July Trip: New England

ROAD TRIP!

In July we went to visit my brother Sean's family in Connecticut...via Niagara Falls. We set the destination in the GPS, hit "Go!" and off we went, on a very scenic route. (We later realized the GPS was set to avoid toll roads, so we were all over those back roads, lol.) We had planned to drive all the way up to the falls in one day and sightsee the next, but about 9 hours into our 12-hour drive Daniel started throwing up--a lot. After the fourth round in half as many minutes, and I only managed to catch the last with a plastic bag, we pulled over to change his clothes and wipe out his carseat. I implored Nathan to stop for the day even though we were short of our goal. We were in the middle of NOWHERE. GPS saved the day! It was so nice to hit "nearest hotel" and get directed to a town just east of us with a hotel, a Wendy's, and a Walmart. Thankfully Daniel didn't have any more episodes, but he did have a high fever that night (yay Walmart for a Tylenol run!).

The next day we headed out again, and just as we crossed the New York border, Daniel started fussing again. Fearful of vomit round two, we pulled over, and a nice man stopped to check on us. When we told him we thought the kids were just tired of being cooped up, he offered to show us the way to a local playground. The boys loved that.

After about 30-45 minutes we headed back on the road and arrived at Niagara Falls mid-morning. We didn't bring documentation to cross the border, but we did go on Maid of the Mist, which I think was way more fun than crossing over.

After we toured the Falls we drove to Lockport, NY to see the Erie Canal. We also did a tour of Lockport Caves, which was pretty cool.

We spent the night in Rochester, NY in preparation for our stop in Palmyra. In the morning as we were eating breakfast, the hotel's fire alarm went off. We evacuated the hotel and the boys watched in awe as two firetrucks pulled in, firemen hopped out in all their uniformed glory, tossed axes and other tools to each other and hoofed into the hotel. We don't know what the problem was, but one of the firemen gave each of the boys a Junior Fire Chief sticker afterwards.

In Palmyra we visited Hill Cumorah, the Martin Harris Farm, and Joseph Smith's homestead, including the Sacred Grove. It was the first day of the Hill Cumorah Pageant, so between that mess and our eagerness to get to Sean's we didn't spend a lot of time in Palmyra.

We finally arrived in Hamden, CT that night. While visiting Sean and Jenny we got to ride an authentic steam locomotive in Essex, CT. That train had been used in the latest Indiana Jones movie, "The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", in the scene where Shia Labeouf rides his motorcycle onto the train platform and calls out to Harrison Ford on the train. Take note that Harrison Ford was sitting in car 503 as you look at the pictures...

We also visited Watch Hill, RI, one of Einstein's favorite haunts. The kids rode the country's oldest merry-go-round, made with surplus rocking horses! Then we headed to the overcast & chilly beach. David had never been in the ocean before that time. He had a blast.

They took us to Boston and we walked the freedom trail. We also visited the New England Aquarium. Oddly enough, as we were wrapping up our visit, the fire alarm went off there, too. We quickly grabbed our strollers (which we had checked at the front desk for easier maneuverability) and ducked out so we didn't have to wait an hour just to get our strollers back.

We finished the day in Boston's Little Italy with dinner at a cute little restaurant and pastries from Mike's Pastry!! Yum-O. Thanks for hosting us Sean and Jenny!

Who's idea was this, anyway?

We bought Daniel's current car seat about 4 years ago. I have a confession: I’ve only washed the seat cover twice. Once between kids and again a couple days ago, after Daniel vomited on it 5 times during our road trip. Yesterday evening I tried to reassemble the car seat, and the experience reminded me why I’ve only washed it twice. That thing is so daggum hard to get on and off! While spending an hour trying to rethread the straps and elastics into a very hard-to-reach crevice with a flashlight, wire hanger and tweezers, I drew several conclusions about the brilliant designer of said seat:

1. This designer did not personally assemble the prototype to know how hard it is to get the cover on and off.
2. This designer was a man, who never considered washing the cover.
3. This man has no children.
4. If this man had children, they never vomited, had blowouts, or spilled milkshakes on the car seat.
5. If this man’s kids ever did the above mentioned things in the carseat—or anything similarly wet, foul, and/or sticky—he never bothered to take it off and wash it.
6. If he did bother to take it off and wash it, he ignored the washing directions and threw it in the dryer instead of letting it line dry—which, by the way, takes a good 36 hours.

At the conclusion of my think session, I had just one more question:

Where's his wife in all this?!

