The rest of our Easter Sunday was beautiful--we all went down for a nice, long rest time, and it was divine. Here we are before rest time:
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Monday, March 28, 2016
Easter Egg Smackdown 2016
We dyed Easter eggs on Saturday afternoon, a task my children took very seriously so don't mind their lack of smiles!
OBX: Bodie Island
It was ridiculously cold and windy on Saturday, but everyone headed to the beach nonetheless (well, everyone aside from the women and babies). No one stayed very long or got very wet. Here's Daddy and Benjamin walking back from the beach:
OBX: The Outer Banks, day 1
Our goal was to leave the house by 11:00 on Friday morning. We left at 11:07, so not bad in our book, but we had to pull off at a gas station half an hour into our drive. Half the kids--Miriam and Benjamin--rode with Grandma and Grandpa in the rental car. Andrew and I took Rachel and Zoë so that the oldest could help take care of the youngest in the backseat. This was mostly accomplished by looking up from her kindle every now and again to throw a toy or some food in her direction, but ultimately proved most useful when Rachel yelled, "Oh, no!!!"
"What?" I asked, whipping around in my seat as Andrew reflexively stepped on the breaks.
"Just,"Rachel said, a bit calmer now, "Zoë has yellow stuff all over her legs for some reason. She's smearing it all around. I'm not sure how it got there but..."
"Lovely," I sighed, craning my neck to investigate. "That's poop."
Clean up was fun and soon we were on the road again (and without further mishap, though we did have to stop again to nurse a screaming baby). For the most part I ignored the quickly passing scenery, engrossed in the book Into Thin Air. I had to get down from Everest before I could focus on anything else, though I did look up when Andrew slowed the car down for a long line of other cars rubber-necking at an alligator on the side of the road (it was humongous) and to shudder a time or two while driving over miles and miles of bridge spanning the open ocean (or sound or whatever (so many miles of bridge)).
The kids were all too happy to pile out of the vehicles when we arrived at the beach house and while Daddy and Grandma went to the store to purchase provisions, Grandpa and I took the kids to the beach. It was a beautiful day, though a little chilly and terribly, terribly windy. But I suppose that's to be expected around these parts--because that's the reason the Wright Brothers chose this area to try out their flight machine for the first time. The wind never lets up.
Lethbridge ain't got nothing on the Outer Banks!
The wind whipped the sand painfully against our bare legs, and the ocean is still icy cold from the winter currents, but we endured a happy hour or so at the beach, skipping in the waves and playing in the sand. We did not attempt boogie boarding because the minute we stepped over the dune our boogie boards lifted in the air like kites. Rachel accidentally let go of her strap and had to chase her board down the beach quite a ways before she caught up with it (so Grandpa walked them back to the house for us).
And not that this has anything to do with our first day at the beach, but overnight one of Benjamin's brand-new crocs blew away. We eventually found it (far, far away from where it was left) but it took quite a long time with several of us looking.
Anyway, here's a picture of Zoë enjoying the beach:
"What?" I asked, whipping around in my seat as Andrew reflexively stepped on the breaks.
"Just,"Rachel said, a bit calmer now, "Zoë has yellow stuff all over her legs for some reason. She's smearing it all around. I'm not sure how it got there but..."
"Lovely," I sighed, craning my neck to investigate. "That's poop."
Clean up was fun and soon we were on the road again (and without further mishap, though we did have to stop again to nurse a screaming baby). For the most part I ignored the quickly passing scenery, engrossed in the book Into Thin Air. I had to get down from Everest before I could focus on anything else, though I did look up when Andrew slowed the car down for a long line of other cars rubber-necking at an alligator on the side of the road (it was humongous) and to shudder a time or two while driving over miles and miles of bridge spanning the open ocean (or sound or whatever (so many miles of bridge)).
The kids were all too happy to pile out of the vehicles when we arrived at the beach house and while Daddy and Grandma went to the store to purchase provisions, Grandpa and I took the kids to the beach. It was a beautiful day, though a little chilly and terribly, terribly windy. But I suppose that's to be expected around these parts--because that's the reason the Wright Brothers chose this area to try out their flight machine for the first time. The wind never lets up.
