Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Weekend trip to DC

Our friend Josh got married this last weekend. I think it's so special when people get married in their 30s, and all weddings are worth celebrating! We road-tripped to DC and stayed with Jill at her sister's house in nearby Virginia. We went to the wedding and had a little time in the city between the ceremony and reception. I knew we were going to have a family day in DC but my expectations were very low. I wanted to see some monuments, eat at food trucks, and see street performers. Never did I expect that while watching a street performance Doug would be pulled into the performance and jumped over!
They were like "sexy white guy, get over here", I guess that's what you get wearing your nice wedding attire while walking around. I don't know how to link videos on here, but all those guys got jumped over by a guy flipping over them. It was pretty fun.
A little more pre-reception city exploring:
The wedding was at a fancy Army and Navy club, delicious salmon dinner, a live band.
The next day we drove back in to do a little city exploring. We wasted a lot of time trying to find parking. That was frustrating! Finally parked at the capital and walked 2.25 miles down to the Jefferson Memorial and back.
Sadly the street truck food was just meh, but the day together was nice. No cherry blossoms, but it was sunny and hot!
The next day we drove back. August took a couple naps and mostly entertained himself, which was a little better than the drive there. This was encouraging as I am trying to talk Doug into another fall colors road trip this fall!
We shall see...

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Mother's Day Weekend

This last weekend was very nice. We had a 3 day family weekend off work. One night my parents offered to come babysit in the evening so we started out with a date night and saw I Can Only Imagine. It was so good! Truly moving. I recommend it.
We did a little shopping with our Menard's rebates and I picked up plants for my raised beds. I'm giving gardening one last try this year!
One big tomato plant, two little tomato plants, zucchini, green beans, sugar snap peas, yellow peppers, and strawberries. They look so pretty in the garden bed.
Actual mother's day was a little rushed as our friend's baby was baptized that day and Doug was the godfather. Ended up not being so fun for me as I spent the whole baptism chasing August in the hallway and then Doug got to go to brunch while I had to take August home to nap, waaaaah. But it was ok. I took a little nap and then when he got home I went to use a gift card that I had received for Christmas for a "make up lesson". So it was nice to have some "me" time. I say make-up lesson because it was supposed to be a 30 minute lesson of showing me how to do makeup, like she does an eye, I do an eye. Anyway, it was actually a little disappointing because people kept interrupting to ask her where something was in the store, and she was polite about it like "sorry for that", but it still took time out of my 30 minutes. And she spent some other time looking for "the right color match" in some other area of the store. And then when I asked about eyeliner it was like 'oh out of time'. And she ended up doing all the makeup herself so it wasn't really a lesson at all. The same thing happened that always does when I get my makeup done, it always looks too different so I just go back to normal. And she gave me like super dark eyebrows so all I could see was eyebrows when I looked at myself. Anyway. Would be kinda fun to play more with makeup, but in the words of that famous news lady, ain't nobody got time for that. My bathroom uninterrupted time is extremely limited.
It was kinda late after that makeup experience so we just went to this quick Mediterranean place where I always get hummus/bread, and delicious salad. I love their salads so much, I just never have all those same veggies on hand to chop up!
August ate tons of veggies and loved it.
Here was us at church earlier
My first art from my son! I love it so much. So sweet of his Sunday school teachers to make that for me.
Beautiful tulips, my boys also got me wind chimes and a massage gift card
August checking out the new fern plant
It was a very nice weekend, and I am so blessed to be August's mother.

Monday, May 7, 2018

family day

We had a wonderful family day on Friday because I had to work this last weekend. Started the morning with cinnamon rolls. I had prepped them the day before:
my little 'helper' kept me company by playing nicely in the kitchen
This was them after they rose. I put them in the fridge because they were for the next day.
After baking and icing.
Soooo... I'm not sure what happened, but they looked a lot different than the recipe girl's rolls:
It might be because my flour was actually white (wheat) flour when it probably was supposed to be all-purpose. And I'm wondering if them sitting in the fridge overnight messed anything up? But really, who wants to wake up an hour earlier to make cinnamon rolls for breakfast?! And even my icing doesn't look white or good either, and that was made exactly the same. So who knows. They tasted ok, but "ok" is kind of a bummer when you were hoping for cinnabun deliciousness and you spent an hour making mediocre rolls.
Oh well, they certainly did not stop us from having a good day.
And August loved his first cinnamon roll.
We played with August, worked on our deck project, cut dead branches off a tree in our yard, went to the park and played with him on the jungle gym.
- See those adorable x-wing star wars pants! May the Fourth! :) -
Went to Menards for deck supplies. And when we came home watched The Greatest Showman. We had to go to 4 redboxes to get it, pretty popular, but neither of us really liked it. Felt it was kinda blah, and I would've preferred a more documentary-ish truth of the real story of the Barnum & Bailey circus.
So anyway, a nice family day, and then 2 days of work for me. Oh how I wish someday to not have to work weekends. Yes, it's only every 3rd- I just always seem to miss something important. This weekend was Liz's son Ben's 3rd birthday, and the funeral service for Doug's aunt. Also this really fun door-to-door music festival in Ann Arbor was this weekend too, we've been there 2 years in a row. Plus I just like to be home on Sundays for church and family time. Maybe someday.
Home with August today, enjoying time with him after seeing him only 30 mins after my work day/before his bedtime. We are done breastfeeding (good job boobs!!) so I don't wake him up anymore before I go to work, and I miss him.
Spring has come and it is so beautiful.
I love our yard in the spring.
September kitty will not stay indoors!

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Our first cruise

Everyone always says how much they love cruising. When Doug and I were talking about spring trips we decided on Hawaii again and even bought the tickets, but then got too afraid of the 8+ hour plane trip and time difference for August, so we cancelled the tickets. Instead we decided to go to Florida and visit my sister and brother-in-law, and then all of us went on a cruise to the Bahamas together. No grandparent wanted to watch August more than 3-4 days, so he came too! Which is just as well, he is a part of this family :) I do wonder how it would've been without him though. There is so much fun stuff to do on cruises! My sister and Johnny were so awesome and really helped out a lot with him. They had a room right next door so at night after we put him down we'd take the monitor and go watch a movie or hang out in their room, or one of us would go out to the show with them while the other stayed in monitor-range. It really worked out well. On the cruise day we took him to the ship daycare for a couple hours so we could go on a snorkeling excursion, which was fun. But otherwise it was a lot of nice family together time.
The cruise was fun. It's definitely just a glimpse of an area, you're only there < 8 hours. But it's fun. I still think if we were to do it again it'd just be to relax and have fun, not to really try to see and discover a new country. But it's nice having room and board and oh the glorious food buffets.
Florida was fun too, we went to the Florida aquarium, the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine, and Weeki-watchee mermaids. Good times.
And now the pictures: