We’re back from our almost-week-long trip to WI! We saw my parents and siblings on Wednesday and my grandparents on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Then we headed up north to Morgan Lake to camp with Chad’s family.

Camping did not go exactly as planned. We had a lot of fun the first day and I was actually enjoying it (which means a lot because I’m not an outdoors-y person at all, which is why I wouldn’t be interested in Outer Banks foreclosures LOL) and then it started raining. Then it stopped…but then it started again….and it did that most of Friday and all of Saturday. Around noon on Saturday, everyone but Jeb and Laurie (and kids) decided to go home. I think if we had been planning on staying longer and there was hope of swimming and hiking after the rain stopped, we would have stayed. But it was our last day and there was no point spending it cooped up in the tent or van. Plus we were quickly running out of warm clothes for the kids (because they kept getting wet). Chad and I were both happy we decided to leave early…it was much more enjoyable spending time with his family at his parents house than out in the rain!!

We ended up spending some extra time with my grandparents too, so we came home Monday during the day. The first half of the trip was good and the last half was not. Kelvin was pretty fussy and at one point, I used my Blackberry to post on Facebook, “Someone please beam me home!!” It sure would be easier that way!

While it’s nice being home in our own beds, it’s always a little bit lonely coming back down here. Being up in Wisconsin with our families makes us realize how much we gave up to buy this business and take that leap of faith. It’s worked out amazingly well in every way except one….we definitely miss out on having a strong dependable support system. Down here, it seems like we have to fight tooth and nail just to have a feeble support system. Which is sad.

Oh, and the other reason I dread coming home? The unpacking and LAUNDRY!! And it’s even worse this time, with having to wash everything we brought with us. I’ve done 6 loads of laundry today (only 4 got folded so far) and 3 loads of dishes and I still have a lot more unpacking to do tomorrow. I would be a lot closer to being done if Kelvin hadn’t stayed up until 10:30 PM tonight, though!

Anyway, I’m sure I’ve bored everyone enough for one night. Pictures will be up on photobucket as soon as I’ve emerged from the mountain of laundry I’m buried in!!

Posted: July 28th, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 2

Ava’s just growing up so fast! She’s getting so independent lately. This morning, I had been upstairs changing Kelvin’s diaper and I came back down and found the iced tea on the table and no Ava in sight. I went into the kitchen and found her on a chair getting a cup down from the cupboard. I’m glad I found her before she tried to pour it on her own…that would have been a disaster!

She’s very into art right now. We shopped the back-to-school sales to replenish her art supplies and she’s very much enjoying it. This was the first time I had bought her markers…she’d always used Color Wonder markers that only color on special paper. And it’s going to take some practice for her to learn to be careful with them. She couldn’t figure out why she had blue all over her legs!!

Potty training is pretty much at a stand-still. We were getting nowhere and both my mom and a friend with 5 kids told me that I wasn’t potty training her, I was just training myself to take her to the bathroom every 20 minutes. And they were right, so we’re going to wait until she seems more ready and willing. She’s only 2, after all…

I love it now that she’s talking in sentences. I’m not sure if I posted about her first sentence yet, so if I did you’re hearing about it twice. LOL About a month ago, she was eating a hamburger and the bun was sliding off of one side. She looked at me and said, “My gur-gur broke!” I thought that was a very cute first full sentence.

She’s becoming quite the little diva. She has to have her toenails perfectly painted at all times. And she’s obsessed with changing her clothes several times a day, whenever the urge happens to strike her. If she starts getting into Naot sandals, we’re in trouble!

Posted: July 20th, 2009 under Ava, Ava's Potty-Training Journey.
Comments: 3

Kelvin is growing and changing so much every day, it’s just crazy!! He’s all over the place now. He does this cute little army crawl and he’s so fast! Just today he started crawling on his hands and knees, but he still prefers his army crawl. I hope he’ll start hands-and-knees crawling more in the next few days because it will keep him a lot cleaner while we’re camping….because it’s not like we’ll be at Outer Banks rentals or anything. We’ll be out in the Boonies!

He also pulls up to standing now. The only time he ever does it, though, is to get into the toy box! LOL I guess that’s the only thing that motivates him enough!

