Lake House with Everyone, Part II -- Water Fun

Keira loved the water front.  Besides visiting the bunk beds downstairs, it was her favorite destination.  She played happily for hours in the water and on the sand, and usually a lot of both.  Once again, she was amazingly independent in her Princess Float.

Besides happily playing by herself for house, she also enjoyed some water time with different family members.  She even got to spend some special time with Uncle Brian in the water before he had to head back home.

 

 

Elijah also got to enjoy some time horsing around with Uncle Brian in the water, too.  They took turns trying to throw each other in the lake.



Besides trying to push Uncle Brian into the lake, Elijah spent many other happy hours at the waterfront, too.  He played in the sand and swam around the swimming area.  Unfortunately, his comfort in the pool didn't completely translate to lake swimming.  But, he loved swimming out to the float and asked Daddy and I to accompany him whenever he got the chance.

Lake House with Everyone, Part I -- Lake House

In the middle of July, we spent a week at the Lake House.  The whole family spent at least a little time up at the lake -- Aunt Seana, Mr. Josh and Hayden stayed up all week, Grammie and Babo left two days before we did, and Uncle Brian and Ms. Kathryn came up over the weekend.  It was wonderful to see everyone -- we had a great time.  I've divided my memories and pictures into four posts: Lake House, Water Fun, Boat Rides and In Town.  First, I'll start with all the fun we had around the house.

As with any trip with that many people, we had no shortage of food.  Fortunately, we used the food spreadsheet that Brian created a few years ago which clarified the meal planning and cut down on the redundancy.  Along with regular meals that everyone chipped in on, as usual, Aunt Seana kept us well stocked in yummy baked goods.  True to form, Elijah volunteered to help with some of the baking.  That's one of my favorite parts of going up to the Lake House with such a big group -- there's plenty of opportunity for spontaneous extended family time.

 

 

With that many people and in this in this day and age of laptops, we had FIVE laptops at the lake house at one point.  When Josh realized that this picture was being taken, he rushed to bring out all the computers to highlight the ridiculousness.

 

 

As usual, my favorite place to be around the house was on the screened in porch.  The wonderful thing about this trip is that the kids are getting older and more independent.  While Keira played next to us on the porch, I was able to play a few games.  Amazing!  My favorite was Rummy-O.  Hayden and Elijah loved the game, too.  It was especially fun to watch them play together since this was the first time they had met.

 





Buzz

I think we may have a little actress in the making.  For the last year or so, her favorite game has been some version of Dora The Explorer.  She would "talk" to her audience the way Dora does, describing her adventure and asking for help.  Now, this summer, was the summer of Toy Story.  We started watching some Disney favorites this summer.  We watched Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, The Jungle Book and most recently Toy Story.  We've now watched all three Toy Stories LOTS of times, and both of the kids are enamored.  Therefore, Keira's Dora character has been replaced by Buzz Lightyear.  Now, she's constantly "flying" around the house with a very serious expression on her face, saving people.  Scott had a creative brainstorm, and with a little help from some on hand crafts supplies he created a masterpiece -- a Buzz Lightyear costume for Keira.  As you can see from the photos, she adores his awesome creation.

Keeping Cool

In the last week of June, we were hit by a heat wave.  Temps climbed into the 100's all week, although the humidity wasn't too bad, so it could've been worse.  We spent our fair share of time at the pool that week and all summer, but during the heat wave we also beat the heat in our own backyard.  Like last summer, our homemade water slides have been a big hit.  Unlike last summer, Keira got comfortable almost immediately and independently slid over and over again.  Elijah continued to love them this year, and even got adventurous by sliding down on his tummy, face first.

After what seemed like hundreds of times down the hill, both kids were finally ready for a snack and a giggle.

After their snack, they decided to change it up a bit and take a dip in the baby pool.

The next day was hot again, so the kids wasted no time getting back to the water slide.  This time I decided to join them.  So much fun!

Solo Lake House Trip

We had an unusual opportunity this summer.  With everyone else otherwise scheduled or engaged, we got to go up to the Lake House with just the four of us in the middle of June.  While we missed everyone, it was a wonderfully relaxing, laid back trip.  We were able to have our stuff all over the house and make as much noise in the morning as we wanted to.  The kids were unusually independent and spent hours playing by themselves, or together, on the screened porch while Scott and I relaxed or read. 

There were a few exceptions to the laid back agenda for Scott and I.  First, Scott was in school finishing up his master's, so he did have some work to do.  As for me, I ran every morning.  I decided to start running at the beginning of the summer.  It was a spur of the moment decision when I was feeling less than challenged on a walk one day.  I started by mostly walking and running a few minutes, and now I've worked my way up to running for a half an hour straight.  It's been amazing.  So far I've lost about fifteen pounds since my highest weight this winter and I have about four pounds left until I reach my goal weight.  Yay!  While we were on our solo trip at the Lake House I was still alternating between running and walking.  But the Lake House has such gorgeous surroundings that any run up there is wonderful.

