said, "Oh Daddy, Mommy loves you so much.  Do you love Mommy so much?"  It was a very sweet moment.  I hope he always feels like we have a lot of love in our house.

He also likes to be the voice of reason with his sister. "No, no Charlotte, don't pull the table cloth.  You have to go to time out if you do that." 

Last week his cousin Halle visited us.  Trey loves Halle and was very sad to see her go.  When I came back from taking Halle to her house on Friday, Trey greeted me at the door and said, "I wonder what Halle is doing at her house now.  I think she wants to come back to our house."  At dinner that evening he looked around and said, "I think we are missing somebody, I think we are missing Halle." 

Then tonight his prayers went something like this, "Dear God, Thank you for food, water and all my toys. Amen."  He made sure to cover the basics.

Children's Museum Cont.

The tickets for the Children's Museum were all day tickets and they let you come and go as you please.  Talk about catering to families! We went back for another couple of hours between naps and dinner.  This time we played with the tree again (of course!), the digging area, and outside.  

The Great Apple Tree.  In these pictures you can kinda see the tubes in the leaves that the apples come down. 

This digging pit had little pieces of rubber, not sand.  It was perfect to play in, except for the mess it left in Charlotte's shoes.  At this point in the afternoon there were maybe 6 other families in the museum so Jay and I just chilled on chairs and watched the kids play.  It was a nice, relaxing way to spend the late afternoon. 

Another favorite: the big slide!

Charlotte is definitely a country girl!

More inside playtime

  
Before we left we, headed to the outside play area.  There was a section with large musical instruments for the kids to play.

Each block you stepped on played a different note.

Charlotte couldn't resist the water area and was soaked by the time we left.  Luckily we had an extra set of clothes in the car!

Scattered outside were these drums.  The bigger they were, the lower the sound. We had a two man band going on here. 

Children's Museum

While we were in Richmond last week we took the kids to the Children's Museum of Richmond.  This was the perfect place to go considering it was 100+ degrees outside and the museum was nice and cool.  It was the ultimate play area for the kids without being crazy or overly stimulating.  Everything was designed for play with a purpose.  We stayed a couple of hours in the morning then went back to my parent's house for lunch and naps.  Here is the massive photo dump of pictures from the morning. 

When we first arrived we had to walk around the gift shop while we got tickets.  Charlotte is a shoe girl.  This was the first thing she spotted and hat to look at!

The three and under room had all kinds of vehicles and there is nothing my kids love better than a toy with wheels, especially ones that they can drive! 

There was a farm stand section where you could sort the produce, hit a lever to make an egg come out of the chicken, and push buttons to listen to animal noises. 

All the toys were made to be climbed on, climbed under, or climbed through. 

 

 Trey LOVED fishing in the boat.  The fishing pole was in high demand and he did a good job sharing with other kids, but he could have fished all day.

 

He is also quite adept at auto repair.  I may need to remember this in the future.

This is a picture of Charlotte and a dinosaur.  She is giving him a kiss.

Going down the slide together, although in hindsight Charlotte would have been safer not starting out in Trey's lap, because you can see she ended up behind him!

  

This tree was played with for the better part of an hour.  It is a huge apple tree with 3 sides that have apples coming out the kids can pick and put in baskets.  When your basket is full you deposit the apples into a container inside the trunk and these tubes with air (or some other scientificy-thing) suck the apples back up the tree and out onto the leaves.   

 Back at Nana and Papa's happy to relax and play.  

Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens

Having no power at home led to a mini vacation at my parent's house in Richmond.  On July 4th we went to Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens with my brother and his family.  The kids were happy to see their cousins and had fun exploring a new area. I was impressed by the beauty of the gardens and how wonderfully the Children's Gardens were set up to inspire creativity and play.

Warning: Lots of pictures ahead! 

Waiting to see our cousins! This was my attempt at a nice picture together of the two of them- fail! 

They boys wanted to hold hands as they walked along. 

Trey's cousins helped him since they knew the way around.

In the Children's Gardens.  They had these neat huts with primitive tools and household items.  Trey is sweeping and Charlotte is playing with a dried corn cob. 

We didn't bring the stroller with us and figured Charlotte could just walk.  She walked without getting tired the whole time, only she always didn't want to go where we were going!

This area had a bunch of branches on the ground just for climbing.  Charlotte loves to climb! She also spent a lot of time standing up on the stump behind her.

There was also a huge tree for the kids to climb.  Trey was so brave to climb all by himself! This was just before he slipped and fell under the tree :)

Trey and Chandler looking out the window in the tree house.

Trey LOVED the sandbox and did not want to leave it.  I think he would have had fun digging all day.  He just saw this picture on my computer and said, "That's me digging in the desert with my friends Jacob and Chandler."

Charlotte's first time in a sand box.

She's no so sure, so Chandler brings her a shovel.

She starts to dig with the shovel....

and then decides the sandbox is not for her.

We ended the day with the water area.  There were a lot of kids and Trey and Charlotte were just trying to figure out what all these sprinkler things were!

Charlotte cracks me up here.  She is watching the other kids. She wasn't super excited about the water but she enjoyed seeing all the other kids around. And she looked really cute in her bathing suit :)