These vagabond shoes...

 

I love to travel. When I was seventeen, I took my first trip to New York. Really, it was my first trip anywhere east of Utah and north of Oregon. Yes, I was extremely cultured in my youth.

I had planned a summer trip with my best friend Danielle to go visit two sets of cousins in New York. Our first stop was Alfred, which is a small town upstate that was as green and lush and charming as anything I had ever seen. I was in love!! We spent a sublime week there with the wonderful Ludlows, and even took a jaunt up to Niagara Falls, Canada -- my first time in a "foreign" country!

From there we headed to New Jersey, where my very cool Clive cousins lived just 20 miles from NYC. They showed us everything you could possibly see in one week at full speed. All the classic touristy spots and more, including a performance by some crazy Mongolian throat singers. It was unbelievable!

That trip broadened my horizons. It helped me to see what was out there in the world, outside of my little hometown. In those two weeks, I decided that I could be happy anywhere I lived, because anything would be a new experience. Whether I ended up in a small town like Alfred, or the heart of the big city, I was excited for the future!

I saw NYC once after that with my family, when they visited Matt and me the summer we lived in DC right after we got married. Still enamored. Still in love with the lights, the big buildings, the hustle and bustle of crowded streets, the sidewalk performers, the skyline, the culture, the food, everything!

Why am I strolling down memory lane, like you care? Because I like to. But this is not a post about my past. That was just a little warm up.

The real news is that NYC Trip #3 came a couple weeks ago when Matt's parents were here. He surprised me with a romantic little overnight getaway!! 

See? Don't we look romantic??

Trip summary:  still love love love that city, but no longer want to live there. 

It's amazing how kids change things like that. One semi-rainy day on those sidewalks and subways was enough to tell me that little people would make this place unbearable. As much as I love them, I was so glad we didn't bring them along!

So here's how the trip went. We flew to Philadelphia for free on Dow's air shuttle and drove a rental car from there, then paid for a hotel right in Times Square with rewards points. If there's one thing I like more than my dear husband planning a surprise getaway for us, it's my dear husband planning a surprise getaway for us on the cheap!

We had about twelve waking hours in the city, so we tried to make the most of our day. Thanks to some very detailed and helpful tips from our amazing friend Natalie, we were able to make a plan and go go go!

5:15 am -- Wake up and get ready to leave. Hope I don't wake up Jude on the way out.

7:30 am -- Flight leaves from tiny local airport.

9ish -- Plane lands in Philadelphia. Get rental car and drive. Stop for some greasy late second breakfast at gas station. (I eat second breakfast almost every day, even when I don't wake up at 5.)

11:30ish -- Arrive at hotel in NYC. Park car in crazy little lot with elevators for cars so they can stack as many as possible on top of each other. I will never figure out how these crazy city lots work or stay so organized or cram so many cars so close together. Wish I had snapped a photo.

11:45 -- Check into hotel. Drop bags in room. Contemplate taking a power nap, but don't want to waste time. Hit the streets!

Here is where I stop writing the approximate time of day because it is all a blur. I'll just try to go in chronological order.

Catch subway train going south to Brooklyn Bridge. Get a little lost finding the pedestrian pathway, with a husband who is too embarrassed to pull out our city map because he doesn't want to look like a tourist.

Find the walkway and follow the crowded crowds up the bridge, after stopping to watch a cool spray paint artist. Never gets old. Hear more languages in one hour than I can count.

Walk halfway across the bridge and have Matt look up what's so cool about it on his phone because I am a history airhead. Take some really unflattering pictures and head back down.

Walk to Canal street for the shopping! Buy two beautiful scarves for way cheap and a couple Christmas presents. Carry around my black shopping back in plain sight so that every shifty salesperson on the sidewalk can identify me as a tourist and taunt me with phrases like "Louis Vuitton" and "Rolex Rolex Rolex". Do not give in!

Catch the subway back up to Times Square to stand in line at TKTS for discount tickets to a Broadway show. Gawk at how long the line is for a slightly rainy Thursday afternoon before the booth is even open! 

Wait for an hour and people-watch. Look up summaries for all the musicals to see which ones we're interested in. Decide I want to see all of them in one day! Try for Jersey Boys. Sold out. Buy tickets for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying starring Daniel Radcliffe and John Larroquette.

Yes that's right, I've seen Harry Potter in real life! He's very small.

Walk over to Rockefeller Center to see the 30 Rock building. Get all hyper and giddy, hoping I see the real life Tina Fey or Tracy Morgan or the guy who plays Kevin...or anybody famous. Take more touristy pictures.

Do you hear the 30 Rock theme song in your head right now? Me too.

Find Magnolia's and, per Natalie's suggestion, grab a banana pudding. 

"Suggestion" is the wrong word here...she actually said "Commit now to eating the banana pudding from Magnolia's." She was so confident that we'd love it, I had to search it out. And oh my...they need to find a different name for it because it is NOT just fuddy duddy banana pudding! It is heaven in a paper cup! Like ice cream, but not frozen. Pudding, fresh bananas, crumbly vanilla wafers...so so good! I even looked up the recipe because I need to have it in my life on a regular basis. Go to New York and eat this. Or Chicago...I heard they just opened a Magnolia's there this month!

Walk around looking for dinner somewhere casual enough to accept our blue jeans, but worth our money according to Yelp.com. Settle for a bar/grill close to the theater. Have my ID checked for the first time ever upon entering an eating establishment. Realize that by most people's standards I have been a seriously lame 20-something.

Have some time to kill before the show, so look in a few more tourist shops. Did you know they make super cute ridiculously overpriced Angry Birds pillows??

Meet up with our Chicago buddy Sam for a few minutes before he heads home from work! Send lots of hugs and tushy squeezes home to his beautiful Vanessa and baby girls. Miss them. Stupidly forget to take a picture together.

Head to the theater!!! Wonder why Daniel Radcliffe sounds weird for the first half hour until realizing it's because he's not using a British Harry Potter accent. Duh. 

LOVE every minute of the show. Even the twenty minutes I spend in the insanely long amusement-park-style bathroom line during the intermission. Laugh at the concessions guy for expecting me to pay $5 for a pack of M&Ms. Smile while my cute, talented husband reminisces about performing this musical in high school.

Walk back to the hotel. Take off my boots and collapse. Such a fun day.

Wake up early the next morning to drive the car back to Philadelphia and catch our flight home. 

Enjoy the nice wide business class seats, the free breakfast on the plane, and the crazy leg room of the emergency exit row. These are my legs completely stretched out and still not touching the seat in front of me!

Home again. So happy to see our boys. It took about twenty minutes away for me to miss them. I'm such a weeny. Many thanks to their dear grandparents for taking care of them! This was such a nice, needed getaway! 

Visitors

The last six weeks have been crazy. Aside from unpacking a million boxes and trying to get our new place in order, we have had a stampede of visitors. An awesome stampede. Everyone wanted to come after the house was finished but before the weather got cold. Remember when this happened to us in Chicago last spring, after Jude was born? This situation can be explained with a simple equation:

family's hate for cold weather > family's love for us

Our family is literally made up of fair weather fans. Ha! Just teasing. Honestly, I wouldn't want to visit the Midwest in the winter either! But seriously, once the last brown leaf hits the ground this fall, we can expect no happy visitors until those trees are in full bloom again. And that works out well because it's the season we try to head west and get the heck into some sunshine!

Alright, back to my post...

First relative in the door was my mom, here Sept. 11-20. It was so nice to have her. We got so much done around the house and still got to have a lot of fun. 

We went apple picking...

Thoroughly enjoyed the cider slushes and cinnamon donuts at the apple barn...

(We may have finished off a six pack of those babies before we got home.)

Painted some old furniture for the boys' room...

Tried to get Jude to like food...

Smothered the boys all week...

Visited the farmer's market and the famous Tridge...

(It's like the Sundial Bridge of Redding. Just somewhere to take visitors.)

Took a few lovely walks in the stroller...

Went to a great children's museum in Ann Arbor...

Wanna know how awesome it was? This awesome...

And swam in our hotel pool the night before my mom's flight. She is such a fun grandma to get in that cold water with both boys while I sat by the edge like a wuss.

Next in was my sister Stephanie, here for almost a week. She is her nephews' number one fan.

There's not too much to do in Midland, but the boys never get sick of taking walks around the neighborhood. Even in the rain.

