Summer is Here!

It's the first day of summer!  School's out and we're hitting it with a bang!  To the beach, I said.  To the beach!

Dad even brought his laptop with us and worked at the beach.  This is going to be awesome!  I love summer!

I can see the light of summer!

Today, I dyed my hair.  It needed to be done.  I went darker and used a colour that my sister uses.  I think I like it.  Turns out I missed a spot and had to get Tyler to touch it up later.  That's what husbands are for.

I really hate my hair lately.  This humidity is killing me.  I have no idea how to deal with this hair in this humidity.  I'm trying to grow it long, but it just always ends up in a pony tail because it's a sweaty mess on my neck.  But then if I cut it, I'm worried the humidity will make it impossible to style it the way I want and I'll just be stuck with short hair that I hate.  It's taken me 2 1/2 years to grow it.  Do I give up?  

We're back in the swing of the last few days of school and soccer.  I'm REALLY looking forward to summer.  I think.  No more alarm clocks!  No more lunches!  But I will have 3 kids home ALL DAY EVERY DAY!  And I have a feeling they will be expecting me to figure out ways to entertain them.

Logan is playing soccer with big Logan.  They both happened to have the same name, and both had red t-shirts on.  Logan tried to convince me to let him go and play soccer on big Logan's team when it was his turn to play.  

See, look how big he is!

We have a lot of people coming to visit us this summer.  My parents, my sister and her two kids, and my little sister are all coming throughout July and August, and then Tyler's sister and her husband are coming towards the end of August and into September.

I declare this to be the SUMMER OF GEORGE!  now I just need a bit of time to decompress.

Logan

Logan is obsessed with these goggles.  He wears them pretty much every day.  They're either around his neck or on his face.

And then he'll randomly turn to someone and say, "Adventure is out there!"  only, it sounds more like, "abventure's out dere!"

He's handsome.

Thomas the Train

A few weeks ago when we were at the mall shopping for Dad's Father's Day Present, I noticed a big poster advertising that Thomas the Train would be visiting the Cataraqui mall.  I grabbed a flyer and made a mental note that my boys would probably love that.  Then we headed to DC.

I came home, made plans for a YW's presidency meeting and thought nothing more of it.  Then, last night, I remember that Thomas was here.  Fortunately I had put the flyer on my fridge.  And fortunately I had noticed the flyer amid all the other paraphernalia that's on there.  Wedding invitations, school calendars, christmas photos, etc.  So, this morning I went to my presidency meeting, which happened to be about 2 blocks away from the mall and then we headed to see Thomas.  Logan wore his Thomas shirt and brought his Thomas the Train with him.

It was a bit pre-schoolish, so I'm not sure how excited Max actually was, but he likes going out and doing things, so he was a good sport.  Plus I bought the boys a hot dog for lunch...so they were pleased.

We got our picture with Angelina Ballerina too.  The nice thing about living in a fairly small town, is things are never REALLY busy.  Especially when you've just come home from a trip to DC where everything is busy.  I don't mind waiting in a line of 10 people.  That's nothing.

Mark My Words

Today, I am feeling a little batty.  I'm not sure if it's PMS.  Well, I'm pretty sure PMS is contributing...but it isn't solely to blame.  Another culprit is some serious lack of sleep.  A week in 4 different hotel beds, sharing a room with your husband AND 3 children, going all day until 10:30 at night and up and at 'em to start the next day before I've gotten a decent night's sleep...plus staying up well past midnight last night catching up on PVR'd shows contributes to my sleepiness today...which also contributes to the batty-ness.

But that's not it.

Dealing with mountains of laundry after a week long trip adds to it.  Especially when my dryer takes three or four rounds before actually drying the clothes.  Coming home after a week and discovering 'a smell' in your house that you can't pinpoint, and therefore can't illuminate adds to it.

Finding papers and socks and toys and wrappers and toothbrushes and pillows and suitcases and shoes shoes shoes ALL over the house adds to it.  Things that had a place before we left, but have not found their way back to their place since coming home Saturday night.  Why have they not found their way back to their places?

But the real source?  The real problem I'm facing today?  Is a problem I do not yet have a solution for...and hence, the batty-ness.   Stuff!  I don't like seeing stuff.  I like stuff to be in it's place...and it's place is most definitely out of sight.  I would love to not have all this stuff...but the people insist that they need it, so we keep it.  But in order for this mother-child relationship to remain simpatico...the stuff needs to be in it's place.

And new stuff keeps finding it's way into my house.  Everyday my kids come home from school with a backpack full of stuff.  I imagine that the teachers feel the same way I do about all the stuff...so their solution is to send it home in a backpack.  Out of sight!  I wish I had a backpack I could fill with stuff and send away and be done with it.

I lived in a trailer for 5 years.  5 years!  We started with 3 people in that trailer and grew to 5. We acquired a lot of stuff.  There were 2 closets.  Stuff did not have a place.  For 5 years!  Don't get me wrong...I loved living in the trailer...but not for the house.  The people made it fun.  The proximity to Grandma's made it fun.  Being snowed in, freezing pipes, mouse droppings, and not having ANY space for anything did NOT make it fun.  Things usually ended up on the counter.  Or the table.  Or the desk.  And it would stay there for a long LONG time.

The walls feel tighter around me when I think of all the stuff.

So now I am in a big beautiful home.  Oodles of space for stuff.  But my insanity continues because there is space for stuff but nothing to put the stuff IN.  Remember...out of sight. I want it out of sight.

Most of the furniture that we own is 2nd hand.  Or 3rd.  Our living room furniture is new.  Our TV is new.  Our mattress is new.  That's all.  We have dressers that were handed down to us from our parents...who got them handed down to them when they were newly-weds.  The kids beds, basement couch and chairs, dining room table and chairs, and bookshelves come from moving sales.  We have 1 bedside table that came from a friend.  There is no artwork. There are no curtains.  You can't usually find those at garage sales.  The washer and dryer are from kijiji.  They're being replaced by ones from friends.

So as you can see, we don't spend money on things to put our stuff in.  And therefore, the stuff is around.  I would love to have places for things to go...but I also choke at the possibility of spending money.

We have the ironing board set up in our bedroom so there is another surface to collect things.  Sunday School manuals, papers, a climbing harness, mail, artwork from my children.  And every Sunday, my husband moves these items to other locations so he can iron his shirt (because I don't iron) and every week, those items move their way back to the ironing board, because I don't want them in other places. It's like a dance.  A hill-billy dance.

On Sunday, my friend came over and brought me a gift.  A beautiful, wonderful gift.  I have been bringing a deliciously beautiful trifle to a number of BBQs and events lately.  It's delicious.  It's sought out.  It's wonderful. I bring it in a white mixing bowl, because I don't own a trifle bowl...or event a clear bowl for that matter.  I was in Walmart the other day and saw a trifle bowl for $20 and thought, should I buy this?  I make a lot of trifles.  It would make sense to have a trifle bowl.  And then I thought, it's $20...my white bowl is already sitting in my cupboard at home.  It has a place.  A trifle bowl would not have a place.  And it's $20.  I did not buy it.

So I shared my trifle recipe with my friend, who shared it with her sister, who made it for her dad for Father's Day.  And these two sisters got to talking and said, "have you ever noticed that Heather never brings trifle in a trifle bowl?"  "Why, yes, I have noticed that."  "Do you think she owns one?"  "I don't know."  "You gave me 2 for Christmas a few years ago, would you mind if I give one of them to her?" "I don't mind at all."  And so on Sunday, one of the two Sisters came and brought me a beautiful trifle bowl for my trifle creations as a thank-you for sharing the recipe.  How thoughtful.  How glorious.  And I even found a place for it.  It's beautiful.

So I digress...this is getting lengthy.  And the stuff is still there.  It screams to me silently and makes me crazy as I sit here all alone in my house.  We're here!  You can see us!  We're the stuff without a place!

Yes, stuff, I see you.  And I hear you.  Constantly.  Your day will come.  When my purse strings loosen a little bit...your day will come.

Mark my words.

Driving Home

It's finally time.  We're finished with all the adventures we had planned for this week.  There is nothing left to do but drive home.

We stopped in Watertown to grab some dinner (Little Caesar's Read Made Pizza's...you're the best).  Tyler decided to just get one, and regretted it.  He didn't want to spend the extra money on a second pizza.  I reminded him that an extra pizza was $6.  Making our grand total for dinner $12...as compared to the $30+ dollars we've been spending every time we went to McD's.  The ridiculousness was duly noted.  Pizza is a bargain.  Don't scrimp.

So we listened to some tunes.  Laughed as the kids danced along to "Call me, Maybe" (Max's current favourite) and "We Are Young" (Logan's favourite).

And we rode off into the sunset.

Thanks for welcoming us home Ontario.  It's good to be back.  Now to unpack, get the kids to bed and let Tyler prepare his talk for tomorrow morning.

I get to look forward to mountains of laundry.

Crayola Factory

Today was the final day of our trip.  I'm sad to be going home, but also looking forward to sleeping in my own bed...and not sharing a room with the entire family.  It's been really great to spend so much time together though.  We've been hot, and tired, but we've had a lot of fun.  I feel like I've gotten to know my kids again.  Looking forward to the summer (I think).

This morning we woke up and had breakfast (did I mention I like free continental breakfasts?).  The kids headed to the pool with Dad while I showered and cleaned up the room.  Can't miss the opportunity to swim in every pool!  The elevator was out so we had to lug the luggage (I guess that's why they call it that) down the stairs to our van.  Took a few trips but we made it.  (Side note, I accidentally type elevatory first, before correcting it and it doesn't tell me that's a misspelling.  What's an elevatory?)

Once we were packed, we headed to the Crayola Factory.  Excited!  This town is a dump.  Seriously sketch.  Every other store is boarded up and it just looks like nothing good happens here.  We were still hopeful that the factory wouldn't disappoint.

After waiting a LONG time in the line-up to get it (seriously, open more than one till people - am I just getting crabby?) we were on our way.

It was basically a self-guided process where you could just do whatever the heck you wanted.  And sadly, in mine and Tyler's opinion it wasn't really worth it...but the kids loved it.  Mostly just tables and chairs set up in different rooms with crayola supplies on them.  First they got to use washable crayons to colour on this white-board car.

Then we used special markers that you write on black paper and the colours show through.  Not sure how to explain that better...not sure I care.

Then it was off to play with Crayola's version of play-doh.  Can't remember what it's called.  They gave us a handful of tokens at the beginning that we could use to 'purchase' supplies and the play-doh was just such a purchase.  The kids had fun at this station and we stayed there for a while.

Little Play-doh Logan:

Tyler jokingly made me a ring and I said "YES!".  "Wow, no hesitation this time."  "Nope, I can't say no to that ring."  He didn't like my joke.

The two older kids took turns going with Dad to paint with melted crayons.  It was a bit messy and hot (Max got burnt once) so we decided it was probably not a good idea for Logan.

Then it was side-walk chalk...which was a good idea in theory.  And Logan really loved it.  But it was messy.  Chalky bums.

They had walls set up where you could draw with a glow-in-the dark wand, but they didn't work very well.  And Tyler even found one that was shorting out.

Next, while Lucy danced it up, the boys played in a kid's zone.

Then Logan got his picture taken with Lightening McQueen.  They printed out a colouring page that had Lightening on it and him.  Pretty cool.  Max posed with Spiderman and Lucy posed with Cinderella.

Then they used watercolors to pain paper plates and put them through a dryer so we could take them home with us.

They got to do Color Wonder pages, and colour with markers on a wall.

We tried doing a "How it's made" demonstration on how crayons are made, but it was WAAAAAY boring, so we left.

In the middle of the factory, they had these water tables where you got to guide a boat and it's cargo through the locks.  Not sure what it had to do with Crayola at all.  But the kids liked it.

One of the best parts was the glow-in-the-dark markers.  We had fun there.  Partially because we hit it at the right time and it was quiet in there, and partially because it was just really cool.

Lastly, the kids got to make their own vests out of a paper bag.  Max's is a space suit, Logan is a cowboy and Lucy is a princess...I guess you could call her the paper bag princess.

We were exhausted by the end.  The kids used the rest of their tokens to get markers and crayons and we headed out for one last stop at McDonald's (seriously, 3 days in a row is SO gross) before we headed for home.

My overall thoughts on the Crayola Factory?  Skip it.  Not worth the money.  It cost us about $50 to get in and we could have used that money to actually buy our kids a butt-load of crayola products and recreated the same experience at home.  Plus the place was chaos and the town was sketch.

When we were looking at the Crayola webiste last night in preparation for our trip today we realized that there was an amusement park called Sesame Place a little ways outside of Philadelphia.  If we had gone a different way home we could have stopped there instead and had WAY more fun.  I guess that just means we need to plan another road trip!

Shuffelin'

Today, Tyler had his conference from about 7am-2pm.  Unfortunately, neither one of us heard the alarm go off, so he woke up about 10 minutes before he was supposed to start his presentation...not showered, not dressed, and not set up with his huge poster and laptop presentation ready to go.  The phone rang about 15 minutes later while he was still quietly scrambling to get organized (me, crossing my fingers that the kids would sleep through it).  Someone asking where Tyler was.  Unfortunately the phone woke Logan up.  11pm bedtime and 7am wake-up is not enough sleep for that boy.  Crabby day!

The kids and I headed downstairs for breakfast (not complimentary!)  Why do expensive hotels not have complimentary breakfasts but a Holiday Inn that only costs $100 does?  What gives?  I am definitely all about the free continental breakfast.  So after we paid to go to the buffet (fortunately they only charged me for one of the kids and myself...which still cost $40!) I headed to the front desk to ask if we could get a late check-out.  Nope.  The best they could do was 12:00.  So we headed back upstairs.  Watched some TV and I showered.  I packed up our room and loaded the luggage cart.  The hotel at least was kind enough to store our luggage for us until Tyler was done in his conference.  And then kids a I checked out of our room and headed to the rooftop to use the pool.  Hoping it wouldn't be a problem that we had already checked out of the hotel.  I was pretty grumpy and a little put-out by the not so convenient super expensive hotel that I'm pretty sure I would have said 'screw you' or something a tad nicer, since my kids were with me.

