Toddler Speak

We have found ourselves laughing hysterically over the way Micah and Hallie say things right now, here is my attempt to record some of those things, although I have to admit... it's all way cuter in person.

guilk, guilk, guilk... milk

ook... book

aaaayyy... eye

sssss (Micah) zins (Hallie)... raisins

keeeeeeys... keys

haa... hat

httt... hot

chsss... cheese
cacker... cracker
uice... juice
wok... walk
papa... grandpa

grmama... grandma
ousiiiii... outside

teeee... teeth
agle, along with cupping of the hand and rotating of the wrist(Hallie)... Apple, tomato, grape, or anything small and round

errrrr (Micah)... siren noise

baaaaa... bob-

as in Bob the Builder, with whom Micah has serious attachment issues. He asks for it almost every time he looks at a TV, and usually gets the full on lip quiver- with tears and progressively more anxious baaaa's along with frantic rubbing of the stomach (The sign for please) and pointing at the TV. Like I said serious attachment issues!
no no, no no... NO NO,

which is usually repeated over and over again at each other when fighting over something

Silly Kids

Hallie and I are stitch and glue free, with only small physical scars which should heal nicely! Hallie who was already tentative at the Doctor's office is now terrified, she began screaming the instant the nurse came into the room to take her stitches out, clinging on to me for dear life. Hopefully we should be doctor free for the next few months so she has time to 'forget' her trauma before her next check up!

The kids have been frustrating, but cute lately. They are going through some weird sleep issues... crying before going to bed and waking up at night for no apparent reason and being up for several hours in the middle of the night. Exhausting and unexplainable at this point! I did get to see the lightening bugs out in full force against the trees in the middle of the night last night which was quite the show!

On a more positive note they have been incredibly cute during the day. They love to chase each other around the house laughing at each other, give each other hugs, sit on the shelf together, and today they even gave each other some kisses which was beyond adorable! Here's a short video from my phone of them giggling at each other with a short intermission of crying when Micah hits his arm on the shelf, but what can I say that's just life right now :) Enjoy!

The Accident

My clumsiness struck in full force yesterday morning! I was carrying Hallie into her room because she was smacking Micah and my foot caught on the 'shredded' bottom of my sweatpants, we both fell to the floor smacking our heads directly on our bookshelf. It happened so fast I unfortunately had no time to even think about breaking our fall. We fell hard and I knew it was bad the instant I heard the thud. We both ended up with lacerations on our foreheads, and as you can probably guess, there usually isn't a shortage of blood in head injuries!

I cleaned us up the best that I could, called Tyson (I was fine until I had to tell some what happened- then the tears came full force!), and we jumped in the car to the ER. She thankfully was fine after the initial shock and pain, as long as I left her injury alone.

We arrived a few minutes later at the ER with my shirt spotted with blood, blood running down my forehead from the rain, and Hallie with bandaids and blood in her hair, and sweet Micah following closely behind... I'm sure we were quite the sight! I didn't think I would need any medical attention, but the nurse said otherwise, they checked me in and were able to treat my injury with glue.

Hallie, unfortunately, received the brunt of the fall since she was in front. She ended up needing 4 stitches. They treated my injury first while Tyson hung out in the other room with Micah and Hallie. I had to wait 15 minutes before I could get up from being treated and in the meantime, the Doctor attempted to begin work on Hallie... with Micah in the room. That didn't last long and they quickly 'discharged' me so I could take care of Micah. Tyson had the unpleasant job of helping to hold Hallie down so they could clean her wound and stitch her up. She screamed DA DA DA pretty much the entire time but as soon as the nurse gave her a Popsicle, she was as good as new :) Not an experience that either Tyson or I (and I'm sure Hallie) want to go through again anytime soon or ever for that matter!

Both of us are fine minus a little headache. Hallie periodically points at my bandage and then points to her bandage, but other then that she's a champ. Tyson enjoys laughing at me with my bandage on my head, but hey I'd probably laugh at him too so we're all good!

A sweet reminder

I had an elaborate post started about the rest of our drive, but plans changed this morning with a fall into a bookshelf that landed Hallie and I in the ER with lacerations on our foreheads. Poor Hallie took the brunt of the fall ending up with 4 stitches, I narrowly escaped stitches, and will most likely only be left with emotional scars.

As I was rushing around the house crying trying to stop the bleeding from both of our heads, changing diapers, and trying to get out of the house to go to the ER Micah calmly walked around the house giving looks of concern on several occasions. Upon return home, I found random things pulled out of the bathroom scattered around the house, so I'd say he made the most of his time! But most sweetly of all, right before we were ready to leave the house, he looked at me, folded his arms, and gave me his high-pitched uhh uhh (the little whine he gives when he wants something). He wanted to say a prayer... what a sweet reminder from a sweet little boy.

I love that kid.

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Why do I have so many pictures of them sleeping!? Probably cause it was the only real downtime we had the entire trip!