Daniel at the Zoo

We went to the zoo on July 2. We got lucky and hit feeding time for the sea lions, seals, giraffes, and gorillas. We were so busy enjoying our outing that the camera pretty much stayed in the bag, but we did get one video of Daniel reacting to the Sea Lion as he swam by. Look for it at the 15 second mark...

Ere you judge...

...he's enjoying an IBC Rootbeer. But the picture was too perfect not to take!

What might have been...

This Spring we planted a garden. We chose a spot in our back yard, cleared it, added garden soil, planted seeds and starters, and got really excited as things started to grow. Then the trees got leaves. And our garden got nil sun. Nope. None. Pretty shady back there! Some plants grew, some didn't. Some flowered, some didn't even get that far. Our tomato plant probably would have grown six feet tall if we hadn't topped it to encourage the one flower to come to fruition. So while my friends roll up their sleeves for canning and post pictures of the fantastic fruits of their labors, I'm going to post pictures of what might have been...

And now some close-ups of the particularly pathetic:

Romaine Lettuce

Watermelon

Cantaloupe Supreme (the weed is bigger than the vine)

Not quite what I pictured with Petite Corn

And the winner...our one and only, $60 tomato. Now that's value!

Taylor Reunion 2009

My sister-in-law Suzy was the official photographer of our family reunion last week. Good thing, because my camera was rarely handy. Here's a slide show she made at Scrapblog.com



As an explanation for what you're looking at in the slideshow: Friday night we had bounce houses set up in my sister DeeAnn's back yard. Big hit. Especially when someone "accidentally" shut the blower off and one of the bounce houses started to collapse on everyone in it. Uncle Nate played nice and rough with the little kids in one of the bouncies and ended up with a black eye to prove it!

Saturday was rainy so we went to see UP in 3-D (David's first movie theater experience!), and between storms the guys played football and Ultimate Frisbee.



Sunday afternoon we played a Father's Day game. Each wife wrote 5 clues about her husband, and we mixed them all up in a "fish pond" (paperclips and a magnetic pole). We had the Dad's sit in a row (I sat in for Nathan since he didn't attend), and when we read each clue we had the kids line up behind who they thought it described. It was a lot of fun.

Monday morning we did a service project for my parents, who just bought the house next door to my sister the week before, weeding their very overgrown beds and digging out their basement window wells. The clay and gravel was right up to the sill down there, so when it rained, all the water ran under the windows into their basement.

Now, you'll see some rather funny photos. Like DeeAnn holding her 12-year-old son, Taylor, down and forcing his mouth open. See, Taylor thought it would be funny to throw a worm at his cousin Madison, who in the process of flailing to get it out of her hair, had it land in her mouth. The boys were rolling in laughter at her ensuing screaming (I admit, we all were chuckling when we found out what happened). But to discourage further pranks, DeeAnn pegged Taylor and put a worm in his mouth. That started a whole round of the boys thinking it was cool to lick slugs and put worms in their mouths, and a couple of them even swallowed some. Yuck.

The Reunion officially ended Monday afternoon and the Nevada families went home. Monday night Preston's family went up to Nate's farm and rode their ponies. Tuesday we were all left to do our own things. I went to Farmington and visited Nathan's Aunt Jeannie. The boys enjoyed seeing their horses and goats, and catching a fish in her pond with a mini-marshmallow as bait!



Wednesday morning those remaining celebrated two birthdays and a baptism. Then the boys and I flew home Wednesday evening.

heart wrench

So a few minutes ago I was milling around the house tidying up, getting dinner ready, etc.  Basically going in a lot of directions, and David was right on my heels the whole time.  After almost tripping on him several times as he followed me upstairs, into several different rooms to drop stuff off and back downstairs again,  I turned around and said, "David, please go find something else to do."  To which he replied, "But you're setting a good example for me; that's why I'm following you."

Amazon's Universal Wish List

I posted this on my Rants and Raves blog, but this was too good to hide behind a link:

In Short:

In Depth:

I'll let Amazon describe it for me. These are screenshots from their website:

Click here for the Universal Wish List button link shown above

All I have to say is, I love it. It's super convenient for when I stumble upon something cool online, or even to browse for items of interest when I get a catalog in the mail, hop onto the catalog's website, and add stuff to my Amazon wish list. Later when I'm ready to buy, I have one-stop shopping. No more catalogs kicking around for that day I might decide to splurge. No more trying to remember where I saw that nifty item online.

Thank you Amazon!