Watervale 2013

This was our 22nd year to go to northern Michigan...and we had a wonderful time, as always. :)

PROS from this year:

1) NO MORE FLYING SOLO! - J flew with P and me so I didn't have to fly alone with a toddler!!!  HOORAY!!!! (And a big "thank you!" to my mom and dad for making the 22 hour drive and taking all of our stuff up there!)

2) AIRPLANES ARE "SO COOL"! - P absolutely LOVED being on the airplane.  His best lines were "SO COOL!" (which was what he said as we took off for the first time) and "Up, up, up, sky!" (in reference to where we were and what we were doing). :)  Every time we took off and landed (a total of 8 times that week), he looked at us with sheer joy and this face that said, "Do you all realize what's happening here!!?!?" So fun.

3) P IS A ROCK STAR. - P was a fantastic traveler...virtually zero fussing (thanks to the ridiculous array of snacks that I packed for the kid, as well as his favorite books - including Ten Little Lady Bugs, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, If you Give a Pig a Pancake, No,No, Yes,Yes, No, David! mini books, and Goodnight Moon, some stupidly expensive yogurt pouches with Sesame Street characters on them, as well as his new Water Wow! Paint with Water book by Melissa and Doug and my phone :)).  We even got several compliments on how well behaved he was. :)  He really was a rock star.

4) ZZZZZZZZ... - P slept SO well the whole week.  Like ridiculously well...he went to bed pretty easily every night and slept through the night and woke up at 7:00 or so each morning.  He was also a fantastic napper.  In fact, there were several days where he took 3 hour naps that we had to wake him up from!!!  Quite the departure from our first year there with him when he would wake up 5 AM, and we'd have to carry him in the Bjorn down to the big beach.  Mom and Dad were tired that year!  It turns out that if I could just have a lake near by that he could play in every day that he would sleep well. :)

5) MEALS - P got to eat with us in the dining room this year, so no one had to miss out on dinner like last year when we took turns staying with him.  We went ahead and tried to keep him on "Texas time," so we ate dinner at 7:15, which worked out great. He was one of the only kids at this later dinner, and he really did SO well.

6) BLUEBERRIES, Blueberries, blueberries. - More details are with the pictures below, but we ate LOTS of them. :)  One night at dinner, I told P that they were having pizza and that he should tell our waitress what he wanted.  He looked at her and said, "Blueberries?" :)  Another blueberry story:  the first morning we went to breakfast the guys were golfing, so it was just my mom, P, and me.  We all ordered blueberries, and while waiting for our food to come out, P ended up eating all three of our cups of blueberries.  When my mom and I requested more to go on our oatmeal, P proceeded to eat my mom's second bowl...inappropriate amounts of blueberries were consumed by this child.  I suppose there are worse things. :)

7) COOLER WEATHER! - God totally smiled upon us, considering the fact that we week before we went, the highs were in the 90's in Michigan...and they don't have air conditioning! :/ This was by far the coolest weather we had had in years.  The lows at night were often in the 50's, and it turns out that we sleep better when it's not 72 and humid at night. :)

8) SWIMMING!!! - Again, more details below, but P LOVED the beach and going swimming...

9) READING - J and I were actually able to read some books this year since P was such a good napper!  J read And the Mountains Echoed, and I read Bittersweet and Shadow Divers.

10) SWINGING! - P LOVED swinging at the little park this year...especially if his Papa was pushing him.  He would count, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9..." really fast and then on "10" my dad would grab the swing, bring it back, and then let it go.  P would just giggle and squeal and laugh.  He couldn't get enough.  He even got bruises on his back from falling backwards into the swing...it was intense fun.

CONS from this year:
1) NO KIKI and B - since K was so close to her due date (Aug. 26!!!), she was not able to travel.  Even though we had a great time it absolutely wasn't the same without the dynamic duo...although I do think P slept better having his own room.

