staycation

 So I dropped off the face of the blogosphere for a week long "staycation" and it was glorious.

(Dave hates the word "glorious" but sometimes it is just truly the most appropriate adjective.)

My brother and his wife rolled into town last Wednesday.  (Actually, they flew.  Can you imagine how crazy it would be if rolling across country was an actual means of transportation?  I'm getting way off track but this is the direction my mind wanders in when I have been spending a week doing nothing but chilling.  Seriously.  If I get any more chill, my pulse will slow down to a relaxed five beats per minute and I'm pretty sure that's frowned upon medically speaking.)

Dave and Jack are basically BFFLs (Best Friends for Life) so he took not just Thursday, not just Friday, but also Monday off from work!  This has been a long weekend for the record books.

We started things off with a bang.  Thursday is my mom's birthday but we kicked off the celebration on Wednesday with a night in and take out from Chipotle.  This was a wonderful sign of great things to come as we have spent the last several days chillaxing with nothing pressing and nothing scheduled.

On Thursday, we drove off to Quintana Beach where we had rented a cabin on the boardwalk.  It took us a while to realize it, but we were actually sleeping in a historic home from the 1800's.  Apparently, Quintana, as much of a ghost town as it is appears now, was one of the first places in Texas to have been explored by the famous Cabeza de Vaca.  Before hurricanes and disease wiped out most of the town's buildings and population, it was a happening summer destination for plantation owners and fancy people back in the day.  This may not sound like much, but to a history nerd, it just about made my trip.

This is the second time we have taken Katelyn to the beach and, again, she was not a fan.  I think it's the combination of the scratchy sand and the crashing waves that freaked her out.  Either way, she was just not interested, which is a shame because she looked like a legitimate surfer baby.  The Beach Boys song Surfer Girl ran on an infinite loop in my mind the entire weekend.

She spent most of her time on the shore sitting in her special baby beach chair playing with a half empty water bottle.

We celebrated my mom's actual birthday at Long John Silver's.  Things got a little crazy.  It was about an hour past bedtime and some people were getting a little punch drunk.

We spent our time at the Seaburn House playing in the warm waves, napping with the smell of the water still on our clothes, or sitting on the boardwalk in the breeze of ocean air while Kate ran around like a wild woman.

We also went out for late night walks on the beach while my parents stayed behind with sleeping Katelyn.  The breeze at night is refreshing and salty and the sand that just hours ago burned our feet flowed between our toes like a cool liquid.  Dave and I walked along the beach with Jack and Jessica and Lauren to the pier where a family was fishing in the light of the docks.  There will thousands of tiny fish that swarmed around our feet with each wave.  We had so much fun catching them and watching them swim back into the ocean.

On Friday, the air conditioning broke.  (I guess you shouldn't expect much out of a two hundred year old house.)  It took only a few minutes for the humid ocean air to feel overbearing and about an hour before conditions became intolerable.  Luckily, we got our money back and were able to pack up the car in a hurry and drive over to the air conditioned safety of Buccee's.

Sunday dinner was a "Make Your Own Mac and Cheese" Party at my parents' house.  This is a family favorite because who doesn't like pasta and cheese?  Also, even if you didn't care for pasta and cheese, I'm pretty sure you can't turn it down with fix ins like bacon and sausage, goat cheese, freshly grated parmesan, and pepperoni.

Tonight was our last night of "staycation" so we threw ourselves a pool party.  We brought the foil dinner ingredients we had planned to cook during our last night at the beach and threw everything on the grill while we played in the water.

Sitting around the picnic table, enjoying grill roasted veggies and hamburger and the sounds of an evening of family time at the pool, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of sadness as I sensed the sun setting on the last few moments of this year's summer.  It's been a great couple months and a great couple days.  But, as sad as I am about the ending of a blissful time, I'm ready to get back into the swing of things.

And, really, I can't be too sad about everything because after summer comes fall and we all know how I feel about fall.

#tbt - better to give

If there's one thing my family has always excelled at, it's a good celebration.  Birthdays often became birthweeks and presents multiplied like bunnies underneath the Christmas tree.  One year there was an actual bunny rabbit.

I remember one Christmas sitting behind the gift wrapped fort I had constructed and peering over at the small piles of presents my parents had at their feet.  Compared to our mounds of gifts, my parents always seemed to have maybe five to six or seven on a big gift year.

At first I assumed it was because their gifts were more expensive.  I figured that the Barbie dolls I was opening were just worth less than the presents they got from Santa.  Eventually, I learned more about budgets and the prices of things and I realized that just wasn't the case.  They were getting more expensive surprises but it's not like they were receiving trips to the Bahamas or anything.  Year after year they opened books and CDs and workshirts and ties and the occasional gift certificate for a massage or tickets to a concert.  If there were dollar signs hovering over our gift piles theirs would be much smaller.