Lethbridge ain't got nothing on the Outer Banks!
The wind whipped the sand painfully against our bare legs, and the ocean is still icy cold from the winter currents, but we endured a happy hour or so at the beach, skipping in the waves and playing in the sand. We did not attempt boogie boarding because the minute we stepped over the dune our boogie boards lifted in the air like kites. Rachel accidentally let go of her strap and had to chase her board down the beach quite a ways before she caught up with it (so Grandpa walked them back to the house for us).
And not that this has anything to do with our first day at the beach, but overnight one of Benjamin's brand-new crocs blew away. We eventually found it (far, far away from where it was left) but it took quite a long time with several of us looking.
Anyway, here's a picture of Zoë enjoying the beach:
Friday, March 25, 2016
It's always fun when Grandpa comes
Zoë took about a week to warm up to Grandma. I left the kids with Grandma on Wednesday last week because I had dance practice, which means two solid hours of dancing. I've been getting away with holding Zoë on stage through most of these rehearsals but I simply can't dance for two hours while holding her. So even though she'd just met Grandma, I left her anyway, all alone (Andrew was out of town).
She screamed and screamed and screamed.
So I took her to rehearsal with me on Thursday.
Slowly, though Zo came around to Grandma. She learned that Grandma's arms kept her out of Benjamin's reach. She learned that Grandma will give her Cheerios and Veggie Straws. She learned that Grandma is phenomenally great at the game peek-a-boo. And she decided that Grandma was pretty okay.
"She's just gotten used to me and now we're going to introduce her to another new person," Grandma said.
And then we wondered how Zoë would react when she (re)met her grandpa. Would she be shy of him for the whole week? Or would his baby-whispering ways win her heart outright?
We found out today when Grandpa texted Grandma around 10:30 this morning.
"Eduardo," he wrote.
"What?" Grandma asked.
"RDU," Grandpa wrote back.
Museum with Grandma
Grandma and I took the kids to the museum yesterday afternoon. I'd promised the girls that we could go during spring break (they're always so disappointed whenever Benjamin tells them that I took him to the museum while they were at school) and our spring break is disappearing at an alarming rate!
It didn't help that the first three days of spring break were designated snow make-up days. Nor does it help that our entire life seems to revolve around rehearsals for the musical. I've spent eleven hours either rehearsing or driving to/from rehearsal just in the past three days.
That's like 1/6 of my time!
Maybe that doesn't sound like very much time to be away from the house doing other things but, I assure you, to my nursing baby it feels like basically an eternity. And then, because I've been starving her (ha! this child is so far from starving) she wants to eat and eat and eat when I get home. And then wants to eat and eat and eat all night long, which means that I'm sleepy.
But I powered through the afternoon at the museum anyway (and I think, if I'm not mistaken, that Grandma actually dropped Zoë and I off at home to nap while she took the kids to get pizza for dinner (I'm so tired I can't even remember what I've done certain days)). The kids had a fun time showing Grandma their favourite parts of the museum.
It didn't help that the first three days of spring break were designated snow make-up days. Nor does it help that our entire life seems to revolve around rehearsals for the musical. I've spent eleven hours either rehearsing or driving to/from rehearsal just in the past three days.
That's like 1/6 of my time!
Maybe that doesn't sound like very much time to be away from the house doing other things but, I assure you, to my nursing baby it feels like basically an eternity. And then, because I've been starving her (ha! this child is so far from starving) she wants to eat and eat and eat when I get home. And then wants to eat and eat and eat all night long, which means that I'm sleepy.
But I powered through the afternoon at the museum anyway (and I think, if I'm not mistaken, that Grandma actually dropped Zoë and I off at home to nap while she took the kids to get pizza for dinner (I'm so tired I can't even remember what I've done certain days)). The kids had a fun time showing Grandma their favourite parts of the museum.
Sunday, March 20, 2016
The messiest game of peek-a-boo
Zoë had refried beans and avocado for dinner, which made quite the mess! When she was finished eating she decided she wanted to play peek-a-boo with everyone who was still eating (who can resist a captive audience?), which only made things messier.
