Exclamations

Lately Shane and I have been very grateful that we don't swear. Oliver has been picking up on our exclamations. He doesn't always repeat them, but stores them away and uses them later. We were driving by a big truck the other day and Oliver exclaims "That's a big big GIANT truck! OH. MY. GRACIOUS!" It was too funny! Other exclamations he likes to use. "Oh Come ON!" "Dang it!" "Oh boy, oh man!" It's so fun each day to find out what he is going to talk about and to just see his little imagination develop!

Busy Times at GaGaPopPop's

We had a vacation at GaGa's house last week, doing all of the things in the summer growing up. It was so much fun to do it all with my kiddos! And thank you so much to GaGaPopPop for all of their help and patience with the kiddos!

Monday- Shopping day finished off by a dip in the pool!

(I was washing Oliver's jammies, so he wore PopPop's shirt that night, love it!)


Tuesday- Leavitt Beach with my childhood friend, Amy and the children she nannies, Laura and Sammy. Laura, 4, and Oliver got along so well! She would tell him "Now we're going fill up the bucket with rocks!" and he would diligently follow. What can I say? He likes a girl who takes charge:) Lily, who usually HATES strollers, sat in the stroller for about 3/4 of the time, happy as a clam! It was such a great day with a great friend.

Wednesday- We went through a hike through Chamberlain Reynolds Experimental Forest. Its such a great walk for a 2 year old. Wide trails, mostly flat land, and not we only encountered probably 5 people on the trails!

(On the way back, both babies wanted to be carried by Mama! What a work out!)

Thursday- In the morning we visited my friend Courtney and her sons Xander and Nolan (Nolan just turned 1 month!). Oliver had a great time with all of Xander's great toys (lots of cars and tractors, he even has a bouncy house!) Lily enjoyed switching between the dummies that Nolan gave her (he only likes Nuk) In the afternoon we went the the Squam Lakes Science Center. What a cool place! It is like a zoo but with all local animals. They have great interactive exhibits, too. It's all about understanding the life cycles of the animals and plants around us and how we can affect them for better or worse. Pretty much , Oliver just liked the slides and the waterfalls...

(notice the sleeping blackbear behind Oliver's head!)

Friday- Our final morning we went to Heritage Farm Pancake House. Some friends of ours from church own it. They serve hearty, delicious breakfast platters using all local foods. They also have a petting zoo behind the house. Oliver liked the piggies and the bunny. The geese were terrifying, honking and hissing at us! Laura May, the owners daughter, even let Oliver ride her pony, Black Beauty! Shane came up for dinner (he'd been at work all week) and took us out for ice cream after. What a joyous reunion!

Protect

Before Shane leaves for work each day, he tells Oliver to protect his sister. A few weeks ago, we were at a party and there was a baby with the same hat on as Lily's. Her Grandma was holding her. Oliver spotted her from across the yard and started yelling "Hey! That's my sister! Hey! Let go my sister!" then he turned to me, pleading, "Mama! Its my sister!" It was such a beautiful display of a brother's love for his sister. I of course pointed out that Lily was on MY lap, and he said "Oh. Ok" and continued playing in the sand box.

Tonight Lily woke up about 45 minutes after she fell asleep. I guess I took too long getting to her, because Oliver yelled at me "Mama! Beanbean's crying! Go rescue her!" I love how much that boy loves his sister:)

Southern Belle

A big thanks to Ariane for this adorable dress/hat combo! We love playing dress up in it!

ugh.

