4th of July

For the 4th of July this year we decided to finally check out our "small-town's" 4th of July parade.  We've heard lots of wonderful things about this parade, and we've even heard that it's one of the largest parades in the state!  Considering we do live in a small-town, that's just amazing!

The parade turned out to be just what we had heard--awesome! It lasted nearly a full 2 hours and there were loads of people there. The Kiwanis club has a bus service that can pick people up at various parking places around town and take them to the parade route, so we decided to use that. We parked at the high school behind our house and boarded a school bus that had to take an absolutely crazy route because of all the parade traffic. Kai LOVED being on the school bus. It was certainly a highlight of his 4th. We arrived at the parade right as it was starting and so we didn't have a ton of time to stake out a good spot, but we did alright. About half way through the parade a family that was sitting on the curb a few feet in front of us decided to switch spots and so we were able to get right up on the curb. That was awesome for Kai as it got him closer to the people who were throwing out candy. The candy was his absolute favorite part. I think I liked the people who were throwing out frozen Otter Pops the best! Either way, we had a great time and saw lots of neat things. Pretty much anyone that wanted to have an entry in the parade could. There was even one girl that just drove her car through the parade with a large sign on it about her lost dog. No kidding! But there were lots of other awesome entries, too. I think we'll be going back again as it certainly is a fun 4th of July tradition. Here's a small sampling of our parade experience.

Waiting for the bus.  Poor Finn got sunscreen in his eye and it bothered him the entire time.  I felt awful!

Happy to be on the bus!

Our initial parade viewing spot.  Here we're seeing some of our armed forces.

Kai loves motorcycles! 

A submarine!!

As Finn would say, "It's a go!"

This reminded me of our nieces Annalese and Tessa.

This is where we got a bit closer.  Yay!

One of Kai's favorite cars is a beetle.  He loved these beetles.

The fire trucks signal the end of the parade.  And they were LOUD!  Poor Finn started crying after one of them sounded their horn and the driver (a female) heard him and felt really bad.  She made direct eye contact with me as if to say "sorry".  It was nice, but not her fault.

That night we decided to go to Culver's for burgers and custard.  Since Kai ended up taking a nap after the parade (a first in a long time!) we let him stay up for the fireworks.  He loved his first firework display.  But I will admit that it went later than I thought and he ended up being quite a cranky boy the next day.  I'm not so sure he'll get to join us for fireworks next year.  We'll see.

We certainly had a great 4th of July!  I'm looking forward to doing it next year!

The Wildlife Experience

Last Wednesday (June 29th) we headed up to Parker, Colorado to visit The Wildlife Experience.  The website made it look like a pretty neat place and while I still wasn't sure what to expect, I was hoping the kids would have a good time.  That day it was approaching 100 degrees outside and so it was great to be inside in the air conditioning (which we don't have at our house).  While there was very little in the way of "wildlife", it was a good fun trip.  Maybe we'll have to do it again another year with Reid as the kids seemed to enjoy themselves.  There were two museum halls, one of which currently has a Megalodon display (the world's largest shark).  The rest of the museum was a series of pathways  that takes you through the different habitats and displays the different animals that you could find living there.  Seeing as Finn doesn't really like animals, this was a good way to introduce him to a bunch of them.  He still hung out in my arms a good portion of the time, but he did enjoy watching the fish.  After several hours (including our lunch time), we headed home.  Finn fell asleep pretty quickly in the car so Kai and I finished up our trip with a drive-through at Sonic for some slushes.  It was a great way to cool off in some pretty hot weather.

Kai with Megalodon shark teeth.

Uncovering "bones"

Finn pointing out a TV for me.

For some reason, I really liked this quote.

A megalodon's daily food intake.  That's a whole lot of tuna!

The "wildlife"

Kai and Maddie checking out the displays

Playing in the submarine display

A shot of the inside of the building

Another view

All of the kids

There were these guides throughout the museum that responded to the questions that you choose on the display.  I heard one mother compare it to the pirates in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World.

A Vest!!

One of Finn's daily required treatments is airway clearance.  Since the time he was about 6 weeks old the Respiratory Therapist (RT) had prescribed 10 minutes of Chest Physical Therapy (CPT) twice a day.  At first I did it with my hands, just beating on his ribcage.  However, it's pretty hard to do it correctly and effectively that way, so we moved on to percusors to help us out.  Around the time he was 12 months old, the RT started talking to us about getting him a vest.  We even switched insurance carriers this year, just because the coverage on durable medical equipment (which is what the vest falls under) is better.  It turns out that there are 3 different companies that manufacture vests.  In the end, they all do HFCWO (High-Frequency Chest Wall Oscillation) and since there are industry standards, they are all effective.  So, in making a decision, it comes to down to other smaller factors.  One vest has one air tube to help it inflate, the other two have 2 tubes.  One vest is machine dryable, while the other is only machine washable.  Yep, silly little things like that.  We were actually able to eliminate one company quite quickly, but the other two companies were kind of a toss up.  We went through the pro's and con's many times.  We finally had sales reps out here for both companies.  After what feels like an agaonizingly long time, we made a decision!  Finn now has a nice new The Vest by Hill-Rom.  After struggling for a year and half to do CPT, this has been wonderful.  He loves his new vest and has not missed a treatment since getting it.  It's easy for both mommy and Finn.  Win-WIN!