2) COOLER WEATHER - there were a couple of days where the high only got up to the 68 degrees (I know, I know, so sad...), but a cold big lake + 68 degree temps + wind blowing = chattering teeth of a 2.5 year old who was desperate to go swimming!  We managed, and P figured out that if he would submerge himself up to his neck in the little lake by sitting down that it was much warmer. :)

3) SMALL BEACH - the water was really high this year which made for a small beach and no rocks to hunt for (to my mom's dismay :)).  There were also a lot of little, dead fish on the beach...yuck!

4) BYE-BYE PORCH - when you start bringing little tiny people to Watervale, you are banished to the main dining room to eat.  It really wasn't nearly as bad as we were remembering/ anticipating, though. :)  It probably helped that we went to the 7:15 dinner and not the 6:00 seating!

4) HEY? WHERE ARE YOU GOING WITH MY BLUEBERRIES!? - Turns out that the dining room experience can be a little confusing for a 2.5 year old.  Dinner at Watervale always consists of soup and salad and then your entree.  The first night they brought P's dinner out with everyone else's entrees, and while they were bringing us our soup and salad P was saying, "My turn? My turn?  My food?"  Poor little guy was feeling neglected! (even though we brought him his own snacks to tide him over until his meal came).  We fixed that the next night, requesting that they bring his meal with our soup and salad, and all was well with the world.  P also struggled with the silver dessert tray (as we all did...but his was for a different reason). :)  They bring out four dessert options on this little silver tray, and one of the options is always fruit of some sort.  P would always want the blueberries, but after we ordered and the waitress went back into the kitchen to place our order, P would get so upset, not understanding why the blueberries that were just offered to him were then taken away. :)  Life is tough when you're 2.5.

And now for the pictures...

Here's P's first venture into the big lake.  The water was freezing, but he was desperate to be in it.  I wish I had videoed him...he was more or less squealing with joy with every wave that came in.

I believe this is photographic evidence of said squealing.

On Monday, we headed out to pick our own blueberries, which we did last year.

This year, P quickly figured out how to find the big, blue berries, pick said blue berries, and eat them.

Here he is with an unripe green berry...it only takes eating one of those to convince you to focus your energy on the blue ones. :)

We would ask P to pick the blueberries and then add them to our bucket.

Instead, this was his response. :)  I think he probably ate 98% of the berries he picked...and I'm afraid he picked a lot.  J had to put in a little bit of extra money at the self-pay place because of how much produce this kid inhaled.

Running through the blueberry bushes.

Cheese!

Best we could get of the three of us...

Playing with P.

The only picture of the two of us all week. :)

And, for what it's worth, this year we picked 4 lbs. of blueberries (at $2.00 a lb...a 25 cent increase from last year) and ate them in 2 days.

On Tuesday a front came in, and it was UNBELIEVABLY windy.  The wind was consistently gusting at 25+ miles an hour...making it a stay-inside-the-cottage day.  My dad and I went to the big beach in the afternoon to check out the waves.

Winds from the north.

White caps on the lake.

A deserted beach.

You know it's windy when the little lake looks like this!

Thankfully, we had quite the assortment of toys and books with us, so P was still entertained while being confined inside.

Reading one of his favorite books of the trip...No, No, Yes, Yes.

Two rules he seemingly feels extremely passionate about:

1) Don't color on walls.

2) Don't put your finger in your nose...use a Kleenex please!

 

Wednesday morning they guys went out to golf at Arcadia Bluffs, and mom and P and I hung out and played outside.  P loved going to the park, blowing bubbles, and hurling himself down the small hill in front of our cottage.

Taking a break from running down the hill.

Whew.  This is hard work.

{source}

Here's a pic of one of the holes at Arcadia Bluffs...pretty incredible place and my understanding is pretty incredibly challenging, too.

I wish I had pictures of it, but Wednesday night was the BBQ, and after dinner, P went on the hay ride with my mom.  It's supposedly a little under-whelming, but P was in heaven, and when it was over, you could hear him crying 100 yds. away..."Bye horsies!" :(  Poor kid.  Life's tough when you're 2.5.

On Thursday we headed back down to the big beach since it was nice and sunny.