Besides beautiful surroundings and relaxing days, one of our highlights of our solo trip were boat rides.  Before that trip Keira has never been fond of "Babo's Boat."  In fact,  on boat ridesshe'd spend most of the time screaming, crying or clinging to me.  She hated the noise.  But, this trip, after some initial hesitation, she realized it wasn't very loud after all.  Once Keira got over her trepidation, we had several wonderfully successful boat rides.  In fact, Keira was so at ease, that we even took a few Nap Rides on the boat.  Once the kids fell asleep, Scott would cut the engine and we'd basically idle around the lake, enjoying our surroundings while the kids snoozed.  We got to watch our beautiful sleeping babies, look at the gorgeous view, and one day we even saw a mama duckie with her baby ducks. 

As for Elijah, he was ecstaticto be spending time on the boat.  We had prepared him for the trip, by saying that we probably wouldn't be able to go on the boat this trip since Keira hated it so much.  We explained that it was hard for Daddy to drive, get us in and out of the docks and navigate by himself while Mommy held a crying girl.  Fortunately, with Keira's happiness on the boat, I was able to help Scott when needed so we could go out successfully on the boat.  Elijah was incredibly relieved as he loves cruising around the lake, looking around and most importantly riding to the marina to get ice cream and feed the ducks.

The surprise highlight of our boating adventures was swimming in the lake.  With Keira previously being so reticent about the boat in general, we never imagined that she'd be interested in stopping the boat and swimming in the open water.  Turns out both kids loved it.  Elijah even jumped in a few times all by himself.  All four of us spent quite a bit of time splashing around.

Keira was so comfortable on the boat by the end of our trip, that one of the kids' favorite things to do was hold on at the bow of the ship as we drove fast over the waves.  They even started dancing around and jumping up and down while holding on.  That was serious progress for a girl who used to cry her way through boat rides!

As you can see, our boat rides were well documented, but of course they weren't the only fun we had, just our most photographed fun.  Besides having fun on the boat, we also enjoyed our time around the house, as I said earlier, and we all enjoyed many happy hours down at the lake side, too.  Both kids had a great time splashing around in the swimming area and playing in the sand.





Butterfly Release

As I said in a previous post, we ordered a butterfly kit and it arrived during Elijah's last week of school.  Yet unfortunately, we forgot about our Disney trip when we placed the order.  We got to watch the caterpillars eat, grow, shed their skin, eat, grow, shed their skin and finally build their chrysalises.  But, when we left for Disney, none had turned into butterflies yet.  Fortunately, as usual, Bapa and Dendi took care of Kodi and our plants while we were gone, and they agreed to add butterfly duty to their roster of jobs.  As we expected, all five butterflies emerged from their chrysalises while we were in Disney.  But thankfully they were so well taken care of that they survived until we got back and we were able to release them.  Both Elijah and Keira enjoyed participating in the butterfly release, although it was slightly anti-climactic as the butterflies seemed perfectly content to stay in their cage.

In the end, one of the butterflies was so reticent about flying out of his safe place that Scottie had to flatten the cage for encouragement.



Disney World, Part V -- More Downtown Disney and The Ride Home

No visit to Downtown Disney is complete without visiting our favorite, mini train.  On this trip, Keira started with being a little nervous, and wanting to ride with me.  While Elijah, confidently rode on the Caboose all by himself.

After enjoying her first ride accompanied by me, Keira decided that she felt brave enough to ride in caboose with her brother.  She had extra incentive, since parents are only allowed to ride in the cars.  If kids want to ride in the engine or the caboose they have to be brave and ride without their parents.  As Keira struggled with her buckle, her wonderful big brother immediately jumped in to help her.  Both kids enjoyed many more solo rides in the caboose and engine.

After her independent experience on the train, Keira was disappointed that I had to join them on the carousel.  But, I kept a bit of distance to continue her "big girl" experience.

After they ran out of their allotted carousel and train tokens, we headed to the van to begin our long trek home.  All in all, our car rides were enjoyable and calm.  The kids have gotten to be much better travelers as they've gotten older.  Keira played with lots of toys, looked at books and requested music, while Elijah spent most of his time reading the directions to his Star Wars paper airplane book over and over again.  We stopped for dinner at an older Chick-Fil A that had an expanded, outdoor play place that Keira loved.  In fact, she loved it so much that she's requested going back several times since.  At dinner, Elijah lost his third tooth eating a french fry.  In the car after our fun experience, I got a picture of our happy car girlie, while Elijah took a few self-portraits of his new grin.