Day 5,6, and 7!
Catch up... I'm sure I'll have many more days of catching up this month so I'm not considering this cheating.
So, Friday:
First thing of course, we got the boys off to school. The girls and I ate breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen then headed straight out to Ikea! I feel like I've been waiting for this day for years - we bought Lucy a little play kitchen!
Let's hope this sucker looks like this when we're done building it - damn you ikea and your inability to put things together for us!
Lucy loves to play tea party and Mommy and I think this is going to make an awesome addition to their play! I love wooden toys and "open ended play" which essentially are things that kids can use for many different kinds of play. Some of our favorite toys are dishes, play food, play silks, dress up clothes, and our small collection of Schleich Animals. The kids play with them ALL.THE.TIME. The kids also love legos, duplos, and lincoln logs - so we DO have plastic toys too! ;) I also really like to buy the kids toys, when we are buying toys (birthdays, christmas, etc.) to buy a toy I know all the kids will like. Is that horrible? It might be. But I am 100% confident that Molly and Joe will love the kitchen as much as Lucy!
Fridays Jerry works and the boys have a half day. They get home around 1:30-ish. Iris takes a nap every single day without fail from 8:30/9:00 to 2:00. every.day. Since Jerry works from home I am able to leave her to nap while I go out and get things done in the morning. It really nice for multiple reasons, first of all, I have been getting a lot of time with Lucy! Secondly, Iris doesn't have to nap in the car and get woken up a bunch of times. She is sooo good in the stroller. She will zonk out and sleep, just shilax, or munch quietly on a snack... but a shopping cart - no, she will try her damnedest to get out of that contraption and will scream her now infamous shriek that shatters glass. So I left her home, with the intention of getting home by noon for the bus... I'm not going to lie, I couldn't remember if the boys got home at 12:30 or 1:30 so I figured noon was safe. We arrived at Ikea at 10:00 at opening and left at 11:30 - PLENTY of time to get home... only freaking Renton was under construction and because of a wrong turn I ended up being rerouted to I5 instead of 405! It took me an hour to get home! Yikes! I was panicking, especially since Jerry wasn't answering my texts and I couldn't remember if the front door was unlocked... ack! I was seriously stressed out! Right when I pulled into town Jerry texted me and said, "Iris is awake. Home soon?" I texted him back '3 min!' and was panicking even more wondering if he was upset, what if Iris had been crying for awhile? ACK ACK ACK!I got home and found she had just woken up and the boys weren't home for another half an hour. phew! Looking back I should have just called him, but now I know not to go anywhere on Fridays, it's just too stressful!
Saturday was Lucy's big day! she turned three years old! Her party isn't for another week so I don't have any cute pictures of us. Jerry's schedule just changed so he now goes into work on Saturdays. Which really - was great. I needed to stay home! I cleaned our room and changed sheets and got a TON of time with Lucy all day, we even had an awesome "nap" together. After a breakfast of CHOCOLATE muffins (she thought they were cake - contains Zucchini!) I gave her and Issy a bath in the big bath (my bathroom) - as requested by the birthday girl herself. Afterwards she jumped all over my bed and had a ton of fun jumping onto pillows from my bed while I packed up my book shelf. We watched Ponyo after her nap, had mac and cheese for lunch, and Daddy came home to cuddle soon after. I think she had a perfect Lucy day. I can't believe she is three years old!
Today - Day 7, Sunday! I wanted to go on an adventure and we were looking at our calendar and realized how full it is almost until the baby is due - January has two weekends free and October, only this one! We decided we would have a family day-cation. One day of family adventure far from the day to day life. We woke up and headed to Mt. Rainier. I feel like this is practically in our backyard because it looks so clsoe!
Catch up... I'm sure I'll have many more days of catching up this month so I'm not considering this cheating.
So, Friday:
First thing of course, we got the boys off to school. The girls and I ate breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen then headed straight out to Ikea! I feel like I've been waiting for this day for years - we bought Lucy a little play kitchen!
Let's hope this sucker looks like this when we're done building it - damn you ikea and your inability to put things together for us!
