Vacation - Part Two

Just as soon as I posted last night about what a great traveler Elizabeth had been, she decided to change things up on us. She bounced out of bed at 3am, declared "It's wake up time" and refused to go back to sleep. Fortunately, she wasn't grumpy - just wide awake. "I'm not sleepy" is not something you ever want to hear coming out of your child's mouth at 4am when you're stuck in a hotel room with them. At that time, it had already been an hour, and I was starting to believe her, so I decided to take her for a little drive, figuring she'd fall back asleep in the car. No doing. An hour later, we pulled into Waffle House and had an early morning breakfast. That seemed to do the trick, because she fell fast asleep as soon as we got back in the car. But, it was short-lived, because she was wide awake again after I brought her in the room and tried to put her back into bed. Instead, she again started trying to convince me that it was "wake-up time." Grrr.... Fortunately, at some point after that, David took over and took her out for her 2nd breakfast (of 3 total) while I got a little bit more sleep. Even more fortunately, it didn't seem to affect her today, since she was quite a trooper throughout the rest of the day. I do think, however, that it did affect the coma she's currently in...at least I hope so, because I sure don't want to hear a peep out of her tonight!

We went to an air show at the Meridian Naval Station today. We got to see the Blue Angels fly, and they were awesome! Then, tonight, we went out to dinner with one of David's old high school buddies and his family. It was a very enjoyable day.

Here are some pics for you from our trip up to this point:

Picking flowers at BB's house (Spring is in full force down here - YEAH!)






Petting Piglet with Uncle Scott (She's still obsessed with that cat! She's also for some reason terrified of bugs right now. When Piglet ran away from her to go outside, she yelled at him, "No Piglet! There are bugs out there!" :) For some reason, it didn't seem to phase him...)




At the air show:

A much needed break

We packed up yesterday evening and hit the road for Spring Break. We drove to Alabama, where we stopped for the night, then headed on to David's parents' house in Mississippi this morning. We had a really good visit with them this afternoon/evening. Now, I'm back in the hotel with Elizabeth, while Jonathan and David do a little more visiting, so I figured I'd let you all at least know we're gone. :)

Elizabeth's doing a great job on this trip. She is so easy to deal with now that she's older. It almost makes up for those horrible trips we had during her first 2 years....almost....

After a few days in Mississippi, we're going to head over to Georgia to see Erin's family and Amy. So, we'll have the opportunity to visit with part of both families before the week is through. Pictures will be forthcoming, of course.

In the meantime, here are some odds and ends for you.

A friend of mine made Elizabeth's birthday party invitation for us this year:



Isn't that about the cutest thing you've ever seen? I'm sure you're not surprised to see she chose Dora as her party theme. We'll be sending these out in a couple of weeks, but anyone who might be able to make it can save the date now (Saturday, March 3 at 12pm). We're optimistically hoping that it will be sunny that day, since we might end up with a bunch of kids/adults there.

I also wanted to show you how quiet time ended up one day last week. As I told you, Elizabeth tends to turn her room into a complete wreck during quiet time, and that day was no exception. Here was the scene as I opened the door:



I was a little concerned when I couldn't see her right away. But, upon further investigation, I found her:



She had rocked herself to sleep!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! Hope everyone had a great holiday! We had a wonderful day, which just ended with a fabulous meal and fun with friends. It couldn't have been nicer!

Easter in the Bluegrass is traditionally pretty cold, and since it happened so early this year, we never really stood a chance at nice weather. It was about 40 degrees and cloudy all day, and was even snowing a little bit when we came home tonight. Elizabeth never got to take off her sweater to really show off her dress. But, fortunately, it's one she'll be able to wear throughout the summer. (Plus, I bought it for $3 at a garage sale, so I can't really feel like the money was wasted...)

I actually managed to convince her to stay still for a few pictures this year:





(As opposed to last Easter, when I had to settle for a picture of her rolling on the floor!)

That pesky wabbit

After Elizabeth woke up from her nap yesterday, we had a fun time dyeing our Easter eggs.



(Note to self: Never use the phrase "Say Cheese" when photographing this child.)

We put vinegar in with the dye this year, so the colors turned out a lot better. And, she's still really into stickers, so I made sure to get a kit that had some. Unfortunately, that meant we got the jungle animal Easter Egg kit, which was the only one at the store with stickers. That seemed like a strange combination to me, but Elizabeth enjoyed turning her Easter eggs into monkeys and tigers. It even came with a gray tablet, for those oh-so-traditional elephant-colored Easter eggs.