I always felt really bad for them and worried that it was the future waiting for me.  I would recount my shiny wrapped presents and gather them in a little closer.  I had heard that it was better to give than to receive but I wasn't completely convinced.

Our family vacations were spent traveling in the loaded up minivan with child friendly destinations like water parks and Disney World while my parents had to forgo the less family friendly cruises and beach trips to Hawaii.

I was less appreciative for their sacrifices than I should have been and more worried that it would someday happen to me.  I felt sorry for all the people who had whiny sniveling kids who required their parents to give up so much.  I thought spending a Saturday at the pool with a bunch of children seemed like a less fun option than sitting poolside with a magazine and a Diet Coke.  I spent a lot of time watching the time on the clock of my life that counted down to the days when I would be the sorry person stuck in the kiddie pool.

Last week we went to the splash pad at City Creek Mall.  We loaded up in a van that had no air conditioning and drove to downtown Salt Lake City in the heat of the day as I felt the first shocks of an oncoming migraine headache.  By the time we stepped into the oven roasted parking garage I thought to myself, "Well at least if I throw up everywhere it's on pavement and not in the car."

Getting out of the parking garage seemed like it would help but the beating sun on my aching head was worse and I felt trapped in a Catch 22 of bad options.  I couldn't get back into that stale hot car but I couldn't stay sitting in the hot sun either.  I looked down at Katelyn and caught sight of that innocent chubby face and precious toothy grin and realized the only option that motherhood allowed.

I had to get over myself for the sake of my baby.

I got up and changed Kate into her swimsuit and watched as Dave led her to the splash pad.  Soon I found myself standing at the edge of the spray watching her intently at first for safety's sake but eventually out of sheer amusement.

I watched as her stocky little legs carried a tubby little tummy and short little arms joltingly around the fountains.  She squealed with delight when the water shot upward and clapped when it rained back down.  With a scientific precision she studied the mechanics of the fountains around her.  She got down on the ground to get a better view and when the water sprayed in her face she reacted by simply blinking the water out of her eyes.  She had decided that further inspection was required so she got even closer and I watched the fearless daredevil spirit she was born with in action.  She spent the hour toddling around and watching the older children with a toddler's awed curiosity.

She was just having so much fun and within a few minutes I realized I was having fun too.  I almost couldn't believe it but if offered a cozy seat in an air conditioned room with a cold Diet Coke and a pedicure I would have turned it down.  (Well if I'm going to be one hundred percent honest and because I really love pedicures I will say that at the very least I would be really conflicted.)

I realized that I was finding a true sense of satisfaction from providing an environment where my baby could sense the contrast of the warm sunshine on her cheeks and the cold spray of water on her legs, where she could smell the unique scent of highly chlorinated water that is so characteristic of happy summer days, where she could feel the squish of wet shoes between her toes and the surprise of a spray of blue water.

I stood there the whole time with sweat running down the inside of my shirt and plastering my hair to my neck having a motherhood epiphany.  This is living, I thought.  This is the living my parents had been enjoying for years and I had pitied them for.  This was the kind of sacrifice that parents everywhere were enjoying everyday and this was why my parents never seemed to dread a Christmas morning where their piles of gifts were so insignificant compared to ours.  This was the exchange of comfort and fun for pure joy and happiness that you make the day that you leave the hospital with a squirming bundle of love and this was the trade that stretches you, pushes you, and ultimately changes you into a stronger, wiser, and better person with a larger capacity to love and care and feel for others.

Suddenly I wished that the hands of the clock could just take a break for a bit and that my senses could be heightened so that I could smell stronger, hear louder, and feel more distinctly this moment.  I wanted to stay standing at the rim of those fountains for another forever with the sun beating on my face and the sweat running down my back and the water streaking my makeup.  I wanted just another hour, another minute, another second to watch someone I love with an intensity I have only known about for the last fifteen months purely enjoying herself.  But that same sun was beating on her back and face and I worried about her sensitive porcelain skin getting burned so I knew that the moment was ending despite my internal pleading.  Once again, I had to sacrifice my wants.

But when I scooped her up and wrapped her in a soft towel to see two big beautiful eyes and a huge joyful smile I knew it was all totally worth it.

a vacation pictorial part seven

Well I guess this isn't really much of a pictorial as this is the only picture I have to commemorate yesterday's events.

This picture was taken at the baby blessing of Jon and Tina's little one Max.  It is a fitting photo as I am holding a massive cup of ice and Katelyn is refusing to cooperate.  I guess it was a sign of things to come.

