Pulling Old Toys Out of the Closet: $0 Rediscovering Old Toys: Priceless!

Jason pulled out the pop up tent while I was at the Doctor this morning and Will had a BALL! It was like he had never seen it before! He is so much fun these days, full of the "Joie De Vivre"!

Leavin' On a Jet Plane....

Tomorrow morning we leave! I am so sick though that I am no longer looking forward to it. I went to the Dr this morning and got antibiotics and recommendations for decongestants. Ugh. I hope by some miracle I feel even 50% better by tomorrow. Will is healthy, so at least I don't have 2 sickies. I am all packed, I have a ton of clothes for Booker and diapers for Morgan so I will end up with an empty bag to bring home all my goodies in. I have oodles of toys and books and stickers for the plane, along with new DVD's and chocolate. I will also bring the ever coveted fruit snacks! It will be interesting to see how Will does away from Jason for 2 weeks, I think he will be okay. Me, on the other hand, I will be miserable. I miss him so much when we are apart, I can't sleep and I end up wanting to call him 20 times a day. We have been together so long and yet it never gets old. I will also miss all the help he gives me! We do the entire bedtime routine together every night and he lets me sleep in the morning so he can get some extra time with Will. He also helps at meals, so doing this on my own is much harder.... Blogging is difficult on the island so don't expect much for the next 2 weeks! To all my Seattle area peeps- I'll see you soon!

Funny or Tasteless?

There is a LOT of controversy surrounding this shirt in our house. Molly and I bought it at Gettysburg and we thought it was funny. He is a Lil' Rebel! However Jason, Aunt Julie and Grandma think it's tasteless, mainly because of the flag.... They also had a Lil' Yankee one, next time I will get that! What do you think? Tasteless or Funny?

Gettysburg: Graveyard and Monuments...

Molly and William are standing on the memorial erected to the spot where Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address. The two panels on the sides have the speech carved into it, and William was fascinated by the letters. He found "Y" and kept pointing to other letters and naming them, but more often that not, incorrectly. It was very cute! The graveyard was very sad, with many, many unknown soldiers. There were so many dead, in such a short time that they had to bury the bodies as quickly as possible. I doubt they spent much time trying to figure out who was who in that day and age. Quite a few graves did have names, but one plot had over 400 soldiers with no name, and they didn't even know what state they belonged to! There were SO many monuments everywhere, it was amazing. They have an driving tour set up so we drove a good deal of it. It was 23 miles long, which surprised us both. We always thought the battle field would be just that: a field. This was miles and miles of land that had multiple battles that took place all over. It was very beautiful, and I thought about how it must have been so scary for the families that lived in the area at the time! I am really glad we went, I wasn't sure I wanted to spend a day at a battle site, but it was very interesting and I learned a lot.

Little Round Top....

This is the view from across the valley and what the Confederates would have seen when looking at the challenge that lay ahead...of course they would have seen thousands of soldiers up there too....

View across the valley from the top. You can imagine how easy it made it to pick off soldiers that were trying to attack...

The Union soldiers had control of this hill top during the battle of Gettysburg and they had a HUGE advantage obviously. They basically just stayed up there and picked the Confederates up as they came up the hill, and later actually made a down hill charge that is still considered to be one of the best moves of the war...

Shopping and Lunch...

This picture is so scary! But it's also fun, so here it is! We bought some fun stuff at the gift shop and then went to lunch at the Dobbin's House which has operated since 1776! Wow! Will spent some time there transferring the bark from one side of the fence to the other. He had a really rough time at lunch and it couldn't have been finished fast enough!!! It wasn't one of our finest moments...

46,000 and ONE Casualties at Gettysburg....

William fell down the steps at the Gettysburg Visitors Center today. He got a good sized goose egg on his little forehead, poor guy! Thankfully they gave us an ice pack and Will occasionally would let us apply it! So much for those 18 month pictures!

Dave and Busters!

We ended the day at Noodles and Company- Will is waiting for his food...

Will is counting the tickets and dreaming of what he will get with them!

I have been dying to go to Dave and Buster's for ages, but it isn't Jason's kind of thing. It is like an adult Chuckie Cheese except without the annoying animated musicians and furry mascots running around. We had a ball, and played all kinds of fun games. We won a grand total of 3500 tickets with Molly pulling in 1500 alone! Wow! Nick got us hooked on these weird coin games and we all discovered we were pretty bad at Skee-ball. We traded in our tickets for some crazy animated stuffed animals, and a Cookie Monster that is almost as big as William. It was really great and Molly and I will have to go again when she comes back at Christmas!

National Zoo...

We ventured out to the zoo today, and invited Nick to join in on the fun! Nick and Molly went to elementary school together so I have know him since he was very little. Seeing him now makes me feel very old! William still seemed more interested in walls and fences and trashcans, but he did enjoy the Elephants and Meerkats. Once again he played for a long time at the pizza play area, I wish it wasn't so far from home, I would bring him much more often. We had a good time and had FANTASTIC weather!

Baltimore Inner Harbor...

Sunday night we drove the airport to pick up Molly, and on the way there we noticed that the traffic back to DC was so bad we figured that we would just go to Baltimore for dinner and drive back later after traffic cleared. Molly had never been to Baltimore so she enjoyed seeing the historic boats and all the interesting buildings. We had seafood for dinner of course and William did really well at the table, actually sitting and eating some food! Amazing! It was perfect weather and it was so nice to be out and we all love being by the water. I love these end of summer evenings!

A Better Day...

Today was much better. I took Will to the Dr to make sure he wasn't sick, and he wasn't. Dr Rahman thinks he is just in a phase, which is probably the case. We went to the park, drew pictures, and had a lollipop and all was well in his little universe. I was so relieved that yesterday didn't repeat itself. He had a few fits today, of course, but nothing huge. I have to work the next two days, so Jason will be on duty and I hope Will isn't a terror all weekend. We are going to Solon and Andrea's on Saturday night and we go pick up Aunt Molly on Sunday at the airport, so it is going to be a very busy weekend!

One Day at a Time...

Thoughts are swirling about in my head. William has been SO difficult today and he is draining me of all the patience and energy I have. Every situation has ended up with him flinging himself to the floor and usually hitting his head in the process or screaming at the top of his lungs for a long time, or both! He has been getting into everything he shouldn't, and once I tell him "No" he quickly moves on to the next naughty thing. The odd thing is at the same time he has been more affectionate this week. It's like this is PASSION week, ups and downs, but all done with a passion. I am dreading the airport and flying with him... I think I am going to have to go into survival mode and bring a 5lb bag of M&M's. On a happier note we took William for new shoes today. He is now a 7 1/2 wide and we got him some cute little Stride Rite leather shoes that amazingly are machine washable. When I saw the shoes he was supposed to try on I just about died. They were so big! My little boy is getting big in so many ways, I just hope I can keep one step ahead...

Playground ...

For some reason William likes to pretend the swinging bridge is a bed. He lays down and says "Baby Tired". It's very cute!