Taking 2 toddlers on vacation and a road trip across the country is exhausting... go go go all day long! If my children learned anything on this trip- it was how to fall asleep anywhere! Since our return home (I'm sure much to Aaron's dismay!) Hallie now falls asleep in the car without a pre-nap screamfest... it's a miraculous thing, but also tricky since I have to watch her to make sure she doesn't fall asleep in the car so she'll nap at home. What did we do the rest of the time? On the plane we bought 3 seats so we could have a row to ourselves... it worked wonderfully. Armed with our bags of tricks... lots of small toys, books, snacks, and dvd player Micah and Hallie did remarkably well. I wasn't sure how they would handle being confined on a plane for a total of 8+ hours, but they did great... Micah even slept through our near death experience on the plane! (Ok... maybe near death is a little exaggeration, but we all thought we were going down for a minute!) Really the only time either of them cried was when one of us would take the other to the bathroom. I'm not going to say it was easy by any means, it was a lot of work, but we were rewarded by several very nice comments from people which is always great to receive!

And in the car, well we did whatever we could to make it there...

Like eat apples in really weird patterns,

Stare at the GPS and use it to scare Hallie to sleep,

Eat lots of junk food,

Do really weird things like feed Nemo fish crackers,

Play with toys,

And more toys,

And even more toys,

We enjoyed the beautiful scenery, (minus Nebraska) and last but definitely not least I stared at the back of Aaron's head... a lot. Good times :)

Big, bad and blue

Am I really dedicating an entire post to a budget truck?! Yea, kinda lame I know, but stay with me here... this big, bad, blue budget truck was jammed full of our belongings minus the few we sadly had to leave behind. But we'll all have you know that we crammed 9,300lbs into this puppy... that's right we don't mess around! We spent our time at home finding new furniture (gotta love craigslist!), bought our first table and chairs, couches, entertainment armoire, and a bunch of other gadgets! That's right after 6.5 years of marriage we finally have real furniture! I'll take pics at some point and share our killer bargains, but that's another post.

Back on track... so the big, bad, blue budget truck had quite the journey. It carried our precious new cargo from Washington, through (here it goes!) Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, the District of Columbia, all the way to Maryland!

It made pit stops to sleep at night in Prosser, WA; Salt Lake City, UT; Cheyenne, WY; Lincoln, NE; Edwardsville, IL; Columbus, OH; and finally in Chesapeake Beach, MD.

It drank lots of diesel along the way, chugged up hills at 35mph, saw lots of gorgeous scenery, saw lots of nothing in some states :), carried our bikes and Tyson's shoes on its back, and provided seat belts for Tyson, (the all too excited) Micah, and Ira a majority of the drive.


We will always have a special place in our hearts for this guy, k really probably not, but it got the job done and that's what we needed him to do!

Stay tuned for more on our crazy trip across the country...

More exploring at Calvert Cliffs

After finishing all of our chores Saturday evening... this whole unpacking thing is really getting in the way! We ventured down to the tip of the peninsula we live on and found a great little state park. The pics are in reverse order, but we'll roll with it...

We played in the coolest playground I've been to in a long time, this park seriously took some creativity to build.

This is the only pic of me from the evening, the crazy humidity does stuff to my hair I never thought possible!

After mocking me for thinking it was such a cool playground, he did admit that this part was pretty cool!

See what I mean?!

Such a big boy, climbed up by himself and loving every minute of it... all he's missing in this pic is a chick for that arm :)

We attempted the 1.8 mile hike to the beach, but we forgot the backpack carriers and well with 2 easily distracted toddlers and 2 parents who didn't enjoy being smacked in the face repeatedly, we only made it just past the 1/2 mile mark.

Why walk around the roots in the ground?! It's so much more fun to climb up them right?

Smack!

There was a pond at the beginning of the trail where we spent a good 30 minutes, full of fish, frogs, and turtles!

One of the tiny frogsMicah ran back and forth on the boardwalk, stopping to check out the water periodically

Hallie found the dirt and had dinner and dessert for that matter...

A whole lotta love...

It's no secret that I absolutely love my family (that includes in-laws and extended!) Our first morning back in Washington, we headed to a park near our hotel in Bothell for a birthday present photo shoot of the fam for my mom.

Shelly's friend Karlyn, who is an awesome photographer, came down from Bellingham to do the shoot for us. She had a lot to work with but did a great job and I still haven 't seen the entire cd! Here's a couple sneak peaks...

Click here to see more sneak peaks of the chaos on their blog... you won't be disappointed!

Gettysburg

Way back in March (see I told you I'm still way behind!) we made the 2 hour drive up to Gettysburg, PA. It was a humbling experience and despite having two 1 1/2 year olds in the backseat during the auto tour we learned a tremendous amount about the war, the people, and the battle. Highly recommend buying (or borrowing ours!) the more expensive auto tour cd set- I think it cost $24. It was entertaining, engaging, and educational. Sounds like I was getting paid to say that... unfortunately I'm not, but seriously there are lots of different choices for tours of the battlefield, bus, bike, private guide, or the personal auto tour. $$ and comfort wise, go with the auto tour!

Later on in the week we rented the movie Gettysburg and I sat with my little map and guide from our tour and referenced it throughout the entire movie. This really helped to bring history to life for me. We returned to Gettysburg when Kendra was here, which was a little tougher on Micah and Hallie, they weren't digging the car as much that day. But we again saw and learned even more about the battle.

Gettysburg is a definite must-do on my list for the DC area... worth every screaming minute :) Here our the pics from our first trip...

Micah wondering what we've gotten him into...
Beautiful surroundings

Graffiti at Gettysburg... seriously??

More beautiful surroundings...

Robert E Lee's Monument

What a team

My poor mud covered shoe :(

Wiggles and giggles

A touching reminder