Friday, July 18, 2008

The County Fair

Prior to blogging, I kept a message board to keep up with friends and family through pregnancy and mommyhood.  I'm working on bringing those posts to this blog. 


Jeff is out of town for the weekend. This weekend is also the 4H County Fair. No rides or Midway but lots of animals and small games and food (that supports local groups rather than commercial business).

Christy and I took Zach and Teagan after work. I am exhausted.

First, we had dinner. Took a brief pause by the horses and then by the pigs on our way there. For dinner, Zach had watermelon, a fruit slush, some sloppy joe meat, and a couple of grapes. Teagan had a corndog and some grapes and a lemon shake up. I had a pork tenderloin sandwich and some of that sloppy joe and the fruit slush. Christy had a corndog and some grapes, too. Our food purchases supported some local churches and high school groups.

We saw... goats and chickens and a rooster and baby chicks and rabbits and cows and horses and pigs and sheep and llamas and...

Whew!!

Teagan played games, too. Little games. She threw bean bags at a stack of tin cans. With some help from a very understanding and nice worker, T knocked over all the cans and won a stuffed fish!! She also played a fishing game. You get 2 tries with a magnetic fishing pole to catch a fish with either a 6 or a 9 on the belly. T never got a 6 or a 9 but the guy let her win a little prize anyway. She had the most fun doing what she saw him doing- plucking the fish from the magnet and dropping it into a hole and back into the water! She played a couple of other little games and got a few little trinkets.

Hit the commercial tent. Picked up a flyer for a dance studio- T expressed interest but soon forgot about it. Saw some old theatre friends. Explored a Tupperware booth. 

We all 4 shared a funnel cake and a bottle of water and by then it was suddenly 8:30- well past the time I had intended for us to stay. So Zach and I head to the car and Christy and Teagan rush off to quickly see the few animals we had missed. I pack up and change Z's diaper, change him into a dry outfit that he can sleep in... nurse a smidge. 

Get home, pop in Veggie Tales for Teagan (by her very polite request), get Z to bed and now T is zonked out. Hopefully we get a smidge of sleeping in time in the morning!!

Side note- Christy and I joined a gym located directly across the street from our office. I went for my first workout today. Hit the elliptical machine, rowing machine, and treadmill. Did about 45 mins of hard work and the machines tell me I burned 230 calories!

GOOD NIGHT!

Oh- Before Jeff left, he cleaned out the dining room enough that the table is usable again. THANK YOU HONEY! Now T has a spot where she can sit to eat or color or play and Zach can't reach her. He'll get frustrated but can be distracted.

Also, Christy and Teagan went through the pig barn together and T came out looking very unhappy. 2 pigs got upset and were screeching/squealing. No pleasent snuffling oinks. It was a well timed example- she has recently had issues at Lisa's with SCREAMING for all reasons. So we finally found something comparable to call her back to when she is in a screaming mood!! 


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Monday, July 14, 2008

Vacation- Dushore, PA

Prior to blogging, I kept a message board to keep up with friends and family through pregnancy and mommyhood.  I'm working on bringing those posts to this blog. 



Lots of kid pics and family pics. At the end you will see pics of the house. My dad's dad built the house back in the 50's. The main house sleeps 13 in 3 bedrooms and an attic/loft. About 15 years later, they built the back house- cellar (for furnace), storage building, laundry area, and an upstairs apartment (no kitchen in the apartment, though). No TV, no computers, no internet, minimal cell phone. Lots of outdoor time!


Our trip to the mountains, while lacking in technology, was very refreshing. It seemed as though there was nothing to do yet always something to do and it flew by at a crawl. Ha!

Teagan is so very fortunate to have her Uncle Daniel. My brother played with that girl non-stop!! They played kickball, ladder ball, golf- all Teagan style, of course. There is a swing and slide at the house and he went with her every time she wanted to go. And when she wasn't busy with Daniel, Grandma had things for her to do. They cooked, they flew kites, they went for walks. 

Spent an afternoon at Lake Jean. Water was cold, it was very windy, but the kids enjoyed the sand anyway. Teagan swam a little with her floaty but the cold was too much for her.

Went to Eagles Mere for ice cream one evening. 

Lots of nothing, lots of family time, lots of reading time. 

More details to come- and, eventually, pics! We will get back home tomorrow. Looking forward to it... but sad to see our vacation come to an end. 


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Monday, July 7, 2008

Sesame Place

(This post was written on an old message board I kept prior to blogging.)

We are exhausted- Jeff and I. But T is having a BLAST. Sesame Place was great today. As I expected, it was a low crowd day- most folks had come Fri and Sat. 

There is a parade twice a day. The characters go up and down the line and shake hands with everyone- Zach was very taken with Big Bird. Teagan loved that she got to see so many of her favorite monsters and such up close. Earlier in the day, she got to hug Cookie Monster and Bert & Ernie- Daddy got in on the hug action with B&E, too. They were a hoot!

