Vacation-Staycation

This post has sat as a half-finished draft for over a month. I'm just not that into blogging this year. But, given that summer is nearly over (yes, school starts in less than a month!) let me finish telling you about our pseudo-summer vacation. . . . .

We'd thought about going to the beach this year, but after various large expenses this spring, we decided to downsize our plans with a short, close trip strategically timed for max relaxation: the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday following Memorial Day, so we had a three day weekend before going out of town and after we returned. We made sure to fill those six days at home with fun stuff, making those nine days our "vacation-staycation" of 2014!

We spent most of Memorial Day weekend at the pool. Kate is swimming a little more independently, especially if she has a vest on, so she's moved beyond the "catch me!" game that Claire plays over and over, running a constant cycle of jumping in to Mommy (with an adorable "get ready, get set, JUMP" recitation each time), kicking as I escort her to the steps, then running around to jump again). We went over to Matt's parents' house for dinner on Memorial Day. Opa taught the girls to play golf and Granna showed them her new "secret garden."

Tuesday, we took off for Wilderness at the Smokies, a water park resort in the Smoky Mountains, near Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tenn. There are indoor and outdoor water parks there, with slides, wave pools, a lazy river, and other water fun. And kids eat free! So, it was a good place for a mini-vacation with kiddos!

It would be most ideal for families with elementary age kids, since most slides required kids to be at least 42-48 inches tall. Kate went on every slide she was tall enough for a million times. Many required a parent to go with her, so Matt and I spent a lot of our time sitting with Claire while the other parent went with Kate on a slide. Then we'd switch off.

 

She went on these racing slides at least twenty times. You go down them head-first on a little foam mat, but she was fearless. As she told me when I commented on her bravery:

"I'm not scared of anything. . . Except things that I'm scared of."

Claire was not so into it. There were a couple areas designed for small kids, with small slides she could go on, but she wasn't having any of it. She liked a bouncy-swing thing that let them dip in and out of the water, but refused the slides. It didn't really cramp our style, because she didn't throw a fit about it or refuse to go in the water at all. We took her in the wave pool and on the lazy river, and she just sat there on my lap, stone-faced as we floated around. Our serious little girl.

 FYI, if you go: don't bother packing a pool bag with your own towels, floatation vest, etc. They provide towels and vests and all that, included, so you can go to the water parks without carrying anything (except your room key, which of course fell out of Matt's pocket our first time out).

We'll have to come back when the girls are a little older, so Kate can do more things by herself and Claire might be a little braver! (She's always been more cautious. At bouncy places, Kate was climbing up the huge slides and sliding down at 18 months, but even at 2 1/2, Claire just stands in one place and jumps, if she gets in the inflatable apparatus at all.)

 

The rooms at Wilderness are fun, with the feel of a mountain lodge. We got a room with a bunk bed separated from a queen bed by a partial wall. The queen bed was on the side near the balcony, so Matt and I could have some privacy from the kids after bedtime, without spending more on a suite with multiple bedrooms. 

 

We took a little afternoon siesta in our room the first day. Claire wanted to read a magazine, just like Mommy. Fitting that she read an old copy of "Working Mother" with the cover story "Take Back Family Time." :0)

 

Returning from our mini-vacation meant three more days of staycation in Nashville. We went to a baseball game and spent more time at the pool.  There were fireworks after the ball game, and the kids were invited to run the bases, as I recall doing as a child in Louisville. Kate ran faster than Claire, of course, but after turning third base, Kate stopped and went back to meet Claire, so they would cross home plate hand-in-hand. So sweet!

Hopefully next year we'll make it to the beach, but for this year, our "vacay-staycay" was a great kick-off to the summer.

Summer Soiree

I can't believe it's already Labor Day weekend! My parents are in town and we'll be grilling out this evening. I'll have to string up the lights I got for my birthday "soiree" a couple months ago—about which I never shared here!

You may recall I'd been daydreaming about it for months, since Kate's "outsourced" fourth birthday party inspired me to plan a party for myself at my next birthday. I hung lights across our patio and crafted a variety of Pinterest-y hors d'oeuvres, and a few friends gathered to chat and sip sangria around our new adirondacks. My friend Maria did the photographic documentation for me :0)

You can find most of the recipes on my Pinterest board for the party: ginger brie bites, crab cakes, rose' sangria, caprese skewers, and of course tons of cheese!

I've been trying to share some of my various party posts on Pinterest (see the board of all of them: The Parsonage Family on Pinterest).

Check out and consider repinning:
Kate's Ice Cream Party
Claire's Rainbow Party
Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails Baby Shower
Bird's Nest Baby Shower
and, just this week: A Virtual Baby Shower!

Sneak peak: I'm planning a farm/harvest theme party for Claire's second birthday in a few months. Our little foster baby has a birthday a few weeks before Claire's, so if she's still with us, we'll have to throw her a little party as well! Ideas?

Swim Lessons

Ever since we moved into our house two years ago, with the neighborhood pool just beyond our backyard, we've intended to get Kate some swimming lessons, but it just never happened. I do get nervous when my kids are in and around the water, especially because they are so brave.