Lucy loves to play tea party and Mommy and I think this is going to make an awesome addition to their play! I love wooden toys and "open ended play" which essentially are things that kids can use for many different kinds of play. Some of our favorite toys are dishes, play food, play silks, dress up clothes, and our small collection of Schleich Animals. The kids play with them ALL.THE.TIME. The kids also love legos, duplos, and lincoln logs - so we DO have plastic toys too! ;) I also really like to buy the kids toys, when we are buying toys (birthdays, christmas, etc.) to buy a toy I know all the kids will like. Is that horrible? It might be. But I am 100% confident that Molly and Joe will love the kitchen as much as Lucy!
Fridays Jerry works and the boys have a half day. They get home around 1:30-ish. Iris takes a nap every single day without fail from 8:30/9:00 to 2:00. every.day. Since Jerry works from home I am able to leave her to nap while I go out and get things done in the morning. It really nice for multiple reasons, first of all, I have been getting a lot of time with Lucy! Secondly, Iris doesn't have to nap in the car and get woken up a bunch of times. She is sooo good in the stroller. She will zonk out and sleep, just shilax, or munch quietly on a snack... but a shopping cart - no, she will try her damnedest to get out of that contraption and will scream her now infamous shriek that shatters glass. So I left her home, with the intention of getting home by noon for the bus... I'm not going to lie, I couldn't remember if the boys got home at 12:30 or 1:30 so I figured noon was safe. We arrived at Ikea at 10:00 at opening and left at 11:30 - PLENTY of time to get home... only freaking Renton was under construction and because of a wrong turn I ended up being rerouted to I5 instead of 405! It took me an hour to get home! Yikes! I was panicking, especially since Jerry wasn't answering my texts and I couldn't remember if the front door was unlocked... ack! I was seriously stressed out! Right when I pulled into town Jerry texted me and said, "Iris is awake. Home soon?" I texted him back '3 min!' and was panicking even more wondering if he was upset, what if Iris had been crying for awhile? ACK ACK ACK!I got home and found she had just woken up and the boys weren't home for another half an hour. phew! Looking back I should have just called him, but now I know not to go anywhere on Fridays, it's just too stressful!
Saturday was Lucy's big day! she turned three years old! Her party isn't for another week so I don't have any cute pictures of us. Jerry's schedule just changed so he now goes into work on Saturdays. Which really - was great. I needed to stay home! I cleaned our room and changed sheets and got a TON of time with Lucy all day, we even had an awesome "nap" together. After a breakfast of CHOCOLATE muffins (she thought they were cake - contains Zucchini!) I gave her and Issy a bath in the big bath (my bathroom) - as requested by the birthday girl herself. Afterwards she jumped all over my bed and had a ton of fun jumping onto pillows from my bed while I packed up my book shelf. We watched Ponyo after her nap, had mac and cheese for lunch, and Daddy came home to cuddle soon after. I think she had a perfect Lucy day. I can't believe she is three years old!
Today - Day 7, Sunday! I wanted to go on an adventure and we were looking at our calendar and realized how full it is almost until the baby is due - January has two weekends free and October, only this one! We decided we would have a family day-cation. One day of family adventure far from the day to day life. We woke up and headed to Mt. Rainier. I feel like this is practically in our backyard because it looks so clsoe!
We didn't tell the kids where we were going but gave them a riddle (we knew Sam would love it and that he would probably be the only person to get it right!) Here was our riddle: "We're going somewhere that we see everyday but we've never been to!" Sam thought long and hard about it, he was silent in the backseat for quite awhile then finally guessed an airplane, which is a really good guess because his mind was on the right track, after we said no he was quiet a lot longer then he said - "The mountain!?" and Jerry just smiled and he said, "Hiking on Mt. Rainier!?!?! I LOVE HIKING!" and all the kids cheered. Seriously - epic.
And that is just what we did. We are totally exhausted so I'll leave you with pictures and a few captions. Let me just say, one of the most awesome "day-cations" ever.