Once again, P loved every second of it...although he did figure out that you could stay warmer if you didn't go in as far. :)  J was a great sport and braved the cold water with P.

"Waves comin'!!!" P would say...

Think he's happy?

Oh boy!

Are you guys seeing this???

Ready to get wet.

The picture is too small to see it, but he's covered with goose bumps. :/

Strolling in the water.

Holding on tight to daddy.

Walking down to the outlet with Share Share and Daddy.

My boys.

Tiny footprints in the sand.

Some decent-sized waves.

Looking cold.

Checking out the sand...

Hooray for handing the camera over...photographic evidence that I was there, too!

Making our way down the beach.

Ahhh...we made it to the outlet which is SOOO much warmer than the big lake.

This is like a big bathtub.

Such a Peanut face.

Love the clear water!!!

When it was time to get P to walk back down the beach towards our cottage, he wanted nothing to do with it...so Papa began to pick up rocks to hand to P, who would then throw the rocks into the water.  There was a forward motion to this rock throwing, which slowly got us out of the outlet.  (Editor's note: I wish I had a better picture of my dad handing the rocks to P...it was like Hansel and Gretel following the breadcrumb trail...)

 

P quickly realized what was happening and got REALLY upset...as you can see on the zoomed in picture below.

Not a happy camper. :(

To make matters worse, he was really cold. :(
Thankfully Papa was nice enough to share his shirt.

He more or less cried all the way down the beach. :(

Again, life's tough when you're a 2.5 year old...that's kind of our mantra right now.

I have no photographic evidence of our day on Friday, but I do remember that it was supposed to rain all day, but it didn't!  We started off our morning with our traditional "Fried Dough Friday" donut breakfast in town, where we eat a ridiculous amount of fried dough from a fun little bakery.  After breakfast, we were able to hang out at the little beach, which we were SO happy about...and so was P.

Here he is playing with one of his favorite puzzles with one of his favorite people. :)

Share Share loves P!

We always do a lot of exercising while we're in Michigan...golfing, bike riding, running, walking.  We definitely take advantage of the weather and love to be outside in it.  These are some pictures that I snapped one morning when my mom, P, and I went on an "Uncle Wiggly's Adventure" (as my grandma would say) through a trail at Upper Herring Lake.  It was beautiful and so fun to see something new after 22 years! :)  Unfortunately, some of it was some pretty rough terrain, and I ended up popping the front tire on the BOB stroller by catching it on a tree root. :(  Oh well!  At least it happened at the end of the week!

Our last night there it was raining, but mom insisted that we snap some pictures.

(And I'm glad she did!)

Share Share and Papa. :)

A spunky Peanut.

A sweet Peanut.

And just for fun...
Our little family in 2011.

In 2012.


 
And this year! :)

We had a wonderful trip and are excited for the years to come when the cousins will be running around and enjoying Watervale just like K and I did when we were little. :)  Until next year... :)

What Are Little Boys Made Of?, Pt. 2

Yesterday was Pizza Thursday...P is so used to going over to my grandparents' on Thursday that when you say to him on Thursday morning, "P, it's Thursday...what do we do on Thursday?"  He'll respond with, "GiGi, Gramps, Share Share, and KiKi!" (who are, in fact, all the family members we will see on Thursday).  When you ask him what he's going to eat, he'll tell you, "Fruit...and pizza!" (notice that the kid who doesn't like dessert also prefers the fruit cup over the pizza...I'm thinking there was a mix up at the hospital. :))

There are certain things that P likes to play with and do when we're over there, and I've admittedly gotten a little lax when it comes to keeping my eyes on him at all times.  Yesterday my grandma, mom, and I were all visiting while KiKi and Gramps had gone to the other room.  I knew P was in my grandparents' room, but the last I had seen of him, he was playing in my grandpa's chair.

Well, I hadn't seen him in a while, so I went in the room to check on him, and I found him holding a pen and coloring on a pad of paper on my grandpa's desk...I then noticed that the paper was his second choice of surface to color on as the pictures below with attest to...