Last night, David and I participated in our church's Good Friday service. The choir sang an Easter Cantata and the children's drama team did the acting, as well as several other choreographed songs. It went really well. David did an awesome job with another solo/quartet performance. In the meantime, Jonathan earned the Big Brother of the Year award by babysitting Elizabeth 2 nights in a row, for both the dress rehearsal and the performance.

Since I managed to draw this week for singing on the Praise Team, which means I have to be at church at 7:45am on Sunday, the Easter Bunny decided to make an early visit to our house last night.



Of course, Elizabeth didn't know the difference, and Jonathan played along because he got candy out of the deal.



Elizabeth was incredibly excited to get a new Dora umbrella, and is already talking about taking it to Cousin Brooke's house next week. (She's wanted her own umbrella ever since Brooke got one for Christmas.)



Looks like we're now ready for those April showers!

To cap the morning off, we headed to church for their Easter Egg hunt. Last week, I pulled out a bunch of plastic eggs, so Elizabeth has been honing her egg hunting skills all week. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of always practicing indoors. The egg hunt at church was outdoors, and Elizabeth practically refused to participate because she had to walk in the "dirt" (a tiny patch that was missing grass) and the eggs were "dirty" (sitting in the mulch). Sigh....our little princess!

Irony

Elizabeth is slowly growing out of her afternoon nap. She now only takes one every 3 or 4 days or so. The rest of the days, she participates in "quiet time" in her room. Not that it's always quiet - a lot of the time she's singing loudly or reading to herself, but at least she occupies herself for anywhere between 1 and 2 hours. It's actually when she starts to get quiet that David has to worry. Because that usually means she's occupying herself by strewing the entire contents of her toy box and bookshelf throughout the room, leaving approximately the equivalent of a small tornado's worth of chaos.

Today at lunch, Elizabeth was really trying to convince me I should stay home and not go back to work. Unfortunately, I had a site visit to do and a report I had to get out, so I couldn't go along with it. But, as it turned out, my site visit got cancelled, leaving me time to finish up my report. Then, my company announced we could all head home 2 hours early because it was Good Friday. Now, I must admit, normally I would stay in my office and take advantage of the quietness of the 2 hours to catch up on stuff for work (confessions of a recovering workaholic, I know). But, today I remembered how she had begged and pleaded for me to stay and play with her this afternoon, so I shut everything down and headed upstairs, planning to get a headstart on our easter egg coloring activities.

And - here's where the irony hits in...you knew I'd get there eventually, right? - the one day I was going to take advantage of the new non-nap schedule, what do I find Elizabeth doing? Snoozing away in a good old-fashioned nap. Figures!

The eternal sidekick

My older sister is 2 years older than I am. While we fought a lot when we were growing up, we also often had no other options around for someone to play with, so we still managed to play together sometimes (for at least 20 minutes or so before the fighting picked up again). During those times, we would often play Batman and Robin, as we were both enamored with the Batman TV show.

I quickly realized yet another drawback of being the younger sister when we played this game. Amy was always Batman...which left me to always be Robin. Now Robin was pretty cool as far as young superheroes in tights go, but let's face it, we all know that Batman was the cool one in that duo. I often dreamed of just once being Batman, but no, Amy had other plans entirely. The roles were cemented when we got Batman/Robin walkie-talkies for gifts...and of course, I got the Robin one. I literally think I went my entire childhood without being Batman once...unless I was playing by myself, of course.

I'm over it now (for the most part), but I'm now experiencing a bitter dose of deja vu as I play with Elizabeth. With Elizabeth and Jonathan being so far apart in age, we essentially have two first-born children. And, Elizabeth has embraced most of the traditional first-born personality characteristics, including the bossy part. Lately, she's been wanting to pretend to be Dora a lot...which means I get to be...you guessed it...Boots. :( Now, Boots is pretty cool as far as monkeys go...but let's face it, we all know that Dora is the cool one in that duo. Sigh.....here we go again...

Let's run, and we'll have some fun...

...all before it melts away.

And, that's what we did this afternoon!



Here are the action shots:








As you can see, Elizabeth really enjoyed sledding on the small hill in our front yard. Then, she learned the joy of snowballs - and how fun it is to throw them at your parents!



David learned something too - not to get the camera close to her when she's throwing snowballs!



The twin boys down the street from us built a great snow fort. (Or, to be more accurate, their PARENTS built a great fort.)


Elizabeth decided she needed to haul her own snowball down the street to throw at them. (Apparently, OUR snow was better than THEIR snow...)



Although, I can't honestly say the boys thought she was much of a threat. But, they did really enjoy the opportunity to bombard David with snowballs!