He claps now, too. And he watches everything we do and tries to imitate it. Tonight I was holding him on my lap next to Chad on the couch and I patted Chad’s leg. Of course, Kelvin had to reach over and pat Chad’s leg, too. LOL

He has 6 teeth now and I’m pretty sure he’s working on more, too. It seems like he’s been teething non-stop since he was 2 months old! I’m ready for a break in the teething and I’m sure he is too!

That’s about all I can think of for now! I’m sure there will be plenty more things to update on in the coming weeks….it’s seems like he’s changing every day!

Posted: July 20th, 2009 under Kelvin.
Comments: 1

Have you noticed my blogging mojo is gone? It just up and vanished one day.

It may have something to do with how much work it is getting ready to camp for several days with two small children. I had no idea, really. Especially since the campground has no showers or toilets or anything. Just one little outhouse. I hope the lake is clean because I’m not bringing any pond aerators and it’s apparently my only option for “bathing”.

We’re almost ready though. Tonight I need to pack my clothes (and Chad needs to pack his), and then tomorrow we’ll just tie up loose ends and wash diapers. We’ll be leaving in the late evening so that we can be to my parents’ house in the morning. Then we’ll spend Wednesday night with my grandparents and head up to camp early Thursday morning.

By the way, Ava is very excited about seeing her grandmas, grandpas, aunts and cousins. But not her uncles. She says her uncles are going to go “night-night”. LOL

Posted: July 20th, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 1

Lately, we’ve been really busy getting ready to go camping next week. I’m not an outdoor person (at all!!), but I know Chad (and hopefully the kids) will enjoy it, so I’m trying not to dread it too much! LOL

We’re going to be camping with Chad’s family and since most of them read my blog, I thought I’d share the things we’ve planned so far. I’m really nervous about forgetting stuff, so maybe we can all share our ideas and preparations and no one will forget anything!

1. We bought all of our camping equipment last week. We already had sleeping bags, so we bought a tent, camping dishes and utensils, a griddle that goes over the fire, pot, biodegradable dish soap, coolers, chairs, first aid kit, mountain pie irons and more stuff that I can’t remember. I’ll add to this list as I remember stuff.

2. For the kids so far, we bought a floatie-swimsuit for Ava (similar to this), a floatie-ring thing for Kelvin (similar to this except not so expensive!!), sand toys and I’m going to buy a squirt gun for Ava since I heard that the cousins have them.

3. For breakfasts, we’re thinking cereal or turkey bacon and eggs. I can’t think of much else.

4. For lunches, we’re thinking grilled cheese sandwiches, pasta salad (made at home) hot dogs, and other sandwiches with fillings we’re bringing for dinners.

5. For dinners, we’re thinking barbeque chicken sandwiches, sloppy joes, hot dogs, hamburgers, and we had one other idea that I can’t remember. All the sandwiches will be made in our mountain pie irons.

6. For snacks, I’m going to bake and bring cookies and muffins and we’ll also bring convenience-food type snacks like chips and crackers and fruit snacks.

Boy, I’ve had all these ideas swirling in my head for the last week and I finally try to get them down on paper and I can’t remember most of them! I know I had way more meal ideas than I was able to write about. I guess I’ll have to add to it tomorrow after I’ve slept. It’s been a very long day!

Anyway, I’d love to hear everyone else’s ideas (whether you’re camping with us or not). Feel free to leave a comment or link to your own post about it. I could use the inspiration!

Posted: July 13th, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 10

No, I haven’t abandoned my blogs or anything. I’ve just been wishing we could take off on vacation in an rv or something. Just kidding…I’ve just had to prioritize other things the last week or so. My computer had a virus, which put me really behind on getting statements done. Then I was going to do some posts on my other blogs, only to find that they’d been hacked (luckily, my mom was able to get everything fixed). Sometimes I wonder if all this technology is really such a good thing…there are so many more things that can go wrong!!

Then today I was concerned that I might have appendicitis. I woke up with a sharp, achy kind of pain around my belly button. I started reading online and that’s one of the first warning signs for appendicitis. It was a very irritating pain, but not excruciating, so I decided not to go to the ER unless the pain got worse, moved into my lower right abdomen, or I got a fever. Luckily, none of those things happened. It still hurts the same as it did this morning, but I’m pretty sure it’s not appendicitis. Everything I’ve read and everyone I’ve talked to have led me to believe I would be in far more pain by now if that was the case (and I’m a wuss about pain, so I know there’s no way I would manage to stay out of the ER long enough for my appendix to rupture or anything). I’m still not sure why it hurts, though…I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Anyway, that’s what’s been going on here lately. It sure has been an interesting week!