Yesterday was a travel day.  We boarded a flight to Denver at 5:15 and made it home and into bed by 2:30.

No one takes the luxury of economy class flying more for granted than people traveling without children.  I remember the days when my biggest concern when boarding a plane was whether I had a pen for my crossword puzzle.  Yesterday I boarded by plane apologizing as Kate kicked nearly every passenger we passed on our way to the back of the plane.

Our flight from Salt Lake City to Denver had been delayed due to poor weather conditions in Colorado and we had to run almost a mile in under fifteen minutes to catch our connections.  A mile doesn't seem like it would be that difficult but when you are overweight and carrying a 25 pound child, trust me, it is.

Our saving grace on the flight to Salt Lake City had been Slim Jims.  We had an entire bag full of those nasty foul smelling processed beef sticks and Kate reclined across my lap and propped her feet up on Dave's shoulder eating one after another. We had the process down to a science.  One beef stick in Kate's little hand with another unwrapped at the ready and another in line after that.  It occupied her for nearly an hour.

On the flight to Denver it had been those tiny Mamba candies.  To make them last, I bit each little candy into six or seven pieces while Dave tried to keep Kate from flinging sticky little candies all over the place.

Because of the non existent layover, however, I didn't have time to buy more treats.  We had a bottle of apple juice but the real secret of toddler air travel I have learned is tiny foods.  As long as we had some sort of appealing snack that took Katelyn a million years to eat, we were fine.

One of Kate's most favorite things in the whole world is ice.  She loves to crunch ice and we have never seen her turn it down.  Airline ice, unfortunately, comes in giant pieces and is about as hard as I would imagine Arctic icicles to be.  This meant that I was on ice crunching duty.  I started by biting a piece of ice and then handing Katelyn one little bit at a time.  However, this is inefficient and the second rule of toddler air travel is efficiency so I started crunching entire cup fulls of ice at once and spitting the ice back into the cup.

At first I tried to be discreet, you know, wait until no one was looking to deposit a mouthful of masticated ice chunks into a little plastic cup.  Eventually though, I was mentally daring people to stare at me.

"Yeah, you're welcome for protecting your sanity by keeping her quiet."

By the time the plane landed I had crunched through five full cups of ice.  Finally, we landed, deplaned, drove home, walked up the stairs, showered and bathed, and crawled into bed.  I slept until noon because Dave is amazing like that.

Eventually she fell asleep for the last half hour of the flight.  She was stretched out across both of our laps on her stomach with a stuffed dog for a pillow and a blanket keeping her warm.  Dave and I both were frozen into contorted painful positions not daring to move for fear that she would wake up.  Dave tickled her back and I rubbed her feet.  We couldn't help but silently laugh to each other over our spoiled little princess.  Where we once lamented about the fact that the flight attendants rarely gave us the entire can of soda during the beverage service we were now incredibly relieved that for one short moment we could sit and enjoy our flight without wrangling toddler feet.

Despite a crazy day in the air, we had such a fun time in Utah with family.  We made some great memories and it is so sad to think about going back to the real world tomorrow.  Why can't summer vacation last forever?

a vacation pictorial part six

We went for a swim at the new Provo Recreation Center this afternoon.  It was so nice!  I'm jealous that it wasn't that nice when I lived in Provo.  The pool area was huge and was both indoor and outdoors.

First Katelyn and I stopped to visit with my Grandma for a while.

We also stopped by Jack's apartment to meet their cat Storm.  Neither Storm nor Katelyn was very happy about this photo op.

I'm not sure why we all looked so concerned in this series of pictures because we had a really fun time.

We forced Jack to go swimming with us too.

This is about as much as you can ask when posing babies for a picture I guess.

a vacation pictorial part four

 Today we drove to downtown Salt Lake City to check out the new City Creek Mall.  I had heard a lot about it before we moved to Houston and I have to admit, I wasn't really expecting much.  I don't really love malls but this was pretty fun.  It was a huge mall right in the heart of downtown with sky bridges connecting different sections and so much to see!

One of the best parts was the fountain.  I have wanted to take Katelyn to a splash pad for a long time so this was really fun.  She loved it!

Look who we ran into as we were leaving the fountain area!  My uncle John walked right by so we stopped for a picture.

 For lunch we stopped at the food court and I had Red Iguana.  I had heard a lot about Red Iguana but in the seven years I lived in Utah I never went.  It was delicious!

 Kate loved it too!

There was a huge dinosaur play land for the kids in the food court.  Everything was padded including the play equipment so it was great for Katelyn to run around and climb on everything.  She had a great time!