back in the saddle

After being MIA for a while...I'm back! Well, I think am! Things have been totally out of sorts the last few weeks...and this week seems to be the first "normal" one in a while. At least that's what I'm hoping.

So, what's been going on?

• The girls have returned from a week at Camp Grandmom! John and I dropped them off in KY last week, and then Grandmom and Grandad drove them back this weekend. The girls had a blast, and judging by their tans and their new swimming skills, I think they spent the majority of the time in the pool!


• John and I spent a few days at his work retreat. Again, I was treated to good food and spa treatments (mani...pedi...facial...massage). Unfortunately, my pedi has fallen victim to the Broad Street Run. After turning black following the race, on Saturday, my toenail fell off. So now I have 9 perfectly painted toes, and one mutant unpainted toe. Lovely.


• Speaking of injury, I have a pain in my ass. No really. I've been in PT for a few weeks, and took some weeks off from exercising to let it heal. It's still not 100%, but this morning, I finally got back on the elliptical. Hopefully, I'll be running soon, too.


• Finally, it looks like (fingers knocking furiously on wood) that we should have a finished basement by the end of this week. Though people remark that it went pretty quickly, I feel like progress was at a standstill. I just want my house back. Also? The amount of dust in our house has been ridiculous! Here are our stairs from a few weeks back. The white is dust. GAH!
  
  I'll post AFTER pictures when we've gotten it set up...but we're really happy with how it looks so far. We're kicking it old school with some IKEA furniture...and now I'm sporting two huge blisters on the palm of my hand from the assembly process. HELPFUL HINT: If you have gigantic blisters on your hand, don't absentmindedly use hand sanitizer because whoa nelly is it painful!

There you have it...the last few weeks in a nutshell. Hopefully, the next few will be calmer (and less injury prone, to boot)!

home again home again jiggety jig

We're back from a week at the beach. We frolicked in the waves. We played in the sand. We were up early (thanks in part to an unshaded skylight in the girls' room) and went to bed late. We met up with friends. We ate a lot. And one of us even turned *5*! I guess you could say the only thing that sucked were the lollipops we got the girls!

 

More to come soon, including an ode to my daughter who somehow turned 5 and went all tween on me.

mr. mom

On Saturday, I had a baby shower to attend in Richmond, leaving John and the girls to sit around and think about how much they missed me have a fun day together. And, boy, did they ever have fun! He took them into DC where they walked around The Mall and saw many of DC's monuments.

 

The funny thing was that a topic of conversation at the shower was "what unusual place is your husband taking your kids?" Answers included a roadtrip to visit a great-grandmom and the zoon. Apparently, John's not the only dad who gets all overzealous when he's manning the fort kid-wise.

Come to think of it, when John's out of town, we always do a movie night or something special. Does your husband (or you) do that, too?

so much fun...so little time

Our trip to "The Elphia" was a blast! We went to the pool, had a picnic at the playground, and had a BBQ with some other friends with similarly-aged kids. Autumn and I got to get two 5-ish mile walks in, and John and Sean got to get a round of golf in. We made it home late Sunday night, and the girls were so tuckered out from all the fun they slept until almost 9 o'clock this morning!

Since I had to do a few hours of work this morning, John took the girls grocery shopping and had a mini Field Day in the front yard with them...tennis! soccer! basketball! They spent the afternoon on the neighborhood water slide. For dinner, John made the season's first batch of ribs and they were to.die.for. Seriously. Then, the three amigos chilled out on the couch to watch a little baseball (and a bit more Noggin).

The kiddos are in bed. We're set to go for this week. I'm headed up to bed with my new SELF magazine, thankful to not be reading the same damn 120 pages I've read countless times in the last two weeks AND to learn how to drop a dress size in two weeks (I don't think gorging oneself on ribs is on that plan)...