Shoes

Finn loves shoes!  He is our adventurous boy and shoes are representative for him of going out.  So, he loves them.  It doesn't hurt that the "oo" sound is also one of his favorites.  There's juice, shoes, moo, and choo choo.  He's also gotten really good at asking "What/Who's that?"  In the last week, he's learned the word baby and the phrase night-night.  He is certainly getting a lot more vocal.  There are times where I'm convinced I have heard him say the phrases "I need...." (fill in the blank) and "I just sad."  Oh, and he for sure says, "I do, I do" when there's something he wants to do by himself.  He can jump off of two feet and he loves to throw himself around. Tonight he was doing seat drops on the floor (jumping from both feet and landing flat on his bum--hard).  He certainly keeps us on our toes and we love him so much!

Caution

I will admit that I can be a bit of a cautious parent.  At the park, I'm the parent climbing the equipment with my children to make sure that no one gets hurt.  (Unfortunately, even despite that, both of my kids have ended up hurt at the playground!)  Also, neither of my children have attended nursery until they were 20 months old.  But even though I'm pretty cautious, there are also times when I get a little too relaxed and don't realize the dangers that could occur.  And honestly, I never thought about anything bad happening at the beach.

On Tuesday May 31st when we returned to our hotel room Reid noticed a helicopter flying outside.  He pointed it out to Kai and after only a brief time watching it, it became apparent that it was searching for something.  As we looked down the beach we noticed boats, and a group of bystanders all in the same area of the helicopter.  The helicopter was the coast guard and the boats were police boats.  Search lights were aimed pretty close to the shore.  We quickly drew the conclusion that if they were looking for someone, they most likely weren't alive.  It made us sad.

After everyone went to bed, I went out to the sitting room to check the evening news.  The lead story was the search for a missing 9 year-old boy who was presumed to have drowned at the beach.  At that point the search had been called off and officials felt that the boy's body would wash up during the night.  Wednesday morning I was concerned that the beach might be closed, and so I checked the news again.  The boy had been found around 2am about 14 blocks from where he had disappeared.  To read the story, click here.

So, here's what I took from this unfortunate event.  The first is that when the red flags are flying at the beach, don't touch the water.  That remained our rule for the rest of our time at the beach.  Most of the time the red flags seemed to fly in the afternoon when we were doing other activities, but Friday morning the red flag was flying.  Good thing we were leaving the beach and didn't go out that morning.

The second thing I took from this is that I need to get my boys some basic swim lessons.  When Kai was little I had heard a statistic that children under the age of 4 who take swim lessons are actually more likely to drown.  The reasoning behind this is that both parents and children get a little too careful and comfortable around the water and don't take the caution they should.  So, based on that, I never did swim lessons with Kai, and honestly just forgot about it.  But now, I'm keeping a look out for some good lessons for Kai.  I'm not ready yet for Finn, but Kai needs some lessons.  I just need to find some that will fit for us.  If any Colorado friends have a recommendation, I'm open.

Anyway, I know you've all been waiting to hear what happened on our trip, so there it is.  I hope it doesn't upset anyone too much, but that it does remind us all to respect nature and to just be careful out there.  It's been a rough season on the east coast.  So, while I would highly recommend a trip to the beach for any family, I would also say to just make sure you're careful.

Our Family Vacation--Days 5, 6, and 7 (This is a long one!)

The morning of Friday June 3rd (day 5 of our vacation) we packed up and headed out.  We had actually headed out to Virginia for my older sister's wedding.  I was the Matron of Honor and Kai was participating as the ring bearer, so we had some wedding errands that needed to be done that day.  Our first stop was Shockley's cake shop to pick up the Groom's Cake for the rehearsal dinner that night.  When we arrived they weren't quite ready for us and so we got to look around for a bit.  Kai loves Cake Boss and making cakes on his Playdough Cake Makin' Station, so he really enjoyed looking at all of the cakes and cupcakes in the store.  And since we were waiting, the manager was nice enough to give us a big box of cake truffles.  They were yummy!

Once we had the cake loaded in the car we headed to Hampton, Virginia to pick up Kai's tuxedo.  First we had to try it on him to make sure it "fit".  To be honest, though, they gave Kai the smallest tuxedo they had so even if it didn't fit, there wasn't going to be much to do about it.  In fact, Kai's shirt was definitely too big, but they just had us roll the sleeves back and button them without the cuff links.  Anyway, he was handsome in his tux and quite excited to get his "special suit". 

It's so hard to get my kids to stand still for pictures!