 Can you see our first-choice for a canvas? :)

P has been reading a picture book recently called "No, No...Yes, Yes" by Leslie Patricelli.  One of the pictures shows a baby who has colored all over the walls, and when we see that picture we say, "No, No!  Don't color on the walls."  When I picked P up after discovering that he had colored all over his arm, he said to me, "No, no!  Don't color on walls."  I said, "And what else?"  He replied with, "Don't color on arms."  Amen, brother.

 I personally didn't want to take pictures of this bad choice, but I told Aunt KiKi to capture a few. ;)

Thankfully we didn't find a permanent marker! :)  The pen washed right off...

 

I love this last picture. :)  I feel like his little face is saying, "I stand by my creative use of my body as a canvas." :)

What a week! :)

Children's Aquarium

We made our first visit down to the Children's Aquarium in Fair Park on Wednesday with Share Share, and P was in heaven.  The kid LOVES animals and gets excited when we go to the pet store to look at the fish tanks there, so this adventure was right up his alley! :)

The facility is split between the salt water tanks and the fresh water tanks and then outside is a pretty incredible sting ray exhibit where you can feed, pet, and observe sting rays in a very up-close-and-personal way.  P loved it!

I wish I had had my good camera with me, but alas, the iPhone pics will have to do. 

Our first stop was the salt water tanks.  P's favorites were the sea turtle (and rightfully so!!!), the sea horses, the large orange fish in a floor to ceiling tank, the model large octopus tentacles (I wish I had a picture to show what this was... :)) next to the real octopus, and the lion fish.  Also super cool were the sharks, morey eels, jellyfish, freakishly large lobster, and freakishly large grouper. :)  I wish I had gotten a picture of the sea turtle and P...it swam right up to him and just hovered in the water in front of him.  It was really neat.

 Then we headed out to the sting ray exhibit where we got to pet the sting rays.  It really was (as my child would say)...SO COOL! :)  I was able to feed the sting rays - which was quite the experience, and then we just watched and watched and watched them...I think P could have stayed there all day.

 We was hesitant to touch them...although he would sometimes accidentally do so while putting his hand in the water. :)  He really just liked staring at them through the glass.

Here's the funny little face on their underside. :)

Here's some footage of P and the sting rays.

 

Although it would be hard for anything to compete with the sting rays, we ended our trip with a quick jaunt through the fresh water exhibit.  We saw some red-eared slider turtles eating some romaine lettuce for lunch, a seriously terrifyingly large snapping turtle (I'm not kidding...this is the kind of thing nightmares are made of), and best of all an albino alligator.  After the sea turtle encounter and the one I'm about to tell you about, we've decided that P may be some kind of animal whisperer. :)  When we walked up to the alligator exhibit, the alligator had his back turned to us.  Then, all of a sudden, it turned around (as can be seen in the picture) and just stared at P for quite a while...then when P walked away, it turned back around, and that was that.  I saw some other little kids go up to it, and it never turned around for them...so who knows! ;) Maybe P's been working on his animal language all this time... :)

We will DEFINITELY be coming back here! :)  It was a hit!  As my mom and I talked about, it is just so fun to watch the joy and excitement that P has for life and for things like animals.  To be able to see the world through a child's eyes is a reminder that the world in which we live is a pretty incredible place. :)

Q: What Are We Going to Do at the Library?

Typical Answer: "Read books!"

My child's answer: "Play!" :)

It's amazing that the library really is a place where kiddos can go to both look at books AND play.  All of the libraries around us have a good selection of puzzles, blocks, puppets, and other play things to occupy a small child.  P really enjoys getting to go and play. 

A current favorite is the bead maze...he used to not be that interested in it, and all of a sudden he just thinks they're the best things ever!  Here's some photographic evidence. :)

 Happy boy!

Who wants to look at books when you could play with a bead maze?!?