The rooftop pool was fun, and the kids really enjoyed it.  We ordered lunch from up there (which took an hour to come - 2 grilled cheese sandwiches, fries and a club-house sandwich....really?  An hour?  I'm SO not impressed with this hotel).

Tyler met us up there and we got changed and headed out for our drive back to Pennsylvania.  3pm on a Friday afternoon is not the time to try and get out of Washington DC.  Again, we were without AC and it was stinking hot.  Stop and Go Traffic for 2 hours.  And we only went 50 miles.  The car overheated and the callipers swelled.  We had to pull over and let them cool.  We started smoking and thought we were going to have to bail out of our van at any second.  Fortunately we had a flat of water bottles in the van and Tyler carefully poured the water over the brakes to cool them off.  The water evaporated instantly.  Crazy hot!

He got back in the car and we decided to wait for things to cool down.  We remembered that we hadn't been very good at family prayers and scriptures study while we were on vacation and decided to repent and ask for the Lord's help.  We said a family prayer and asked for safety in driving home.  It was a good experience for our kids.  We got back on the road and decided to head through Delaware to get home, so we could add one more state to our growing list.  The detour proved to be inspirational as we ended up hitting a little rain storm in Delaware just as we were getting dinner that cooled things off nicely.  We were able to drive with some degree of comfort and the van performed great.

We got to Easton Pennsylvania to stay at a beautiful, economical Holiday Inn (with free continental breakfast) for the night before heading to the Crayola factory tomorrow.  Exhausted!  A 3 hour trip ended up taking us 6 hours.  Blah!  The kids were really good about it and didn't complain at all.

Washington DC Temple

It was good to chill out and spend some time in the hotel today.  We got up this morning, had breakfast, got ready and packed up and then went for one last swim in the hotel pool before we had to check out.  Then it was back into the hot van to head to our new hotel.  A little construction slowed the progress...which was tough on Tyler since he was already dressed in dress-shirt and pants to be ready for his 1:00 meeting.  Nothing like showing up good and sweaty to a meeting with a bunch of people you don't know!

We got to the new hotel at about 12:55pm and check-in wasn't until 4pm.  Tyler had to leave for his meeting right away which left the kids and I in the lobby with a cart full of luggage and nothing to do and nowhere to go.  The kids were antsy, hungry and hot, which equated to NOT QUIET...and magically a room became available for us.  It's funny how loud kids in the lobby of a posh hotel can do that.  Thanks guys!

We unpacked, headed back downstairs to grab some lunch and then the kids and I hung out in the room for the afternoon.  The kids watched shows on the i-pad while Logan slept and I relaxed for a bit.  It was great.

Tyler came back up to the room around dinner time and we headed out to get a bite to eat (McD's, yuck!) and then went to go and see the Washington DC Temple and Visitor's Center.  We could see the temple from our hotel room, but it's much more exciting in person.

One of the Sister Missionaries at the Visitor's Center gave the kids 'Future Missionary' stickers and let us watch a movie on the family.

Then we headed outside and one of the other senior missionaries took our picture in front of the temple.

Then we walked around the grounds a bit to check things out. 

I actually caught a smile on film!  Only because I told him NOT to smile.  Typical.  

We spotted this little furry friend, and the kids tried to inch as close as possible without scaring him away.

This little garden was behind the temple so we stopped to take a breather and take some pictures.  Here we are, trying to get a picture of the boys and I in our matching stripes.  Max was not picture friendly...again.

The sunset looked beautiful from the temple grounds.  And the drive there was beautiful.  It's like the temple is a true refuge.  In the middle of this busy mega-city there is a beautiful tree-filled park that somehow deadens the sound of all traffic and noise and suddenly you come upon the temple.  It's amazing to walk around and not hear traffic at all.  It was truly peaceful and beautiful.

On our way home we decided to stop by the TLC famous Georgetown Cupcakes.  We went to the Bethesda location, which is not the original.  But it was still cool.  The cupcakes were just ok.

Plus a quick stop at the Apple Store and then it was home for some TV and bed.

Tomorrow Tyler has to get up super early for a meeting (I'm hoping the kids will stay asleep while he gets ready).  We have to check out of the hotel and hang out (who knows where) until he's done his meetings at 2pm.  I'm hoping they'll let me have a late check-out.  Probably something we should have thought of before tonight.  There are a bunch of high-school teams showing up tomorrow though, so I'm not sure if it's going to happen.