Kids went to bed easy the first night and T is had a hard time the second night- even though she is exhausted. We are watched Happy Feet and he crashed after.

Oodles of rides!! T has been on the carousel and the teacup type ride and the hot air balloon thing and the big inflated jumpy thing and lots of water stuff- she loved riding the lazy river with me. I loved most of it- except the part where we got stuck under a water thing that goes for a stretch of the river because this girl kinda pushed us into it- she pushed off us because she was "screeching" at all the water things. Because of my contacts, I couldn't see in the water so I got a smidge panicky. T was totally fine- only concerned that her ponytail got wet! She went down a slide that was boring and really slow. Looked like it should have been fast but wasn't.

The Twiddlebug slides are made to slide down when wet and they go fast and T hurt her butt at the end. 

We left after the parade yesterday- so we left around 2:30 (got there when it opened at 10). Today we stay longer. We will get there at 10, go see Elmo's World (a show) at 11, have lunch with Big Bird, ride more rides and then hit the wet stuff again! I might even get Jeff into the water this time. I did get him into his suit yesterday but we didn't find the Twiddlebug area (best for Zach) until closer to parade time.

I'm glad we brought a lot of our own food. We have a fridge and microwave but haven't used those much- I brought a lot of produce for feeding Zach. Mango, peaches, apples, avocado. That's been helpful more for T!! Breakfast here is ok. It's free so you can't complain. I think we are looking forward to getting up to Dushore- I know Mom will make big breakfasts in the morning. And we can also get the grandparents/uncles to take kids away for a few hours so we can SLEEP.

Day 2 was packed but great. We hit a couple rides then went to Elmo's World, Live. T sat in awe. She gets very quiet and observational with new things- not overcome with emotion like her Mama. So much like her dad in so many ways. Anyway- hit a couple more rides and then headed to our lunch with Big Bird and friends. I cannot say enough good things about that lunch!!!

I had read online that the character meals were worth the expense and boy was it!! We ate real food from a buffet- roasted veggies, pasta, mac n cheese, roasted turkey breast, bbq chicken breast, potato salad, caesar salad, hot dogs, and more. Dessert was soft serve ice cream, cookies, cupcakes. Fruit salad. Really good iced tea. And the cleanest, best bathrooms in the entire park are in the character dining room. Family style bathroom so we could all go in together and be available to help out. Also used it after lunch to quickly change into suits and avoid the icky more-public bathrooms! Anyway- the characters come out (Cookie, Bert & Ernie, Elmo, Zoey, Big Bird). Elmo sits in a designated photo op spot. Big Bird sits on a stool near the middle of the room. The rest go table to table and take a few minutes to visit with each and every kid. And each character does a song at some point during the meal. Kids could also move around and go see characters sometimes. And Elmo did a big cha cha dance with a conga line around the room at the end! T was thrilled because Cookie got in line right behind us. And Zach LOVED Cookie and Ernie- and each character really took a few mins to squat down and play with him and let him grab their nose or hands or whatever. T got to hug everyone many times. It was really, really great.

Then it was off for all the water adventure we could handle! We hit a few spots that we had hit the day before. Went down a "small" water tube slide- me and T. She must have had her concerned look on when we reached the bottom because the lifeguard picked her up from the float and carried her as she guided me to the steps- but T was fine.

And T rode her first roller coaster. It didn't go well but she also didn't panic. We didn't make it sound scary but made she we talked about it being super super fast and showed it to her numerous times. We have DVD and a pic from it- she and Daddy went on it and it's funny- in the pic, they look sooooo much alike!! He said she didn't like it but never cried or anything- just kept saying "it's really fast" in a semi-panicked voice.

Back to the hotel, cleaned up, hit Red Lobster for dinner. Jeff picked- said it was his vacation and he wanted RL. Okay! And it was exactly what we needed. We were all exhuasted and the service was excellent and the food was great. Z is like his mom- loves those cheddar bay biscuits. Zach also loves fish. We bought him his own meal (first time ever) and he ate about half of the broiled fish, plus about one whole biscuit and a bowl of applesauce! 

Everyone is sound asleep right now. And I will be soon, too. Tomorrow we head off to Dushore- up into the mountains. We'll see how fresh air treats Jeff... he might get lack-of-technology-itis!!

Day one

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Day Two
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Jeff had such a great opportunity to grab a bit of Zoey butt or pretend to bite her but he wouldn't do it!! And he had been talking up all the funny stuff he could do in the background of all the character pics we were taking... ha!
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Teagan gave Super Grover the BIGGEST hug. This was right when we were leaving the park on our last day. She had just ridden the roller coaster- it was a Super Grover themed ride. And she didn't like it at all. So she told SG that she didn't like his roller coaster- it was too fast. And then she threw herself into this hug and she squeezed him and hugged him with all that she had left in her...
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