Hopefully, things will be less frantic as they've been in the last few weeks. Only 4workdays to go...

spring fever

On Saturday morning, we got up and convinced E to skip her dance class so we could head to Charlottesville for the Spring Football game. She was a bit hesitant, but even the strongest willed of 4 year olds can't resist the siren's call of The Orange Birginya and a reason to wear a cheerleader's outfit. After doping the kids up with dramamine, off we went.

We had Bodo's on The Corner for breakfast and then headed to Mincer's where A finally got her own cheeleader outfit. Then we walked down the Lawn toward the stadium...all the while telling the girls that this is where they will go to school in a few years when they were bigger (it's always good to start 'em young).

The Spring Game had all sorts of children's activities set up, so the girls had a blast on the moonbounce, getting their faces painted, and getting balloon sabres made. Then we headed into the stadium to watch the team play for a bit. Once the food (cotton candy for E, ice cream for A, popcorn for both) ran out (or got knocked over, in the case of the popcorn), the girls were ready to head out. We stopped by Feast! for a quick late lunch, and then headed back home. We played outside for a while longer, and then hit the hay with no protest whatsoever.

 

Qutie simply, it was a fantastic way to spend a glorious spring day.

disney: the blog post

Day 1 - Saturday
After a fairly uneventful Friday night arrival, we woke up early on Saturday morning and got ready to head out to the park. We packed our backpack with snacks and hopped on the shuttle bus for the park, arriving a few minutes before opening time (as many of you told us to do). Well, none of you told us about the little opening number that they do to open the park with the singing and dancing and arrival of characters! The girls were bouncing up and down and screaming like pint-sized groupies at Mickey and his friends. I must admit that I got a little teary when I saw how excited they were.

We took the train to Frontierland (since Mickey's Toon Town didn't open until 10) and walked over and did It's a Small World, Dumbo and the Teacups and had met Ariel and Alice (aka, Allison to E..."you know, Allison Wonderland") all before 10 o'clock. We then hit the cars where I made the rookie mistake of letting E drive our car. She apparently has not figured out that turning the wheel violently left and right over and over and over again will make the car lurch left and right (and Mommy a little nauseous). But she had fun and I was able to steady the wheel somewhat with minimal resistance from her.

After the cars, we headed to Toon Town where we tried to distract them from the mass quantities of stuff they wanted us to buy them. We got in line to meet The Princesses and were immediately grateful that our girls had no love for The Fairies, which was totally packed. A quick 20 minutes later and we were in the presence of royalty (Cinderella, Belle and Sleeping Beauty, to be exact).

John and I were cracking up at E because she wore her Ariel t-shirt, which clearly signaled to the other Princesses that she was not E's fave. Also, we marvelled at how well A did at these things. She did *not* want to go with her sister. And she totally made herself at home with Sleeping Beauty, climbing up on her bench while SB signed her book.

After The Princesses, we met Mickey and Minnie, and then headed to lunch. After lunch we did the Carosel, Mickey's Philharmagic movie and a couple of more rides and walked around a bit before calling it a day. We headed back and got the girls to take naps.

In the evening, we headed to Epcot for beer dinner. We hadn't made reservations anywhere, so this entailed wandering around to the several countries to see what was available. We were going to do the German buffet, but since it was a beautiful night, we opted for some brats and frankfurters and pretzels (and more beer) instead. We then caught the fireworks and headed home.

 

Day 2 - Sunday
On Saturday, we had reservations for lunch with The Princesses in Norway at Epcot. (In the interest of full disclosure, we actually didn't get these reservations well in advance of the trip. We lucked into a cancellation on Wednesday night. Yep. We were slackers. Who knew?) Anyway, since we were eating at 11:20, the girls dressed in their Princess dresses and we headed straight to Epcot after breakfast.

After running into Stitch (my kids were like "Who?" and I was all, "Lilo. It's from a movie that doesn't have Princesses in it"), we went to the Nemo ride. E is still on this terrified-of-the-dark kick so she didn't enjoy it, but John, A and I did. After that we went to the Turtle Talk interactive thing which was really cute. It's the turtle from Finding Nemo (who sounds a lot like Spicloli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, if you haven't seen Nemo). At one point he asks for questions from the audience, and E's hand shoots up. I'm immediately wary of what she's going to ask, with good reason. Her "question" is,

"I'm going to lunch with The Princesses. And this is my sister, A."
The turtle answered, "I totally know the answer to this question. Yes, you are."