We showed her the library, where Josh has been working on his mouse skills. Those head phones crack me up!

A couple days into Steph's visit, we added two more cute kids to our household while their parents flew out to a funeral in Utah. Josh had older siblings for five whole days, and he loved it! Here they are working on some activity pages while listening to General Conference. 

They were so good during the sessions. I set up a little candy game to help them listen. We chose a different buzz word for each talk (like temple, or Jesus, or Book of Mormon), and whenever they heard that word, they could jump up and choose a candy. It worked so well that Josh jumps when he hears those words at church now. "Mom, they said missionary!!"

Steph was really good at listening during Conference, too.

On Sunday I had three very helpful snickerdoodle scoopers.

We visited Dow Gardens to get out some wiggles that day between Conference sessions.

Steph and I took just my boys to the park at the Tridge one day for some quality auntie-nephew bonding time.

And we hit our favorite ice cream shop on the way home. They have pretty cool flavors in the warm season...like black licorice! And a couple non-dairy options for Josh.

This little one let Steph french braid her hair on her last night here. That's one of those things that makes me want a girl someday. I just need one! 

After everyone went home that week, Josh was absolutely exhausted. I found him like this randomly over the next few days.

And this one was just happy to have more of my undivided attention.

A few days later, our wonderful friends from business school drove all the way from Buffalo to visit us. After living just two floors down from them for so long, we are having serious trouble living without them. While they were here, we went for a beautiful scavenger hunt walk at Chippewa, ate some good food, played Settlers as usual, and made our third trip to the Tridge that month. Look at that gorgeous family!

The day after our friends left, I picked up Matt's parents from the airport.  Not because they flew in on a plane, but because they were returning their rental car. That's right -- they drove all the way from Arizona! ARIZONA! They brought us a car full of stuff we left in their attic, and saw some countryside and some loved ones along the way. I've done that drive before, and if you ask me, we're not worth it.

On the way home from the airport, we stopped at an apple orchard with a bunch of fun kid stuff. Tractors, animals, slides, sand...Josh was in heaven. We of course grabbed some cider slushes and donuts (again) before leaving.

One of Josh's favorite things to do with Grandpa is play Fruit Ninja on his iPad. Or in this case, play Fruit Ninja on his iPad on his sleeping grandpa.

We took Grandma and Grandpa to Dow Gardens as well, even though most of the vegetables were gone for the winter. Everyone still had fun with the bubbles and trails and falling leaves.

A week later, our little family is all alone. 

(At least until my dad comes to visit in November. Just got that email today.) 

I LOVE visitors! But do you know why I don't get depressed when they leave? When I am home by myself (meaning with my boys) after a long stretch of company, I get to bask in the joy of openly being my disgusting self. You know...walking around half-clothed, nursing without covering up, not showering or leaving the house unless I want to, watching my guilty pleasure shows like Dancing with the Stars, letting my house stay messy since there's nobody to clean for, and yes, peeing with the bathroom door wide open. (I know you all do it too.) There. I have no more secrets.

But I promise -- if you come visit me, I will be all cleaned up (mostly) and will LOVE to have you, even if I have to put on some extra manners. Company is worth it!

Baby Stats

The boys had a doctor appointment on the 15th and I want them to remember some details...

How it took two loving and tired adults (my mom was here) to manage them, plus a not-too-kid-friendly doctor and nurse. Note to self:  never ever ever schedule a doctor appointment during nap time again.

How scared Josh was about every single step he took in there, even to stand against the wall to get his height measured. He has a big fear of doctors since we went to the ER for a high fever when he was two, and they insisted on gathering several nurses to wrestle him down in the middle of the night to take his temperature rectally. It's one of those memories that makes me shudder just thinking about it. I still want to punch all those Chicago nurses in the face. And myself for not stopping them.

How smiley and sweet Jude is toward anyone who looks at him for more than three seconds. He's such a charmer, he didn't even suspect that the nurse had plans to stick him with three huge definitely-not-pediatric-size needles a few minutes later.

How far Josh's bottom lip stuck out when he saw the nurse poking his little brother over and over and making him scream in pain. I couldn't tell which kid was more heart broken, and Josh didn't even get any shots that day. He's so protective of his baby brother. It melts my heart.