The first week in March

I tend to focus on weather patterns more than most people, as my workload fluctuates greatly depending on various weather phenomena. And, over the past 10 years or so, I've noticed that our largest snowfalls have primarily occurred during the first week of March. So, throughout this loooooong, looooooong, very loooooong winter, everytime someone at work would make the comment, "I think we're about to hit spring," I would remind them that we have to make it through the first week in March before I'm convinced. Even when the weather tried to trick us into believing it was spring this past Monday, when it hit temperatures in the 60s, I remained unconvinced.

Sure enough, about mid-week, the weathermen started going nuts, preparing us for a blizzard from the snowstorm heading our way. Fortunately, I can say we didn't actually hit the "blizzard" levels they were predicting. But, we did get a nice 3-4 inches and got to have some fun playing in the snow.



Right before we headed out to go sledding, a friend of ours called us up and convinced us to try a new hill - the one next to the Beaumont Y. It was a great sledding hill, but at the time we were there it was still snowing and the wind was blowing pretty hard, so we didn't enjoy it as much as we would have under better conditions. Poor Elizabeth fell asleep in the car on the way over, and after we realized the conditions weren't going to be very amenable for her, we actually let her sleep through it all.



She awoke when we got home, and was disappointed that she hadn't gotten to go sledding, but we promised we'd take her sledding tomorrow before all the snow melted. And, she was completely over it when she still got to have her hot chocolate and marshmallows!



This was my kind of snow - it happened on a Friday night, so the kids didn't miss any more school. (Other than letting out of school 2 hours early, which was completely unnecessary. But, at least they don't have to make that up!) Plus, since we woke up to the snow on Saturday morning, it meant I actually got to play in it too, instead of having to work and see the pictures when I got home. Finally, it's supposed to be back in the '40s and '50s for the rest of the week, so it will melt quickly. Then, hopefully, spring will be here to stay. I am definitely ready for it!

Speaking of smoke and fire....

Yesterday was David's birthday. (Happy Birthday, Sweetie!) And, before you hastily jump to the conclusion that the title of this post is merely making fun of David's advanced age, we actually DID celebrate his birthday this year with smoke and fire. On Friday, he was excited to receive a big birthday package from the Omaha Steak Company, courtesy of my mother. Now he's looking forward to grilling out, since Spring is just around the corner. Little did my mother know, but hiding in the package was another great birthday surprise for David and Jonathan to play with....dry ice! They quickly set to work creating smoke with it, and even Elizabeth had fun playing with it.







Then, later that night, we all went to the Japanese restaurant to sit at the grill table. Elizabeth was pretty scared of the big fire they make on the grill, but she enjoyed the rest of the experience.

As part of the preparation for David's birthday, last week while David and Jonathan were doing the 30-hour famine, I helped Elizabeth make a birthday card for him. She really likes playing with stickers right now, so I found some birthday stickers for her to put on his card, plus she colored a picture for him. After we were done with the card, I warned her not to tell him about it, because it was supposed to be a surprise. She did pretty well until this past Sunday afternoon, when all of a sudden, she ran up to him and shouted, "Daddy! We got you birthday stickers!" Then, she got really quiet, and whispered to him, "But I'm not going to tell you!" And THAT'S why I didn't tell her what his birthday present was!

Last night, my mom made David a birthday dinner and we had a cake for him there. Now, if you REALLY want to talk about fire, let's talk about how high the flames get on a birthday cake with 41 candles.... :) (Happy Birthday, Sweetie!)

It seemed like a good idea at the time

"It seemed like a good idea at the time." David and I have found ourselves saying this many, many times throughout our parenting career. And, I'm sure we will continue to do so. Here's an example for you:

Recently, I thought of what I considered to be a great idea to teach Elizabeth how to spell her name. Like me, she always seems to remember the lyrics to songs very easily (or, at least, whatever she believes to be the lyrics, which can get interesting...). So, I used the mind-numbing tune from Elmo's World, which just happened to fit perfectly with the number of letters in her name, and taught her the song. The lyrics are pretty easy...E-L-I-Z-A-B-E-T-H...Elizabeth! Then, repeat. What I failed to realize is that Elizabeth would be such a great student, that she would learn the song easily, then repeat it AD NAUSEUM. So, the good news is that my child knows how to spell her name. The bad news? She seems to be able to sing it for hours on end to what may possibly be the world's most annoying tune. So, of course, I caught it on video to share with you:



Notice my "That's Great!", which was meant to indicate she had reached the end of the song, didn't phase her in the slightest.

You can also see that she's gotten very good at doing her Alphabet puzzle. She can pretty much identify all of her letters now, and knows words that start with each one (i.e., "J" for Jonathan). Of course, most of that is thanks to Starfall.