we've had a very sick family lately, hence the small number of posts. Memorial Day weekend Oliver started throwing up Saturday night and kept puking right through Tuesday. Right as he got better, Lily started gettinga phlegmy throat. Last Monday she developed a small fever and developed nasty cough. Two days later I felt like I was coming down with something; yucky tummy, sensitive skin, achy, etc. Saturday afternoon it hit me like a ton of bricks and hasn't let up yet. Lily was having the same unpleasant "digestive issues" as me, but hers only lasted a day. This morning Oliver filled his diaper with those same "digestive issues." I can't catch a break! I'm feeling very weak, as I haven't kept anything in my system since Friday and I still have to take care of these babies! My mom came down on Friday to help, and Shane was great all weekend (doing the grocery shop, making meals, keeping Oliver occupied, etc) even though yesterday was his birthday!! Luckily we have some awesome friends who approached Shane at church and told him they would bring him a birthday dinner! Shane said that it was amazing. I'm so grateful for great friends like the Klicks in my life!!



In other news, Lily is 9 months old today!! She's been out as long as she was in! Happy 9 months, big girl!!

Florida Day 7

Oh my goodness, let's wrap this thing up so I can move on with my (blogging) life!

On Friday we went to Downtown Disney. If you've never been its just a bunch of Disney stores. It is not in any of the parks, you don't have to pay to get in, but it still has a nice Disney atmosphere. It was the hottest day, so the perfect day to go shopping!

Our first stop was the Lego store! So much fun! There are just so many Legos and it is so easy to get carried away in there! You kind of forget most of this stuff is stuff you can get in Wal-Mart. The best part are the awesome Lego statues they make. They also have a small playground outside of the store, which was fun for Oliver.

At the Disney store we got all of our souvenirs. A crazy straw cup and a set of cups with Mickey, Goofy, Pluto and Donald on them for Oliver. A Minnie rattle and Minnie/Daisy sippy cup for Lily. And for me? A Mickey Mouse colander, of course! (I have a colander collection that I LOVE)

It was so h0t out that we let Oliver play in the ground fountains for about a half an hour. He loved it so much! What a ham! After we changed him, MyMy paid for him to have a little train ride by himself. He looked so pensive the whole ride, it was like his unwinding time!

For lunch we had Ghirardelli sundaes. Yumyum! They were eaten too quickly to have photographic evidence:)

In the afternoon we took one last dip in the pool. For dinner Sheena made everyone some delish pasta and meatballs.

Saturday's return trip went even smoother than the trip down. The kids did super great. Lily decided she'd had enough on the bus ride home. She screamed for about 20 minutes, but was find the rest of the ride.

It was just such an awesome trip and I am so grateful for my great family and that I was able to enjoy all of these experiences with them!

Florida Day 6

Thursday we went to the Central Florida Zoo. The zoo was about 40 minutes away. Ma went with us. It was a very intimate little zoo. Oliver didn't seem to interested in it. It's tough to be interested in much after Disneyworld. The coolest thing we saw was the elephant exhibit. There was a bird that was poking around in the elephant's territory. He didn't lie that too much so he chased him around the entire enclosure, grabbed a log with his trunk and THREW it at the bird! It was nuts!! The other thing we really liked were the lemurs. They make such unreal sounds! The most disappointing part of the zoo was the stinkin' australia exhibit. 3 emus and 3 kangaroos. Come. On. pathetic.

We spent the afternoon in the pool and dinner was bbq chicken, steak florentine and potatoes. Oliver was so tired he fell asleep before dinner!

The most exciting part of the day was that Shane got a call back from the rental car place and they told them to go down to the office and they'd take off one of the insurances completely and would only charge us the other one until that day. They just wanted to make sure there was no damage. We went down after dinner. The manager was expecting Shane and was so polite. She even decided to charge him for only 3 days of the insurance instead of 6! Shane made sure to tell her that this same thing happened to his Dad with Budget and they wouldn't help him at all. He then said whenever we travelled now, we would always use Payless (and you should too!) She said that they wouldn't make him pay for anything he didn't want. It was so great. She then glanced at the car across the parking lot and said "Doesn't look damaged to me." In the end, she took $140 off of our bill. That worked swell for us since the next day we were going shopping!

We ended the night with some delish triple chocolate ice cream on the porch, just the two of us.