After that we headed over to Norway where we found out that our reservations were for 11:20 AM...on Saturday. Yep. Our hearts dropped about a mile. Luckily, they were able to squeeze us in and thereby saving us from being the Worst. Parents. Ever.

The lunch was good. The girls were excited to see the Princesses. John was excited to order beer with lunch. Truly a win-win. At one point during lunch, A had spilled some salt on the table. When I said something to the effect of A making a mess, E told me,

"Don't worry, Mama. I see Cinderella's here. She can clean it up for us."

Before we knew it, it was over and we headed over to the Magic Kingdom on the monorail. After saying "Hi" to Daisy Duck, we headed to Frontierland where we met up with The Donald (Duck) and saw a parade. Again, the girls were bouncing up and down with excitement, waving to the characters and screaming like...well...like little girls.

We then rode the Aladdin Magic Carpet Ride (the motto should be "Like the Dumbo Ride, but with a shorter line!") and walked the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House. As we headed back toward the main gate, we finally relented and bought E the Tinkerbell she had been begging for since Saturday and A a pair of Mouse Ear teedly-boppers.

Since we didn't nap that day, we made a dinner reservation at the Italian place in our hotel for 6:15. By about 6:45 the girls were d-o-n-e. We finished up our delicious meal and headed to our room. The girls passed out and we watched some of the Oscars before doing the same.


Day 3 - Monday
On Monday, we got up and got out the door ready to hit the park right as it opened. The shuttle bus was a little slow, so we chatted with another family as we waited. E immediately became best friends with their daughters, who were twins that turned 5 in December. When the bus finally arrived, it was crowded so we ended up standing next to each other and chatted some more. Once we hit the park, they took the train with us to Frontierland where we all rode It's a Small World together. The mom and one of the girls went to Haunted Mansion, while the dad and the other girl rode the Peter Pan and Dumbo rides with us.

We then split up as they went on while we rode the carousel. We then hit a couple more rides, including the Goofy roller coaster, before heading back to Main Street for lunch. We caught another parade, rode some more rides and bought the girls ridiculous hats before it was time to call it a day. We headed back where everyone took naps.

For dinner we headed over to the Boardwalk, which was the resort next to ours. We ate at the Brewery, which was nice and then walked the boardwalk before catching the Epcot fireworks. Before we knew it, it was bedtime and our First Ever Slacker Trip to Disney was over.

I've said it before, but your tips really did help out a lot. We followed most of them, with the big exception being the bringing a stroller. We decided to go without, and were pretty glad we did. We did end up carrying the girls a bit (A has perfected her technique to make you pick her up which involves standing in front of you and grabbing both of your legs rendering immobile until you relent), but we didn't have to deal with parking the stroller and finding it after every ride, which was nice. I think it helped that my kids aren't big stroller riders (despite my love of researching and buying cool strollers).

So there you have it. I feel like this post took longer to write than our actual trip to Disney. We definitely had a blast on our trip and will definitely go back again. E threw a coin in one of the fountains at our hotel and wished "to come back to Disney on my birthday." I doubt that will happen since I can't imagine doing Disney in the heat and with the crowds...but we'll see.

we came, we saw, we met some princesses

We're back from a whirlwind trip to Disney. It was great, and your advice was wonderful to have. More to come...but I have laundry, groceries and all that "real world" stuff to contend with.

 

You know...like trying to remove chocolate from a couple of Princess dresses.

disney-bound...and a real dumbo about it

So this weekend, John and I took the plunge and booked flights for the Slackers to hit Disney at the end of February. (Unlike my crazy-ass runner friends, Steel Magnolia and Marathon Mom, who will be doing the Goofy Challenge come January '10.) We'll be headed down on a Friday night and coming back up on Tuesday morning, giving us three full days at Disney.