After picking up the cake and tux, we grabbed some lunch before heading out to Jasmine Plantation, which is where the wedding was being held.  As my sister had rented the place out for the weekend, we were some of the lucky ones that got to stay at the plantation.  We got the Brenneman suite, which actually had a sitting room, bathroom, and two bedrooms.  We got to the Plantation early enough to unload, meet some of Charlie's extended family, and visit with my family for a bit.  It was so fun to see my brother Joseph with his wife Amy and new baby Zachary.  Kai was enthralled with his new little cousin and just smothered him with love and kisses.  Kai has really decided that he likes babies lately, which is nice.  He was a very good older cousin, except for not listening when he was told to leave the baby alone.

That evening was the rehearsal and then the rehearsal dinner, which was held in Richmond at Bottom's Up Pizza.  During the rehearsal we realized that there was going to be no way to keep Finn quiet and still during the ceremony and so after some conversation we decided that Reid and Finn would play in the house during the ceremony the next day and come out for the party.

The morning of the wedding came just like every other, a bit earlier than we would have liked.  The kids ate breakfast and then we got them both into the tub.  After they were done with that we let them roam around a bit outside, but it was hot so we quickly went back in.  Reid and I started to get ready for the wedding and before we knew it it was time for lunch.  Reid was amazing as he went out to the local Dairy Queen and picked up lunch for me, the boys, Wendy, and the other maid of honor.  He also ironed all of our clothes.  He was great!

Finn checking out the bridge over the pond.

The tent getting setup for the reception.

The boys loved playing with this little gate.

Finn took a good long nap that afternoon, which gave me time to go get my hair and make-up done and hang out with my sister as she was getting ready for her wedding.  My mom was nice enough to sit in the room with Finn while he slept and make sure he didn't roll off of the bed.  Of course, once he woke up he didn't want anyone but me and so it got a bit hairy, but we managed.  Reid got Kai dressed and ready and before we knew it, it was time for the ceremony.

Ahhh....how do I describe the ceremony.  It was fantastic!  Kai was the last one to walk down the aisle before Wendy and my dad.  Let me tell you that having just walked down that aisle, I knew what an intimidating task it was.  Once I hit my spot, I turned around to see Kai coming down the aisle.  He did everything perfectly and with a huge smile on his face.  Everyone ooohhhhed and ahhhhed.  After he went down the aisle, he sat with my parents on the front row while I stood next to Wendy.  The ceremony was beautiful and I wanted to second everything the officiant said.  At one point in the ceremony the officiant asked who offered support from the bride's family.  My dad, who was sitting next to Kai, said "I do."  Kai looked confused for a half a second and then added his own loud "I do!".  Everyone chuckled and then the officiant asked for a show of support from the groom's side. This time Charlie's dad said "I do" from across the aisle, and Kai once again said his own "I do".  Once again, more chuckles.

The ceremony ended beautifully and then it was time to party.  The reception was just as nice as the ceremony and was a lot of fun.  There was great food (including chicken nuggets and mac 'n cheese for the kids), good company, and some great drinks.  They even had an old fashioned soda bottle bar!

After eating, there was dancing.  Kai made some friends with my sister's girl friends and had a good time dancing with them.  They thought he was so cute.  As a mom, it felt so good to hear everyone say how cute and well-behaved my kids were.  We sure fooled them didn't we!

We stayed through the tossing of the bouqet and garter and then I gave my toast.  After the toast, the cake was cut.  We enjoyed some yummy chocolate banana cake and then it was time to take the kids to bed.  Finn was so exhausted that he slept solidly through the music and the slamming door of the house.  It had been a long and good day and we were all ready for bed.  But I really wanted to be back enjoying the party.  It was a lot of fun and the DJ was awesome!

My brother Rob, me, and Kai waiting in the house as the guests are seated.

The junior bridesmaid, maid of honor, and me

Kai--the best ring bearer ever!

The table centerpieces

My dad walking Wendy down the aisle

Kai dancing with his new friend

Wendy and Charlie!

"You may now kiss the bride."

The window pane has the seat assignments on it.

Kai and his new cousin Zachary  (Amy, I hope it's ok I borrowed your pictures!)

The only picture of all 3 cousins

  The next morning it was time to pack up.  After saying goodbye to my parents, we headed to the morning after brunch at Hondo's.  It was a great brunch and it was fun to see Joseph, Amy, Zachary, and Rob again.  After brunch we lingered a bit to say goodbye to everyone again.  With my family living on the the east coast, we never know how long it'll be before we see them again.  So, we lingered.  And then from there we headed to the airport.

The flight home was a bit, well, rough, but we made it.  We were exhausted and ready to be in our own beds.  We had a great vacation and it was hard to be back in Colorado again.  After all of the waiting and planning for this vacation it felt a bit as if Christmas had ended when it was all over.  But I'm grateful we were able to go and have such a great time and see family.  Here's to doing it all again someday!