Friday, April 26, 2013

Spring!

We have finally had a few days of spring-like weather! This past week it has been beautiful, and it gradually warmed up to where we can be outside without a million layers on. My birthday was this past week, and it was the start of the warm(ish) weather. Happy birthday to me! (Yes, it actually snowed a bit the day before my birthday, and I may have threatened to move away if it snowed on my birthday...)

Tonight we had a fire in our backyard firepit, and the boys got it all set up (minus the actual flame of course) while John ran to the store to get marshmallows (perk of living less than a mile from Target!). They were so diligent, and they had it all set up in a teepee by the time John got home. Apparently they retained some fire building technique from the multitude of campfires we had last summer!

I'm sure we're going to have another bout of chilly weather, but we'll enjoy it while it lasts!













Monday, April 22, 2013

Life Lately

Just some pictures, since I'm too lazy to actually write anything about them.









Tuesday, April 16, 2013

A couple of stragglers

Since John's phone bit the dust snorkeling, we lost quite a few pictures from the first week or so of vacation. In Curaçao, about an hour before the phone incident, we happened to get free wifi and John was able to upload ONE picture to Facebook (the connection was super slow and nothing uploaded to photostream), and he emailed another. We just realized that these two pictures were floating around. Unfortunately we are missing the best family picture (from Aruba), but at least we discovered these!

Curaçao. Seaquarium. Pre-phone-tragedy.

And Cartagena. Old Town.

Preston aptly summed it up tonight at dinner: "I sure do miss that boat!"



Monday, April 15, 2013

Saturday, April 13, 2013

All About the Fam

Courtesy of Preston. And a picture of P rockin' out, courtesy of the new MP3 player he got at the hospital.



Thursday, April 11, 2013

Fuzzy Sweaters

Thankfully "fuzzy sweater" weather is almost over!

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

QOTD

B: Mom, I don't want to be a garbage man when I grow up.
Me: That's okay, I wouldn't want to be a garbage man either.
B: What?! Even GIRLS can do that?!?! (In total shock)
Me: Well, yeah, girls can do any job that boys can do!
B: What?! Then Mom, get yourself a job!
Me: I HAVE a job. What do you think my job is?
B: Doing the dishes.

Spiderman



It must have been a good trip...

Every week in school, Preston writes about what he did over the weekend. Almost every time, he writes that he played video games and/or watched TV, whether he actually did or not. I was pleasantly surprised to see that something had usurped electronics!

"Last weekend I went on the Norwegian Sun, or it can be called NCL."

Apparently he really DID enjoy vacation!

Monday, April 8, 2013

Preston's Souvenir

When we were in Miami, Preston cut his foot in the pool. We're not sure what he cut it on, but it wasn't a big cut. We cleaned it up and bandaged it, but of course we couldn't keep him out of the sand/ocean/pool!

All was well until the morning after we got back when he started complaining that it hurt. I looked at it, saw it was a little red around it, put some neosporin on and bandaged it again. He took a nap that afternoon (which I attributed to exhaustion from all the traveling), and when he woke up he said he felt sick and he didn't want to get out of bed. I checked his temperature and yep...it was 101.5. I looked at his foot and it was not good. Red all over, streaking up his ankle. I might have freaked out a little. It's important to note here that John didn't have his cell phone due to the snorkeling incident, and he's the medical one in our family. I'm usually the wait and see, try to treat it naturally parent. (I did try putting honey & garlic on it but it was already spreading too much for that I think.)

I called a friend who is a P.A. and he told me to get him seen ASAP. I took him in and about 30 minutes later we were headed to the hospital where we had a 3 night stay. It took a bit to find the right combo of antibiotics for him (the infectious disease specialist got it figured out!) and they think it was some sort of a water bug that he picked up.

Preston was quite the charmer at the hospital. He had all the nurses spoiling him like crazy (and he acquired lots of gifts: a new lego set, an MP3 player, and lots of art supplies)! Plus, he got to beat me in checkers multiple times. He was brave and did really well, despite the fact that our 24 hour say turned into 4 days. I hate that he has to be on antibiotics, but I'm SO glad that this was his first experience with them. He has 5 more days of oral antibiotics and then hopefully he will be fully recovered!







Saturday, April 6, 2013

Miami & the Way Home

We were all sad to be done with the cruise portion of our trip, but at least we had a couple of days in Miami on the beach to lessen the blow. We got off the boat early Sunday and headed straight for Sunny Isles (north Miami Beach area). We basically camped out at the pool and on the beach for all day Sunday and Monday. At some point (I think it was Sunday afternoon), Preston cut his foot in the pool (and I'm writing this from the hospital where we have just finished night #2 thanks to his little cut, but more on that later).

Someone was kind enough to give us their voucher for a free cabana rental, so we got to have some shelter and comfy chairs on the beach Monday, which especially came in handy when the thunderstorm hit! But it was warm and we got to play a few more days before heading back to reality.

Our flights were again a bit of a disaster. I will do everything possible to avoid flying Delta again. We got to the airport plenty early for our flight, or so we thought...we were there almost 2 hours early, but the line to check baggage was so long we had to be rushed through security and didn't even have time to eat breakfast (which we had planned to do) before departure. To top it all off, despite the fact that our confirmation said our seats were "adjacent", we were actually spread out all over the plane. No one was even in the vicinity of anyone else. It was terrible. Everyone just kept telling us "oh just trade with someone on the plane after everyone has boarded." Seriously? Disaster. Thankfully there was ONE flight attendant who helped us after the others had brushed us off. He helped us sit in 2 groups at least, but it was a huge debacle. Thankfully this flight was on time because our next connection was close and I was envisioning another marathon sprint through the airport. Didn't happen though - we got there and immediately boarded flight #2 (and we only had 2 legs this time vs. 3 which was so much easier!).

When we got in to Spokane, the boys got to go in the cockpit, meet the pilots, and pretend to "drive the airplane" in Archer's words. When the pilot said hi to him, he said "Hi, Pilot!" So cute. Arch & B were really into it, but Preston didn't seem to really care (maybe he's too old??). Either way, the pilots and 1 flight attendant were pretty much the only good parts about flying Delta.

So thankful we made it home safe and sound. Not thankful that we ended up in the hospital the next day though!





























Friday, April 5, 2013

St. Thomas

Our last stop was at St. Thomas, and we ended on a good note! We really liked the atmosphere in St. Thomas. Friendly, laid back, fun. It helped that it was beautiful as well (but seriously, every place we visited was beautiful!).

Our first stop was Coral World, which is an aquarium with this deep underwater observatory. The boys' friends from the boat were with us here, and that obviously made it so much more fun for them (and us!). We got to watch them feed the sharks, and there were iguanas EVERYWHERE. The stingrays were really cool too, they would come out of the water right at the edge so you could see them really well.

Coki Beach is right next to Coral World so we went there next. It was definitely crowded, and apparently it's one of the most popular beaches, especially for snorkeling. The boys fed the fish and had swarms of them around us (they thought it was cool...I really don't like swimming in close proximity with fish so I was working on pretending to enjoy it since they were having so much fun!).

We almost stayed longer at the beach, but it was our last stop and I wanted to explore the town too, so we dropped the kids at the boat again and walked around. We wandered through shops, and got a recommendation of a good place to go eat and just relax a little. We ended up at The Dog House Pub, which had a nice outdoor seating area that we could just sit and look around (and eat yummy sweet potato fries!). A good way to end our day in St. Thomas!