Night Driving

Last weekend we went to Michigan to celebrate my neice's tenth birthday.  It was a crazy time of night driving, as we left on a Friday night and came home on a Sunday  night.  Instead of sleeping peacefully, the kids were up most of the four hour drive and went kind of bonkers from sitting in the car too long.  Blah.

But the trip was fun, they love to see their cousins.  I like to see my mom and sister.  It was gorgeous out and we got to spend lots of time outside. 

We even went to Tunnel Park, which is a lovely park on Lake Michigan that has a big huge sand dune.  And going right through the dune is a tunnel, hence the name.  I have memories from when I was little running through the tunnel screaming at the top of my lungs to hear it echo!  It was fun to see my kids do that, too!

 Our sleep was all off and everyone took amazing naps!  Otis in the stroller after a walk with Grandma, and Brendan and Ingrid passed out on the couch.  All that fresh air and chasing balls with cousins really wears you out.

 

4th of July

Too hot to be clever.  My brain is melting.

Yesterday we went to the cottage.  We melted there, too.  Went swimming.  Went boating.  Drank beer from a keg.  Ate ice cream sandwiches.  Played with cousins.  Sweat. 

Then we came home to sleep in air conditioning.  Ha!  Jokes on me, the A/C was broken.  I opened up the windows, turned on all the fans and tried to stay comfortable.  All night was horrible, just laying in bed made me sweat.  Otis woke up and was drenched.  He spent the night in my room and then proceeded to wake up all cheerful and ready to go at 4:30am.  Again. So we went outside and spent a lovely morning with our new neighbor friends while waiting for the repairman to come. 

Then I found a magical light switch that manually turns on and off the air conditioning.  It's about two feet off the floor, perfect for a little man to turn on and off.  Mainly, off.  Air conditioning not broken, just turned off!  Relief that I didn't have to shell out hundreds of dollars to get ours fixed, pissed that it was a simple fix I could've done LAST NIGHT.  Lesson learned!

The house was up to 96 degrees, it's taken a few hours but it's finally down to 80, which seems like the Arctic compared to what it had been!  Screw this heat, I'm done with it!

Family

This weekend my family came into town.  We stayed at the cottage and Ingrid got tons of cousin time.  We were joking that if we were the Duggars, we'd still be ten kids short!  Nine kids is plenty, thank you very much!
Otis had fun bathing in the sink.  Ingrid did this when she was a baby, too.  I just love sink baths!

Ingrid colored with her cousins.  They got along super well, and my nephew just loved Otis!  He was all over him! 

The reason we all got together was for my mom's birthday.  We had a little party for her at my brother's house, and I got this picture of her blowing out her candles.  With a lot of help from her grandkids!

We had a good time just hanging out, playing, swimming, going to the park, and being sleep deprived.  With all the beds the cottage had, for some reason there was always a scramble to figure out who was sleeping where!  Otis had no problems, though, even sleep deprived he was a happy kid.  And those are lipstick marks, not bruises.  Gramma has done this to all the grandkids!  I wish I had all the pictures of various babies with Gramma kisses all over them!

We ended up leaving a day early, though, since it was so overwhelming for Ingrid.  She was ready to get back to her house and sleep in her own bed.  Or was that me?  I love my family but there are so many of us, it's hard to spend too much time together! 

Our Busy 4th Weekend

Brendan doesn't have a lot of extended family, and those he does have live far away.  But each year they get together at the cottage for the 4th of July.  For some reason we haven't gone in a long time, but this year we made sure we did.  I'm so glad we did!  We had a blast.

Ingrid was in love with the kids.  Brendan's cousin has four kids and their youngest is six.  Calvin and Ingrid had fun chasing each other around the house.  Over and over and over.  Never lost its charm.

Otis was awesome and slept wherever.  He took a nap in a bed one day, he fell asleep outside another day.  All that fresh air and activity wore both kids out and they slept like logs. 

We did lots of swimming.  We did lots of hanging out in the backyard.

Otis practiced sitting.

The weather was perfect.

And when we came home we took baths and put on new summer pjs and lit sparklers. 

I'm exhausted and I still have four loads of laundry to do.  Back to reality.

My First Funeral (Sort of)

That's right, I'm 34 and I've never been to a funeral before this week.  How does that happen??  My grandpa passed away on Ingrid's birthday.  I wrote this about him on my other blog.  I love that guy.