Posted: July 8th, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 5

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July!

Ours was pretty uneventful. In the morning we just hung out with the kids. Kelvin played and scooted all over the place and Ava did some art (stickers and stamps and stuff….not custom rubber stamps, though LOL).

The kids wore their 4th of July outfits to church and I got some pictures of them in the yard before we left. I couldn’t get Kelvin to smile for even one picture, though! In his defense, he’d just gotten up from a nap, though. Here are a few of the pictures but there are lots more here.

After church, we came home and had burgers, corn on the cob and 4th of July parfaits I made (pictured here). They turned out really good, even though Ava had strawberries instead of blueberries on hers (she’s allergic to blueberries).

We didn’t light any fireworks off until the kids went to bed. We set a few off the other day and both kids were terrified of them, so we didn’t even bother trying it tonight. Chad and I had fun with them, though! Since we live on a busy road, people were honking as they went by (I’m assuming it was because they liked them LOL).

(Sorry the pictures stretch this post out so far. I’ve been messing around with it for quite awhile trying to get it to do what I want it to do and it won’t. I think it’s a quirk with my template)

Posted: July 4th, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 3

I absolutely cannot believe what a horrible day today was. Seriously, I didn’t know it was possible for days to be this stressful, chaotic and disastrous!! Who needs weight loss supplements when you run yourself ragged like this??

It all started last night. I was online, about to order some diapers, and all of a sudden, my internet connection was timing out. Chad was on the internet, too, and his was fine. At first, I thought that the kids must have been messing around with some wires and something must have gotten unplugged. Then an anti-virus program popped up and started scanning my computer. Neither Chad or I connected the two things, but it turned out the anti-virus program was actually a virus…and apparently, one of the worst viruses out there. It took Chad all night and part of this morning to get rid of the virus, but it had damaged my computer so bad that it had to be completely wiped clean. So Chad didn’t even go to work today, he just spent the entire day trying to get my computer back in business. And I spent the kids’ entire nap time (my only break-time) trying to find disks for certain programs so that we’d be able to get backups to work on the laptop. He’s finally finishing it up right now (thanks to lots and lots of help from Jeb….THANKS JEB!)

But that wasn’t all. I had to take Kelvin into the doctor this morning to have his ears checked because he’s been spending at least an hour every night screaming bloody murder. Turns out his ears were fine, but he’s getting more teeth and he also has a sore throat. Which explains the extreme fussiness all day. Seriously, I couldn’t even set him down without him screaming. Really wears on my nerves when he acts like that.

AND…since I’d spent nap time helping with my computer, I didn’t get a chance to start dinner until about 4. That was a disaster…I had to do everything with Kelvin on my hip, plus Ava was trying to “help” with hot things on the stove. Not fun.

Oh yes, and potty training is not going so hot. I’ll be posting about that soon, but let’s just say…that it’s not going so hot.

So by bath time I was really tired and stressed and I just wanted to survive until the kids’ bed time. So I put the kids in the nice freshly cleaned tub. Yesterday I’d spent every free minute cleaning everything. I soaked the bath toys in bleach, scrubbed out the nooks and crannies with a toothbrush and then ran them through the dishwasher. Then I soaked the bath toy storage bags in vinegar water to remove the soap scum, ran them through the washer with a little bit of detergent and then did another cycle with vinegar. They looked brand new…it was awesome! And finally, I scrubbed out the entire tub with Comet.

I’m sure you can guess what this is leading up to….yup, Kelvin pooped in the tub!!! And not just a turd…a soupy, messy poop that got all over everything! Honestly, my first reaction was to laugh. I just could not even believe that this was happening to me. And I was so exhausted, I didn’t even know what to do. So then I started bawling. It was kind of interesting.

So yes…I got to do all that cleaning all over again tonight. I was not pleased. At all.

All I can say is that tomorrow HAS to be better!!! And also, I’m so glad Chad was the one dealing with my computer…if I’d had to deal with that on top of everything else, I probably would have thrown the computer out the window….for real!!!

Posted: July 1st, 2009 under Random Thoughts.
Comments: 5