2.5

Today, our littlest one is 2 1/2.  I hadn't been keeping track, but just yesterday Dave and I were thinking about it and we realized today was his half birthday.  5.28.14.

I've been a little quiet on the blog lately.  Not intentionally.  But I ALWAYS have things to say about this guy.  He's something else I tell ya.

When Dave and I left at the end of March for our cruise, he was saying minimal words, and hardly putting two words together.  When we came back 8 days later, he was a total different child. And he's been talking like crazy ever since.

I'll let you find what's wrong with this next picture.

Geesh, I can't turn my back.

 

 This past school year, it was just me and him 3 days a week.  Starting in August, it will be just us two, every morning.  sigh. (that's a good sigh and a bad sigh)

Poor last child, doesn't know how to play alone.

And doesn't want to be with mommy most days.  I'm kind of kidding, but not. 

He's the biggest daddy's boy ever.  As in...

I wake up every morning to him crying for Daddy at the door of his room.  I never know what kind of emotional condition he's going to be in once I open the door.  There have been some mornings he has shoved the door back closed on me because it wasn't Daddy coming to get him.  If he does let me in, the first words out of his mouth every.single.morning. are "daddy home?"  And 5 out of the 7 days a week the answer is no.  This is when it can go 1 of 2 ways.  He will decide to be okay with me.  Or he'll decide to spend the morning screaming and crying because he just wants Daddy.  Poor Daddy gets many calls on his phone, because it's the only way I can get him to calm down many times.

He wants Daddy to get him out of his car seat.  He wants Daddy to carry him.  He wants Daddy to play with him, rock him and put him to bed. And he so badly wants to be able to go to work with Daddy just like Mason.

Now, I'm not complaining.  I love their connection.  And it's a nice break for a mama most of the time.  BUT, when the person he wants is gone 80% of the day, it's a little bit of a challenge.

Hopefully it's a phase, and we'll have lots of fun just the two of us this next year.

 Oh, what a little helper he is.  He liked to try to pick the flowers I was about to buy, he loves to smash the bread in the grocery cart, and he loves loves loves to empty all of my expensive bottles of real maple syrup into his bowls of oatmeal. Therefore ruining the oatmeal. The bottle I have now, was bought by a sweet friend that came with a note that said "NOT FOR GAVIN".  We'll see if it stays that way.

 But he also loves to cuddle on the couch with his mama.  And watch Barney.  And he loves to be rocked and read to before bed.  He loves to dance.  And he sings the "Hot Dog, Hot Dog, Hot Diggity Dog" song and "Lord, I Need You".  He takes off into his Sunday School class better than either of the other two kiddos did, and he loves to wave and say hi and bye to strangers.  I've never had a child who will interact with strangers at all, so I think it may be safe to say this one may be our extrovert.

 His facial expressions are quite hilarious.  There is a lot of personality in that little body. 

Everything is categorized into Mama, Dada, and baby.  Size of fruit, size of trucks, size of bites, size of everything.  And daily when I ask if he's my baby, he says "no, I da mommy, you da baby" or sometimes "daddy baby, I da mama".

And he gives the best hugs and kisses.

He's a pure joy.  I can't count the number of times I've caught one of the other two kids or Dave watching him or listening to him and then turning to me with such a content smile as if to say "he's so cute, I can't believe he's ours".   Of course Dave and I think so.  But to see our big kids get stopped in their tracks, and look at him with eyes of endearment and just take him in...it's just a precious thing to see.

 And then there's this...a 2 year old riding a bike.  I don't know what ages most kids start to ride bikes.  But I know my other 2 did NOT ride this early.  They rode trikes and push toys.  Not bikes.  Bikes are for big kids.  But this baby of ours has decided to skip the trike and go straight to the big stuff.  It baffles me every time I see his little body pedaling all over the driveway.

2.5 is just plain too little to be doing this.

But I can't stop him.

