Maine recap

Maine was fun for a lot of reasons. We were excited to go up for our week-long vacation with the Bowers' and Wengles, but we also had Carolyn and Adrian's wedding so it was a nice bi-fecta. Downtown Portland was cute and happening and yet another place we could see ourselves living. The wedding great: fun, funny, short, and meaningful ceremony, and great party afterwards. Cousin Lyssa drove up from Philly in terrible traffic for something like 37 hours, so big thanks to her for watching the kids.

After the wedding, we packed up and got on a ferry to Great Diamond Island in the Casco Bay with the Bowers' (Mike, Stacey and Lily) and the Wengles (Fred and Erin). The island was the definition of relaxing. Well, relaxing with kids anyway. Fred and Erin seemed to be relaxed, and Stacey and Mike only have Lily so they trade off being relaxed. Ali and I were as relaxed as we could be with two kids who apparently plotted in advance to only nap simultaneously for 30 minutes the whole week. But they couldn't help it - it was such a beautiful spot right on the water with our own little beach and a big yard with old trees and tree swings.
We decided not to bring the port-a-crib that Sadie only fits in diagonally, and she slept in a real bed for the first time. Jake and Sadie shared a little room connected to our room that probably had the best view in the house. She did great in her big bed, although we did find her on the floor a couple of times. No crying, so she must have decided to relocate sometime during the night??

The island was pretty isolated, with only a little quickie mart and the random lobsterman on a bicycle with his catch of the day for food. The other option was to order from the mainland grocery store and have them deliver, which we took advantage of. The food came in cardboard banana shipping boxes which were the kids' toys for the whole week. Towers, mazes, art projects imaginary trains, and random games. Even if you don't live on an island, I recommend getting your food delivered in banana boxes if you have kids.


Jake loved his role as gang leader of Sadie and Lily. The two girls are both just two, and at the age where they're just starting to acknowledge and play with each other. Ali and I were both proud of how Jake looked out for the younger girls and tried to include them in his games. They had their issues of course, but overall the kids all played great together and I think next summer they'll all be able to play together even more. Fred and Erin did great too - no fights over toys!

It was so much fun. I think all of us left the island thinking, "so how many lobsters do you have to catch every day to live here full time?"
Check out more pictures here.

Happy Father's Day!

We had a pretty relaxing day today, after the craziness of Jake's birthday party yesterday. Actually, it wasn't that crazy. Jake was great, and seemed to have fun with his friends, and his family, and that made Ali and I really happy. Gram and Poppy came early and took the kids out Saturday morning to the Corcoran downtown so Ali and I could do our arts and crafts projects. We made a giant robot for the door, a racecar for pin the wheel on the racecar, robot cupcakes and robot costumes for a robot dance party contest.

So, if you're a regular tripdub reader, you'll of course rememeber this photo from last fall:
We had a great time with Stacey Mike and Lily at some farm thing, but this photo cracked us up because it makes Ali look like a tiny little leprechaun next to GIANT STACEY. So here's the photo-revenge shot where little leprechaun Lily gets matched up with GIANT SADIE!
Ok, not quite as dramatic, but a little chuckle, no?

Fun weekend

While Ali toiled away working on her schoolwork, Grandpa and I took the kids down to Family Engineering Day at the National Building Museum this past Saturday. It was PACKED! They had all kinds of fun stuff, like guys climbing ropes, drag racers, fighting robots, bridge building and milk carton-balloon race car building.

Here they are in front of the drag racer (that's Sadie practicing her "smile"):
Saturday night we met the Bowers for pizza and ping pong. Here is Jake working his charms on Lily:Once again, the weekend consisted of only two days. Boo. Can't wait for the long weekend down at the lake!

I Heart Fall

This weekend was pretty much the perfect weather for a weekend. Sunny, cool, and the sky looked like the opening scene of the Simpsons.

I love fall, but I still don't get why you're not supposed to capitalize the seasons. With words like fall and spring, they could easily be mistaken for their verb cousins without a capital letter starting them off right. Even "winter" can be a verb. Oh well, I suppose there are bigger fish...

Anyway, first things first. I was going through the camera's memory card, which is finally full, and making sure I had copies of all the pictures before I deleted everything. I came across a few pictures that Ali had taken for Patrick's birthday a few months back of the kids dressed in their Majestic chef's whites. Majestic is capitalized, of course, because it's the famous restaurant recently voted best restaurant in Memphis, TN (full disclosure: at least 23 votes were cast from this household). So, happy belated birthday, Patrick! How's that ukulele?


We started the weekend off with a trip out to Burke nursery with Stacey and Mike and baby Lily. Here we are showing Sadie how smiling works:


And here are Sadie and Lily about to walk through the Great Pumpkin Tunnel:
This picture cracks me up. Yes, Stacey is taller than Ali in real life, but for some reason, Ali looks like she's four feet tall here:
Does Jake have a future career as a professional model? You be the judge (but there's only one correct answer, judges).

Three Musketeers Outing

We had fun yesterday catching up with Jake's buddies, Rachel and Jocelyn. After a snack at Rachel's house, we all went over to Cabin John Park to play and ride the train.