From her first experiences in pools, Kate generally shunned her baby float, preferring just to lunge forward into the water unencumbered. She's had floats and vests she's liked more in recent years, gradually getting more independent, but doesn't know how to hold her breath or anything. And now that Claire is joining her sister in throwing caution to the wind, my anxiety when we're at the pool (especially if it's just one parent with both girls) has increased.

So, we finally bit the bullet and rejoined the Y (Matt has been a member for a while, but I haven't since before Kate was born) and found that there are baby classes as well as preschool and older kid classes! We signed up for a four-week session and have classes for both girls each Saturday morning!

Claire's is first and is a parent/child class, so I'm in the water with her and all the other parents and babies/toddlers (ages 6-36 months), moving her around as we sing songs and rhymes. Claire seems to enjoy it, especially the "tick-tock" of bobbing back and forth to get them used to having their ears wet, and learning how to climb out of a pool on their own ("elbow-elbow-tummy-knee"), then jumping back in ONLY when Mommy counts 1-2-3-JUMP! (Important for kids to learn not to jump in when their grown-up is not ready!)

 

 

Kate has been SO excited about her swim lessons, she was doing her own "swim lessons" in the baby pool earlier this summer, practicing going underwater with her goggles on and all. We worried she would get nervous when she was actually there with the other kids, teachers, noise, and all that, but she LOVED it, right from the start.

 

After the first lesson and for the whole week following, we heard this litany:
"I've got church day, then one school day, two school days, three school days, four school days, five school days, THEN MY NEXT SWIMMING LESSON!"

"Or, you could just say, 'Next Saturday,'" I told her.
"Is that the same thing?"

 

Kate's class is ages 3-5, with three teachers, and they split them up by age, so with only one other four-year-old, Kate basically has a semi-private lesson. The teacher just raved about how well Kate was doing, saying it was obvious she is in the water regularly and that she does either gymnastics or ballet (good sense of her own body). She couldn't wait to practice kicking and blowing bubbles at the neighborhood pool during the week.

 

We had the second lesson this past Saturday, and Granna got to come to watch (and take these pictures for me!) I worked out during most of Kate's lesson, but came back in just in time to see her dive down to the bottom (with the teacher's help) and pick up a ring off the bottom of the pool!

Kate can't wait until Saturday rolls around again—she'll be so sad when swim lessons are over!

I'm a Minivan Mama

Well, the transformation into suburban mom is complete: I now drive a minivan.

Meet Ari. He is a Hyundai Entourage. (I'm not actually a fan of the show, "Entourage," but I do love Jeremy Piven, and it just seemed to fit.) Ari is big. And our garage is small. I just barely got him in there this evening after a family post-dinner ice cream run (so everybody else could enjoy a test drive as well) but I'll get the knack for it.

It's a 2008, from Carmax, and I really like it. It's very spacious, and such a smooth drive. Creamy, like butter. Odd adjectives for a car, I guess, but that's literally what comes to mind when I press either the gas or the brake. Very nice.

Looking at this picture, I am saying to myself, "what have I done?" But as Matt pointed out, the time was right to trade in my Elantra (second Hyundai in a row—I've been happy) and we'd have to take the plunge sometime. Sometime soon, in fact. Things were pretty tight with two car seats in a four-door, mid-size sedan, and the time will come when we need room for more than just two car seats.

No, I'm not pregnant. A third biological child will come at some point, we hope.

But for now, we have a different announcement. One I'd been drafting in another, more spiritual and dramatic blog post, but better I just say it here. Matt and I are in the process of being approved as foster parents! We look forward to hosting children who need a temporary home, probably before the end of the calendar year. More on how we came to this decision and other thoughts about it will come in the other post, whenever I finish it.

Besides new cars and new kids, another new addition is being added to our happy home: a new swingset! Matt and his dad (and my dad, when he was here last weekend) have been constructing this delightful piece of equipment in our backyard. It's quite a project. I can't count the hours they've put into this already. It will be fabulous, though, and the kids will really enjoy it.

And while the men were working on the Great Swingset Project of 2012 (and before and after getting my car) I crafted this little number to celebrate the coming of fall! Yippee!! I'm kind of a stickler for observing seasons and won't pull out the rest of my fall decorations until the autumnal equinox, but since my front door and kitchen table decorations were still my Eastery things I'd had up all spring and summer, it was time.

Plus, it was only in the mid-70s in Nashville today. A regular cold snap after the hellish heat we'd been having. Hope it's nice where you live. Fall will be here soon!

Summer's Last Swim

School is in session, the football season has begun, a few leaves are even falling, and I have an unnatural desire for chili and cable-knit sweaters. But alas, it is still 90 degrees outside (and still technically summer, anyway).

Reluctantly siding with reality over my own fantasies, I blew up the backyard pool and we had one last swim for summer 2010.

 

Kate and I splashed around for much of the afternoon, filling and dumping buckets full of water. We flung water into the air with an arsenal of different colored beach shovels, and got the terms "blue" and "yellow" down pretty well. We also started a new game, where Kate flops across my lap and I rock her while she says, "baby... baby..."

She'll always be my baby, even when she's all grown up. But I'll miss that little polka-dotted ruffle-butt.

Next weekend, I'll break out the fall decorations and begin another season that, while not Kate's "first," will still be extra-special.