So far we've got flights and a place to stay, The Disney Swan and Dolphin. Other than that...nada. So I'm calling upon you, friends o' the Internet, to bless me with your vast knowlege and experience when it comes to the House of the Mouse. Or in our case, Where the Princesses Live.

I beg you...please tell me where should we go? Where should we eat? I know they have Character meals...which ones are worth it? Do I need a stroller for my almost thirty-plus pound 2-year-old? Should we do the Disney park all three days? Any other hints, tips and tricks?

We've started training A with a new party trick in honor of Disney. Right now, if you ask her how old she is she says, "Fo years old!" Which she's not. And I'm terrified the Disney Police will believe her and make us pay for a ticket for her. So Operation: You're Two! is in full-effect.

divide and conquer

This weekend, John and I employed two techniques that make parenting much, much easier. On Friday, we did a little Divide and Conquer. A and I had some girl bonding on the homefront. I picked her up from school and she got to choose dinner. We went to McDonald's, where we had Happy Meals and she wowed me with her Playplace climbing abilities. We then spent the majority time hanging out around the house.

John picked E up from school and headed up to Wilmington to see John's Aunt Kathleen and then head on to Philly for the Temple vs. Tennessee game. They met up with John's friend, Jason and his son, Ben. Good times were had. E wore A's cheerleader uniform...which was definitely too short, but she didn't care. John gets bonus points for putting the orange bow I packed for E in.


And here are the little cuties from when they were almost 1 year old.

On Saturday, we all met back up at my parents house where we employed preferred parenting method #2: leaving them in the care of others. John and I headed into Arlington for our friends' annual Christmas party. We had dinner at Faccia Luna prior to going over which was delish as usual. The party was tons of fun, and was great to see everyone.

On Sunday, we stayed over at my parents' house most of the day, and then headed back in the evening. We had dinner at the Chili's that just opened up near us. The girls actually did great -- they ate tons and were well-behaved. The only issue is that both of them wanted to sit by me...so I was squished in the booth with the two of them while John got an entire side to himself.

In other news, we are pretty much done with Christmas shopping for the girls. We've got to get some stocking stuffers and one more thing for A...but otherwise we are done! Now all that's left is putting together the kitchen that they are getting. How much do you want to bet that we wait until the wee hours of Christmas Eve to accomplish that task?

gobble gobble

It's Thanksgiving morning and John and I are enjoying a cup of coffee (that may or may not be decaf) while the girls play with 30 year old matchbox cars and a creepy baby borrowed from Grandmom's best friend like it's their job. There might be some parade watching or there might be a turkey trot in our future. Whatever we feel like, we'll do...which is SO, SO nice.

Getting to today has been a rough ride this past week. I was super busy with work (think: 60 hours last week), A has been back to her nocturnal shenanigans and threw up within our of our departure from Chez Slacker yesterday. But we made the trip without any puking...and only two potty breaks. And now it's time to sit back and relax and think of all I'm grateful for.

• I'm grateful for my husband...who in addition to being an all-around great guy...really helped out this last week while I was trapped in work hell. He did outings! He cooked dinner! He made crafts! All without grumbling. He is truly and equal partner and I'm so happy he's mine.
  
• I'm thankful for my two beautiful daughters, who are generous with the kisses, hugs and I love yous. In the past year they have become best of friends, playing side-by-side for hoursminutes on end...which is both heart-warming and allows me to get dinner on the table without stepping on a child.
  
• I'm thankful for grandparents. Nonna, Pop-pop, Grandmom and Granddad are all an presence in our girls lives. As someone who lost all of my grandparents at such an early age, this thrills me to no end. And the fact that they provide free babysitting is always a bonus.
  
• I'm thankful for family. We don't get to see Kiki and Uncle Steve or John's brother and sister-in-law as much as we would like...but it's always good times when we do. And, now that the girls remember them between, it's even better.
  