Here are the boys' growth stats:

JOSH at 3 years 3 months:  

39.5 inches tall and 40 pounds (95th %). Almost a perfect square. A very large square, as usual.

JUDE at 6 months:  

17 pounds 10 oz (55th %), 26 inches tall (45th %), head circumference 18" (95th %). Getting bigger! Maybe Matt will stop calling him Willow now that he's finally out of the 5th percentile.

Some of JOSH's favorite things to do lately:

- Cutting with his little scissors and using glue all by himself.

- Using Daddy's screwdriver to stab holes in empty moving boxes while shouting "Hi-yaaaa!!!"

- Playing Plants vs Zombies on Matt's phone every possible chance he gets.

- Making Christmas cookies. (Everyone knows they taste better out of season.)

- Reading "I Spy" books from the library, memorizing where everything is, then reading them over and over and acting like he's finding everything for the first time.

- Diligently practicing his annunciation of "th" and "l" and pretty much any word he stumbles on, without any prompting from me.

- Typing "words" on the computer. Some of them are actual words he has memorized, but mostly he just punches a bunch of random letters and tells you what he's "spelling".

- Playing his "thermonica" (harmonica).

- Putting together big floor puzzles.

- Wrestling. With anyone who will have him.

- Digging in our yard of dirt.

- Going to preschool!! Is this not the cutest little preschooler you've ever seen?

Some of JUDE's favorites:

- Slapping at everything he can get his hands on.

- Rolling all over the place and trying to scoot backwards by arching his back and sliding on his head. We think he has a future in break dancing.

- Growing red hair! It's getting redder every day.

- Screaming and squealing all day long. Both when happy and sad. He's rarely quiet anymore, and I swear his voice gets louder every hour.

- Growing teeth! He got his two bottom ones the week of his doctor visit.

- Sitting up on his own. (Thank you, Bumbo! You are the best invention ever!)

- Eating everything he can get his hands on except baby food. After scarfing his whole bowl that first time, I can't get him to eat any rice cereal or anything green. He'll sometimes go for sweet potatoes or squash. But usually he just lunges for whatever I have in my hand (like bananas, pears, drinks...knives) as if I never feed him at all.

- Exploding out of his diaper and into his clothing at least once a day. Thank goodness I have a washing machine here.

- Whipping his head around frantically at every sound, especially his brother's maniacal laughter.

- Smiling at every stranger he meets. I get stopped everywhere I go by people who want to flirt with him. It's harder to make him laugh than it was for baby Josh, but his big brother is best at getting him to giggle.

These boys are best friends. They are excited to see each other every morning when they wake up. They make each other smile every time they interact. Their hugs and kisses are the sweetest towards each other. I hope they stay close forever!

As a little side note, something we've been trying to do in the mornings at breakfast is a little devotional, a great idea from my friend Jedda. Nothing fancy or formal. Basically I just turn to a new picture every day in my little gospel art book and we talk about it. I ask Josh questions, he asks me questions, then we teach Daddy about it when he gets home. Our first one was just a picture of the earth in space. We talked for about three minutes at breakfast and when Matt came home for lunch, Josh remembered every single detail about our conversation earlier. It blew my mind! 

Here's a little sample of the dialogue...

Mom: What's this picture of?
Josh: The earth!
M: Right!
J: The earth is made out of planet.
M: The earth IS a planet, but it's made out of rocks and water and land.
J: Oh. But I really like the planets that have little rings around them. But the earth doesn't have rings.
M: Tell Daddy what is the blue part on the earth.
J: Water!
M: Uh huh. And the white part?
J: Clouds!
M: And the green part?
J: Land! Green like grass and trees!
M: That's right! And who lives on the earth?
J: We do. On the land.
M: Yeah, now tell Daddy who made the earth.
J: God! And Heavenly Father!
M: Heavenly Father and who else?
J: Jesus!
M: And why did they make this beautiful earth for us?
J: Because they love us.
M: Yes, they do. They wanted us to have a nice, beautiful, happy place to live, so they made the earth for us and everything in it.
J: Yeah, they did. I love pretty grass and trees. And I love space! And planets!

Like everyone, I think my boy is absolutely brilliant, and it has been so fun to watch him and his little brother grow up!