Easter

How was Easter already a month ago?  And how in the world do we only have a few days left of school!?

I'm ready, but not ready.  Our dinner and bedtime is already getting so much later.  And we are jumping into that relaxed summer time mentality a little bit early.

Have you read this blog post, by Jen Hatmaker?  It's hilarious, you may just laugh out loud. I ran across it last year and am starting to see if circle around again. It is so nice to know this happens to most of us moms!  It is so spot on.

So let's back up to Easter. 

We got out our candle wreath and switched our wood figure of Mary, on a donkey (from Christmas) to Jesus carrying his cross.  And we loved listening to this Easter version of Hallelujah while we watched the candles flicker.

I love the anticipation of Christmas, the smells, songs, traditions, memories.  The thought of all the years of waiting for a Savior, and one night He came silently. 

But there is something that goes so much deeper at Easter.  The excitement and joy is hard to even explain.  It's way down deep inside.  Maybe it's because Easter isn't crowded by so many other things, and we can focus more on the actual events and meaning of that day.

Or maybe it's just that this amazing love story culminates to this spectacular climax, leaving us awaiting the next return.

I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, Easter is becoming a favorite of mine.

After church, we ate lunch out together, just us 5.  And had a quick photo shoot before we got home.

I tried to be in some.  But those didn't turn out :-(

I was shocked that they all asked me to take a picture of them alone.  We actually told THEM we needed to stop taking pictures and get home.  Maybe it was a stalling tactic for naptime.

We normally do Easter with Dave's family but his parents were gone this year, so we were on our own.  We ate out for lunch after church, took long naps and then had friends over for Easter dinner.  They didn't have any family to spend Easter with either, so it worked perfectly.

(although I have NO idea why these 2 pictures are not clear one bit) 

I told them to squeeze together and this is what we got.  Couldn't have happened more perfectly.

I don't think these kids realize how lucky they are to have a gate that goes from their yard to their best friends' yard.

And now, here we are.  Almost July 4th.  Geesh.

NYC Cruise {the cruise part}

I took way more pictures in NYC than I did the rest of the trip.  Another nice part of being on a ship in the ocean, means no phone or internet access.  Which means, most of the time my phone just sat in our room.  I wish I had taken more pictures of the things on the ship, but oh well, next time. 

Days 1 and 2 were at sea.  I know some people don't like the sea days but I love them. I love knowing that there is nothing to do other than explore the ship (which is a lot to do) and just relax.  Normally I'd be by the pool laying out, but it was freezing outside.

With all of the chaos and sickness before we left, Dave didn't get the haircut he planned to get before we left.  So we bit the cost and he got one on the boat.  $35, not terrible, but not his usual $10-15.

Our first stop, Day 3, was Port Canaveral, Florida.  The downside to leaving from NYC is that you don't have time to get too far south.  But I guess when you live in Kansas, any beach is better than being landlocked on all sides with flatland for miles. We opted out of the swamp-land alligator tours, and the Kennedy Space Center and decided it would be a good beach day.  We were saving our excursion money for something else!  But it ended up being pretty windy.  After a little bit of shopping, we found The Sand Bar that we had heard awesome things about, and took our time eating some amazing fish tacos and fresh peel-and-eat shrimp.  Just about the time we were finishing up, I spotted  a super sweet gal I went to high school and played basketball with.  She's in a different Premier family and it's always so fun to see each other at Premier events.  A few years ago we promoted to a new level of leadership and walked across the stage together at National Rally. She's awesome and it's been fun re-connecting a little bit!  She and her hubby were dropped off at the Wichita airport at the same time we were.  We were on different flights to NYC but we knew we'd see them on the boat. So it was super fun to see them walk into The Sand Bar and join us.  So our lunch continued for another hour or so. Those unexpected visits are always the best.

We never made it to the beach that day, other than just walking on it a bit.  So we missed some sun, but we also missed getting stung by the sand the whole time because of the wind. I did happen to get in a picture that made it LOOK like I had been at the beach all day.