• I'm thankful for friends. Since lives have inevitably gotten more complicated with jobs and kids and everything else, it's so great to see my friends when I can. And I'm grateful that I've made some new online friends through this blog, too!

Hope your turkey days are happy!

weekend of festivities

This weekend was a busy one in the Slacker house. John headed down to Knoxville for the UT vs. Alabama game. On Saturday, E had a birthday party for a friend at school. Luckily, my parents were available to watch A while I took her...so I avoided the awkwardness of having to call a mom I never met and invite my other daughter as well. Our neighborhood Halloween party, Boofest, was supposed to be on Saturday but got moved to Sunday because of the weather.

The Birthday Party on Saturday was good. Let me tell you...the parents did not go to the Slacker School of Bithday Parties. There was more food on the coffee table in the living room than we had at our entire party...and then the dining room table was covered in food from PF Chang's (where the dad works)...and then they ordered pizza for the kids and had a never ending crockpot full of mac-n-cheese. Not only that, the birthday cake was a 3-tier Princess castle with ice cream cone towers. And, for entertainment, they had an entertainer come. She was dressed as Belle and did magic tricks and painted faces. E about died and went to heaven.

Our little neighborhood party on Sunday was fun. We got a test run of the girls in their costumes. Well, E already got a head start because she has been wearing it since my parents brought it over on Saturday. A kept her ears on for a few minutes at a time ... which I considered a success. E and I had fun during A's naptime making a Jack'o'latern Cake. And they had fun moonbouncing, pumpkin painting, and generally running around.




It's a big week here in the Slacker household. In addition to Halloween on Friday, we've got a field trip with school on Thursday and my birthday on Wednesday! Now if I could only recover from this cold that is *still* hanging around, things would be peachy!

go, slackers, go!

This was one of those weekends that we were on the go from start to finish. On Saturday, we got up, got dressed and got in the car to head to Charlottesville for the UVA v. ECU game. We got to see a few friends before the game at the tailgates (and I heard "E looks *just* like you" at least a million three times).

The girls were great. They played with the Little People and puzzles that I brought them with minimal fighting or whining. At halftime, John took them to get ice cream, and after A finished hers, she laid her head on my chest and fell asleep. Seriously. Girlfriend was up from 2 to 5 AM on Thurday night/Friday morning at our house, but she slept through all of the yelling and screaming and music. After the game we headed home, grabbed some dinner and watched a bit more football before calling it a night.

A little popcorn, a few toys and ice cream at half-time? We're loving these season tickets!

Today we headed out to Cox Farms, which is a local pumpkin patch that has all these cool slides and farm animals and all sorts of stuff. It opened at 10. We got there at 10:15 and it was already packed and there was a traffic jam to get in. But we had tons of fun running around in the gorgeous weather. We did a lot of sliding, watched a cow milking, I painted the girls faces and we generally ran ourselves silly. We were going to eat lunch there, but the lines were so ridiculous that we left and went to this BBQ place nearby that we love. Let me tell you, BBQ travels well...but when it's fresh and hot and you are starving it is DIVINE!

At the gate and rarin' to go...I don't have to tell you that E picked her hair accessory out this morning, do I?
In front of the VA State Fair's Biggest Pumpkin Winner

Slip slidin' away


My face-painting handiwork...don't laugh...we had to fight E tooth and nail to take it off tonight


Attempts at good shots of the fam

The rest of the day was spent napping, watching the Skins lose, grocery shopping (for me and E) and playing outside (for John and A). We had a great steak dinner, kettle corn from Cox Farms for dessert and then it was time for baths and bed.

Luckily, the fun doesn't end tonight! The girls don't have school tomorrow, so I'll be hanging out with them. We're headed to Arlington to see a friend and then meeting up with Marathon Mom and her clan (where I will finally get to deliver a "Welcome, Meredith!" meal...even though Meredith is now over a month old. Luckily she's well-versed in my slacker ways...so, better late than never.