Last time we went, P and I played a game where I would tell him to go and stand on a number on the story-time mat.  He was loving it!  Unfortunately, my phone died while I was filming, but you can get the idea.  My request before the video started was for Parker to go and stand on the number 2...and at the end, I promise he makes it over to the balloon with the number 10 on it. :)

What Are Little Boys Made Of?

We had a rough week made up of two firsts - first bee sting and first black eye. :( 

We had gone to the spray ground by Aunt KiKi's house last Monday and had been having a grand old time.  P went over into the grass for all of 5 seconds and all of a sudden came out screaming and reaching for his toe.  K and I looked down on the sidewalk to see a bee on the ground right by his foot.  We scooped him up, stomped on the bee, and tried to figure out where he had been stung.  Turns out it was square on the bottom of his big toe - as the stinger was still there.  K remembered that you're not supposed to pull a bee's stinger straight out but instead are supposed to scrape it out...turns out she was right.  As bee's stinger is barbed and will break and stay in your skin with its venom if you try to pull it out.  Hooray Aunt KiKi for being so smart!

I was a little worried since he's had some allergy issues that he might be allergic to bees, but seemingly, there wasn't anything to worry about. :)  We went back over to Aunt KiKi's and watched some Elmo while Nurse KiKi put some baking soda paste on his toe.  He handled it like a champ!

 Nurse KiKi administering first aid.

And then, 6 days later, we got our first black eye.  I was getting ready back in our bathroom, and J and P were playing in the living room.  They were having a grand old time, and then all of a sudden I heard a horrible thunk (it really sounded like two pieces of wood being knocked together) followed by hollering...and rightful hollering at that!  P had been spinning around and had fallen and hit just under his eye on the coffee table (thankfully NOT on the corner of the coffee table - UGH!).  It started to balloon up pretty quickly, so we got some ice and sat down to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (sense a theme in our medical treatment plan?).  Thankfully he recovered quickly...but man, oh man.  It was a doozy.

Here's our sweet boy with his shiner.

He was all boy this week...hoping next week is a little more uneventful. :/

July 2013 - B.W. (before Watervale)

So we've made it to the July pictures, and it's only the first week of August, so I'm feeling pretty good about myself. :)

I wish I had more, but these are the few pictures I snapped of our small group 4th of July get together (minus Melissa and Jonathon because it was J's birthday!)  We invaded my parents' house since they were out of town and just enjoyed the unusually mild Texas heat for July, went swimming, and ate the most Americana food possible - burgers, hot dogs, brauts, corn on the cob, beans, watermelon, potato chips, pasta salad, and two types of homemade ice cream. :)  We had a blast and enjoyed getting to hang out with our dear friends.

 Everyone watching the Rangers and eating ice cream

 Little Courtney enjoying some chocolate cherry ice cream.

 Daddy and P.

 Do you see the chaos of toys on the floor?  Between the three kids, we had out every toy my parents have in the house. :)  (p.s. - pregnant bellies make good tables.)

 

Sweet Kinley holding three train cars...and if you look closely enough, she has some evidence of some vanilla ice cream on her face. :)

The rest of the pictures are just random happenings during the month of July through the lens of my iPhone.

 P has been thoroughly enjoying climbing on beds and burying himself in the pillows....and not just at home.  Anyone's bed is fair game.

 My sweet friend Katie invited us to go and check out the kids' area of the Perot Museum.  We happened to run into some of our favorite friends there. :)

 P really enjoyed himself...here he is filling in all the empty spaces with flowers.

 I came across this random idea on Pinterest, and one of our therapists had told me that fine motor skills were tied to speech development (I guess some of the same areas of the brain are used), so we tried it.  P did a really good job...and ate more Cheerios than he put on. :)

 One overcast day we went to the spray ground by Aunt KiKi's house...it was like the spray ground apocalypse.  At one point we were the only people out there.  Totally bizzarro...but really fun!

 We've been doing LOTS of swimming.  Here's a shot of P's after-swimming hair.  Pretty spiffy, no?

This picture is also associated with swimming...he was so exhausted after playing at the pool with some friends that he more or less collapsed on the floor while we were making lunch.  That's some kind of tired.