 So the reason we opted out of some excursions was to get a couples massage at the spa on the boat. Total splurge, but so worth it to me.  Dave isn't a huge fan of massages, he likes them but doesn't see why I love them so much.  But he was up for doing it with me, as opposed to sending me to the spa alone.  So day 4 started with relaxation.

 And then an announcement from the captain that we wouldn't be stopping at Norwegian's private island that day due to rough seas.  There isn't a port and the only way to get people to the island is by small boats back and forth.  With rough seas, there's no safe way to do that.  But the bright side was that we would head on to Nassau and get in there for the whole evening instead of the next morning.  We had been to this private island before so we weren't too bummed.  We were excited for more time in Nassau.

We got off and ate a local seafood dinner and then visited the Atlantis.  It was free to see the aquarium at night, so total score!

On the taxi ride back to the port, our backpack (carrying our passports) got left in a taxi.  We noticed within a few minutes, but the taxi was already gone.  Soooooo.....
We did what we could for an hour or so that night to try to find the taxi, and decided to continue our search the next day.  We knew we could get back on the boat with just our boat card, but needed to make sure we could get back into the US.

I guess we have a history of losing important things on vacations.  Remember my $700 Visa gift card we lost at Disney World?

It was one of those tough decisions...do we just forget the passports and enjoy the day or try to find them?  We felt like we needed to attempt to find them.  In case they had been turned in or taken to the Embassy.  So the morning of day 5 consisted of a visit with the taxi booth, another trip back to the Atlantis, a visit to the police station, and then a trip to the US Embassy.  We got confirmation there that we would be fine getting back to the US.  So we ended the search and found a beach.

There is something wrong when you notice the lifeguard wearing sweats and a stocking cap.
 The wind was pretty awful.  We laid on the beach for an hour or so, and then had enough.

 We got back to the boat an hour or 2 before we needed to be.  We had really seen plenty of Nassau on our passport search.

This was the view of all the ships in port at Nassau.  Ours is the one on the far right.  I had no idea our ship was that big.

This was our view of Nassau as the boat left.

 Our room was off the very back of the boat, instead of one of the sides.  It was a fun new perspective.

Not sure what on earth happened to the coloring of this one.  Bummer too, because it was probably the only non-selfy picture the entire trip.

And Dave didn't even have to miss much March Madness.

 Ok, so one last thing.  I found some pictures online (and I'm sure there are rules on that, but I HAD to show you a few more things that I wasn't able to get pictures of).

 First, these are the slides I mentioned in the last post that dropped you straight down - so fun!

And one of our other favorite parts of the ship was the ropes course on the top deck.  AMAZING!

But wait, that's not all!  There was a plank!  It was the most terrifying thing ever - but soooo fun!  Dave and I both did it.  They just don't let you take your phones up there so we don't have proof.

It was craaaaazy!

 

And that's a wrap.  I noticed we had a bunch of pictures all posed the same way.  I guess there aren't too many ways to take "usies".  But it was a fun look back at our trip together.  Such a fun week with my love.

 
The last 2 days were back at sea.  One day it was warm enough to still lay out on the sun deck, while Dave took the behind-the-scenes tour of the boat.  Then on the last day it was rainy and cold all day.  The p.e.r.f.e.c.t day to sleep in, eat a late breakfast, go back for a late morning nap, eat lunch, then an afternoon nap, then dinner.  There is nothing more relaxing than doing NOTHING when you know there is nothing on earth else you can be doing.
It was a perfect ending before we were back to reality.

We are so thankful for these trips that we've been able to take because of Premier.  With life and kids, and busyness, and money...trips like these would not really happen.  It is such a treat to earn these trips for free and just pay to get there and for extras.  Premier is so generous, and we are so thankful for these memories and experiences that we've been given.  And always so humbled and thankful for those who support my business.  I just started my 11th year!