Where's Zoë? I have no idea because she's such a good hider!
Where's Zoë? I have no idea because she's such a good hider!
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Neighbourhood Easter Egg Hunt
We went to our neighbourhood Easter egg hunt this morning. In years past it's seemed like the entire neighbourhood has shown up and the eggs disappear within seconds of releasing the kids on the hunt, so this year the event planners sent out multiple emails warning everyone to arrive on time (or be left out).
But this morning it was, relatively speaking, rather chilly, and that must have frightened all our neighbours away because by the time we walked to the park (we got there with four minutes to spare) there weren't very many people there. We'd only brought little brown paper bag baskets that we'd made during breakfast but the guy in charge had brought along a bunch of grocery bags (just in case) so Rachel and Miriam grabbed one of those to fill up, too, because apparently they hid 1200 eggs for the kids to find—and there weren't that many kids to find them!
The toddler zone cleared out pretty quickly:
But this morning it was, relatively speaking, rather chilly, and that must have frightened all our neighbours away because by the time we walked to the park (we got there with four minutes to spare) there weren't very many people there. We'd only brought little brown paper bag baskets that we'd made during breakfast but the guy in charge had brought along a bunch of grocery bags (just in case) so Rachel and Miriam grabbed one of those to fill up, too, because apparently they hid 1200 eggs for the kids to find—and there weren't that many kids to find them!
The toddler zone cleared out pretty quickly:
Pullen Park: Another perspective
We've been meaning to visit Pullen Park for the past three years or so but somehow we haven't managed to make it down there. Miriam loved the carousel at Disney World (we went in the summer of 2013) so we figured we'd take her for her fourth birthday that year. But Grandma Sharon unexpectedly passed away and Andrew ended up spending Miriam's birthday in Utah, which meant that the rest of us just stayed home (since Mommy doesn't drive to Raleigh). And then we kept meaning to make it...and kept not doing it...until today when Grandma suggested we just go do it.
So we did.
So we did.
Pullen Park
Hi! I have not written a post on here before so...here goes nothing! So, today we wanted to go somewhere, and grandma asked me if we had been to Pullen Park yet. I said "nope". And Grandma said "seriously! You haven't been to Pullen Park yet?!" I said "nope". I asked Mom,who was writing a blog post, if we could go to Pullen Park. Mom said "maybe". So I went to go play with Miriam. After a while Miriam told me to go to Moms chair. Mom told me to look up Pullen Park.I did,and this is what I found:
When we got to Pullen Park,we got tickets and rode on the Carousel.I chose a horse that was chestnut brown and went up and down. (Miriam and grandma accidentally chose ones that didn't) so after we got off, grandma said we would go again because of that. After, we went to the playground and played for a while. Then we went to the train.Benji really liked it,and so did Zoe.(I did to)
We got off the train and rode the Kiddie boats.They were boring.Then we rode the Carousel again.We went to the park to play. Miriam and I were playing,and I was speed walking down a play hill they have when BAM I tripped and fell!On my face (well chin) and hands and knees!One lady asked if I was okay and I said yes and ran away to Mom. Then we left and went to Chick-fil-A.
- 408 Ashe Ave,Raleigh,NC
- 72 acres in area
- open 10 AM- 6 PM
- opened March 22 1887
- Rides:Carousel,Kiddie and pedal boats,Train
When we got to Pullen Park,we got tickets and rode on the Carousel.I chose a horse that was chestnut brown and went up and down. (Miriam and grandma accidentally chose ones that didn't) so after we got off, grandma said we would go again because of that. After, we went to the playground and played for a while. Then we went to the train.Benji really liked it,and so did Zoe.(I did to)
We got off the train and rode the Kiddie boats.They were boring.Then we rode the Carousel again.We went to the park to play. Miriam and I were playing,and I was speed walking down a play hill they have when BAM I tripped and fell!On my face (well chin) and hands and knees!One lady asked if I was okay and I said yes and ran away to Mom. Then we left and went to Chick-fil-A.
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