I took both kids with me on a five hour drive to my sister's.  Thank god they were good and slept!  Ingrid read books and sang to herself while she was awake.  We stopped for pancakes.  I had a Harry Potter book on cd to listen to.  It was a nice day.

We ended up going to stay at a hotel when my sister's air bed broke.  I didn't want to sleep on the floor and I knew Ingrid was tired and overwhelmed with traveling, so it would be better for everyone if we contained her in a room where she couldn't bother anyone but me!  Otis was a dream--he nursed to sleep at 8pm and didn't wake up until we woke him up at 7:30am to go get breakfast.  This is the picture of a truly relaxed baby:

The next day we had a get together with my brothers.  It is so rare all four of us kids and all our kids can get together!  Ingrid just loves to play with all her cousins!

Ingrid decided to slide down the slide face first into a pile of mud pies they'd been making.  Add a snotty nose and this is what you get.  Ha!

The next day was the memorial service for my Grandpa.  It was sad but also a chance to see everyone and reminisce about him.  My cousin from Indiana was there, she has the same kids as me--a three year old girl and a baby boy.  Her son Max is five weeks old.  Otis is five months, remember?  God he's so tiny!  I always think he is so big, but then he gets put in his place by a sleepy newborn...

It sucks to have a death in the family, but it's nice to see everyone.  Especially with our enormous family that's spread all over the country--it's pretty hard to get us all together.  It's nice when we finally do.  I would prefer a family reunion next time, though. 

Labor Day

So bummed I forgot my memory card this weekend!!  We went to visit my mom and it's the most beautiful place ever, complete with a mama deer and her three babies meandering through the backyard.  But no, stupid me forgets the most important part of the camera...

Anyway, after some discussion with Brendan about our Labor Day weekend and finding out he planned on working, I was loathe to sit at home by myself.  Ingrid and I packed up the car and headed the three hours to my mom's.  She has this great job of dog/house sitting for a very generous woman who lives on a horse farm and small lake.  So there are tons of things for kids to do and Ingrid had a blast!  Gramma took her on a golf cart ride to meet the horses, they went swinging and playing in the play house, we found a basket of maracas and tambourines.  Non stop action!

My sister and her family and brother and his family all came on Monday.  Instead of being 81 and sunny, it was rainy and 60, so we put the kids down in the basement with toys, lit a fire in the fireplace, and had a great day.  In the afternoon it finally cleared up and they got to go fishing and swimming in the pool (seriously, this place is like a kid heaven!!).  I got to cuddle with my one year old nephew, which Ingrid was very unsure of.  Graham was all cuddled up to me with his blanket, Ingrid came up from the basement and stopped short when she saw me.  "Mama!  Put that baby down!"  Oh honey, are you ever in for a rude awakening...

Ingrid did pretty well this little road trip.  She napped on the way there and was cheerful until just before we got to my mom's.  For some reason she started crying "I don't want to go to Gramma's, I wanna go to the area."  I still have no idea what "the area" is, but she was adamant we go there instead!!  She forgot all about it once she saw the horses, though.  She loves to play with her cousins and eat food, and despite whining that she was soooooo tired, she made it through the day in a fairly good mood. 

We're starting a new nap regime tomorrow, trying to get her back into the napping game, since she cannot function on 10 hours of sleep at night alone.  Hopefully the "I'm soooo tiiiiiiirred, Mama!" will cease and she'll go back to being a cheerful person...

Birthday Weekend

This weekend we went to the west side of Michigan to see my family.  It was my mom's 60th last week and my nephew's first this week, so we had lots of celebrating to do!  Ingrid was so great, she napped half of the three hour drive and was happy the rest.  And looking quite dapper in her pearls.

We went to my sister's house and swam in the pool, played with lots of toys, and relaxed.  It was so strange but I didn't have to keep much of an eye on her the whole weekend because there were tons of other people around, and my 7 year old niece was a good babysitter.  So I actually did get to relax, it was nice!

Dinner was crazy, we have too many people in our family...It was nice that all of us could get together at one time, though, as usually someone is missing--either me or my brother who lives in Wisconsin.  But we were all there, all 18 of us! 

The next day we had my nephew's first birthday party.  Ingrid had fun with yet more toys that are new to her, and a swingset in the back yard.  She wore herself out and by the time we had cake and sang happy birthday, she was ready to go.  She slept the entire way home, it was great! 

I am so glad we got to do a fun family weekend.  Ingrid is getting way easier to deal with as she gets older, it makes traveling that much more fun.  We'll see what a new baby brings now!