We started our trip with a good laugh, as we were pulling up I grabbed my cell phone to take a picture because I thought the park ranger was dressed as Smoky the Bear - come to find out she just has very poofy "bear cheek" shaped hair. We laughed SO hard when we pulled up.
In the national park and it looks just as big. :)
Parking lot fun! Iris was jumping for joy that we were finally here!!
I could have died and been happy in these woods - moss covered everything!
.
Starting out at Paradise lodge! We're ready!!
They were ready too!
And it ended so quickly. We were really tired! Here the kids are at the lodge again, looking up at the mountain!
After our hike we had lunch on a train car. The kids were in heaven and incredibly bored. I introduced them to "diner tic tac toe". Sam won every single match - Joe was not happy.
Daddy surprised all the kids with a train ride on the "Scenic Mt. Rainier Express". We took a ride to Mineral Lake and were promised some autumn colors... not so much.
But oh well.
Joe has wanted to ride on a train for... his entire life. He was in HEAVEN!
But oh well.
Joe has wanted to ride on a train for... his entire life. He was in HEAVEN!
This pretty much described Lucy's entire day, poor girl. Everything was too loud, too fast, too stinky, too much. She was exhausted when she finally fell asleep tonight.
When we first started moving they blew the whistle so so so so many times. Lucy was shaking like a leaf and screaming, "HOLD ME HOLD ME HOLD ME!" - we are holding you! I ended up bear hugging her for about 20 minute until I thought my arms would fall off. Once the train was really going they stopped blowing the whistle and she calmed down. Apparently licking my neck helped her calm down -ick, she was SO sweaty. I really did feel bad for her but we couldn't exactly just hop off.
Joe - mind blown.
Irissy waving at cars. lol.
Sam, also not a big fan and I also felt horrible about it. With Sam, when something is really loud he either joins in the being way too freaky and crazy or shuts down and hides. First he started by screaming, then making a train whistle sound as loud as possible. We just let him, there were only 8 other people on our car. When he acts like this my heart hurts and I cen feel the momma bear brissle up. If someone says anything to me about him I always have my backup answer ready, "I'm sorry my son is Autistic." and I also have some sweet cards someone gave me that says, "Thank you for being so understanding to my autistic child." and then it goes on to explain autism. I used to hand them out to whoever gave me the stink eye when Sam would make himself throw up at the store. I just feel very defensive when we're in public.
Molly was very very excited and was being super goofy. She had almost as much fun as Joe. :)
Jerry laughing at our crazy kids... sometimes that's literally all you can do.
Stink face! (I've been trying to get a good picture of stink face for weeks!)
Sam ended up falling asleep for about half an hour and woke up much calmer and ready to be typical Sam again. ie. "Let's throw Joe off kick-you-in-the-face-cliff"
She kind of bounced back from Mommy to Daddy... but when it got really scary she wanted Mommy to "have me to hold you!". So while it's sad, I WIN!!
The train stopped for 20 minutes at Mineral Lake and we found a black berry bramble. The kids FEASTED on those berries!
Going home. We were very very excited to be headed home.
We had such an awesome day... and since Jerry and I both felt really bad about the train ride drama we took the kids to finish the night at the new Orting park. They loved it and now think today was the best day ever! :) Mission accomplished!
Side note:
I think I get an idea in my mind of what a perfect day out with the family should look like and when it starts veering away from that, I start panicking and trying to control every little thing, which makes everything worse and worse. Sometimes I have to have a little reset, chug a bottle of water, maybe tell my husband, "babe, I am sorry. Let's restart." half the time my husband says, "good I need a restart too." and we can have a good bear hug then get in the car and listen to yo gaba gaba for another hour.
The thing that makes today a good day-cation isn't that it was perfect, it isn't having these days where no one fights, there aren't any owies, and no one says they hate someone or someone is stupid. It's trying and it's investing time.
We have a lot of second chances in our family and a lot of restarts... and I need to remember that the kids need restarts sometimes too - they're not always being naughty or disobeying... sometimes they're just... too... overwhelmed, like me. Just don't forget that.
If I could give you any advice it would be:
Keep trying and have more adventures, because... they're worth it!
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