Here they are on the engine. The conductor was very focused on keeping his train on schedule and finally agreed to let us take a quick picture as long we agreed to "make it snappy."

Sadie loved the train ride! Big smiles and lots of pointing. And, we saw a deer!


I'll be sad when the kids are too old to be convinced to make any pose for my amusement.


More pictures...

Jocelyn Turns Three

One of the Three Musketeers - Jocelyn - recently turned three, and her parents threw a fun pajama party complete with scavenger hunt and story time. I hate to say it, but this may be the last big hurrah for the Three Musketeers, as they may be going their separate ways this summer. Jocelyn, Rachel and Jake have been buddies at daycare since they were babies.

Jocelyn was pretty excited to have all her friends at her party, and played the part of a good hostess, bouncing all over the room and playing with everyone. Jake and Rachel were pretty much joined at the hip, sitting next to each other for pizza, and playing together most of the night.
And here's Jocelyn enjoying her fruit cup:

And here's Sadie doing her best Johnny Cash impression (anyone? anyone?):

The Three Amigos in..........the Botanic Gardens!

On Sunday we headed downtown to meet up with Jake's daycare buddies, Rachel and Jocelyn to check out the trains at the US Botanic Gardens. Well, the trains were mostly outside and it was a cold rainy day, so we just decided to head in and search the jungle for frogs. One of the kids noticed the "ribbit" sounds so we had them looking all over for the frogs. We finally found them, but for some reason they were hiding behind these big speakers.

Here's Jake and Rachel taking a break on a bench:
And here's Jocelyn pointing something out to Jake:

More photos (including some cute shots of Sadie) over here.

Dollface

Mike and Stacey, I hope you're getting royalty payments from the Cabbage Patch company.



Check out more pictures of Lily (and her BFF Sadie) here.

Cox Farms

Sunday morning we headed out to Cox Farms to meet up with Jake's old daycare buddies, Rachel, Jocelyn and Evan. This place is pretty amazing. We were overwhelmed with all the slides, rides, and things to do here. The staff is friendly, the place looked great with all the pumpkins and fall decorations, and there is SO much to do for the kids. We spent a while on the giant hay ziggurat with intricate maze system underneath. Jake loved the tunnels ("It's pretty fancy!"), so much so that it got to be tricky to keep track of him with all the various entrances and exits. At one point another parent asked if the kid in the yellow t-shirt belonged to me, because he was last seen running wildly in a direction vaguely away from where we were. Yes, he's mine, thank you. I will put my camera down for a minute and act like a parent now.

Once everyone arrived, we ventured off to the giant slides built on the sides of hills. We saw five or six, but there must have been twice that many. The slides were pretty big and I looked around and saw lots of younger kids going down with their parents, so I wasn't sure if Jake would want me to go with him or not. He raced up the side of the hill, and I followed. As we got the top I asked if he wanted me to go down with him, but I couldn't get the question out before he jumped onto the slide and was halfway down already. He climbed right back up the hill and went down a taller one the next time. Then, he climbed up again, and jumped onto one that had a sharp turn about halfway down. He'd thrown himself onto it with enough force that he wasn't able to control the turn and ended up doing some dramatic tumbles down the slide. He was a bit shaken up, but I thought it'd be best to get right back up and try another one. "Ready for the next slide, Jake?" "No Slide. Jake pretty scared."

We rounded out the morning with a great hayride (they really put all other hayrides to shame) and a picnic lunch. Good times.

See some pictures here or over there in the pictures section -->

Three Musketeers

How cute are these kids? I'm biased about the little guy on the left, but come on, these are all some cute kids.

Sidenote: Have you ever seen those ads at shopping malls for cute kid contests? It's something like $20 to enter the contest and they promise some big payoff, but that sure is a brilliant scam. What parent doesn't think their kid could win a cuteness contest? The guy that invented that is probably retired on Fiji.

To Jake's left are his old daycare buddies, Jocelyn and Rachel. They came up through the ranks together, barely crawling when they first met, and now look at 'em!

So, Ali and I were talking and we both thought, "Gee, Jocelyn sure looks just like her Mom and Rachel sure looks just like her Mom". But we were both stumped about which one of us Jake looks like. Maybe we just can't see the resemblance because we're too close to him? Or does he look less like either of us, and more just like himself? This gives me an excuse to try out the new survey feature of the blog (see survey over/up there -->).

Playdate

We were supposed to go up to Glen Echo Park on Sunday with Jake's old daycare buddies, Jocelyn and Rachel, but the weather forced a change of plans so we decided to have everyone over to our house instead. Unfortunately, Rachel and her parents found that the Beltway had just been converted to the world's biggest parking lot, so they had to turn back. But Jocelyn and her parents came over and we had a fun rain day inside (and outside, briefly, when they both made a run for it).

They seemed to enjoy playing together and they get into these giggle fits which is pretty cute. Jocelyn probably would have had more fun if Jake hadn't decided to hit her on the head a bunch of times with toys. He's so sweet immediately after the assault-- comforting her, offering ice packs, helmets, etc. He either hasn't figured out the cause and effect relationship of Toy-Bonking or he's developed a case of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.