Home Sweet Home

Ryan came in for dinner tonight with a leaf draped over his arm.

"Look what I found, Mom!" he exclaimed before whipping the leaf off to reveal a very small caterpillar. "Can we keep him?"

I guess I should be happy that my first "can we keep him?" was not a cat or a dog, but a small, green caterpillar. The thing is, I would have been more sympathetic towards a cat or dog. But a caterpillar? All I could think was 1) this poor thing will be dead by morning if I say yes and 2) my child took this poor defenseless caterpillar out of his comfy environment where he belongs. He's a caterpillar-napper. A cater-napper!

I tried explaining that the caterpillar actually belonged outside and that he had everything he needed provided by nature.

"I know! That's why we'll collect leaves and grass and branches and water for him," Ryan insisted.

I sighed. "We don't have anything to keep him in."

"I'll find something in the toy area."

Finally I just flat out said, "No. But if you want, you can make a little home for him outside, you can do that."

That's all it took and Wesley and Ryan were off. They made a home for the caterpillar - on my patio table. 

 

I did manage to convince my little architects to move the caterpillar's new abode into the "garden" (in quotation marks because it's so overgrown I'm not sure it actually counts as a garden anymore) where I'm hoping the caterpillar will plan his escape.

Run for your little life, caterpillar!

One Step at a Time

In an effort to get my "borderline high" cholesterol under control, I have become a walker. As I may have mentioned before, I am darn near obsessed with getting my 10,000 steps each day (although I don't always succeed) and I take a 1.5 mile every day at lunch. 

Unfortunately, the Ohio weather has not been cooperating with my new health goals. It has rained 2 out of every three days in June. That's a lot of rain and a lot of days when my walking time is compromised.

I have been bugging Duane about getting a treadmill. I know they are expensive, but I figured a simple, manual collapsible treadmill wouldn't set us back too much. Still, it's been on the back burner, and I've done a lot of pacing in the house to try to hit my step count each day.  

The other I saw a $500 electric treadmill on a buy/sell/trade site for only $100 - that's even less than the manual ones I've been looking at! My darling husband consented to me getting it and even went to pick it up for me! 

The only issue was where to put it.

And so began a major clean out and reorganization of the toy area off the family room. It took several hours last night, but I now have a working treadmill and zero excuses not to get my steps in every day. Well, zero excuses as long as I can keep the kids off it.

 

By the Book

We listened to several family friendly audiobooks on our vacation.  One book we listened to contained two stories - Bunnicula and Howliday Inn.  In these stories there is a dog named Harold who LOVES chocolate frosted cream filled cupcakes - essentially Hostess cupcakes. While listening to the book it occurred to me that Wesley and Ryan have never had a Hostess cupcake. It's not that I'm opposed to giving my kids junk food. Trust me, they eat junk food. It's more that I have lost the taste for them as I've gotten older, so I just don't buy them.

When Wesley and I were grocery shopping we saw a package of "Harold's cupcakes" and Wesley asked if we could get a pack to try.  I said yes, so the boys got their first taste of packaged cupcakes. And of course, they loved them!

The other book the kids loved listening to was "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing." They both liked it so much that asked me to check out the next book for each of them and Wesley even wanted "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" to read in print.

Well, I brought "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" home and Wesley dove right into it. After reading for about 15 minutes he cried out, "Hey! The audiobook of this is exactly the same as the book I'm reading!"

"That's kind of the point, Wesley," I told him. "It's like someone is reading the book to you."

"Yeah, well I thought the book would be a little different from the audiobook. You know, like a book and a movie."

Just remember kid - the book is almost always better than the movie.

Myrtle Beach Vacation Recap - Days Nine and Ten - The Drive Home

For the most part the drive home from the beach was uneventful. Ryan did indeed realize his glasses were missing and he threw a huge fit about it. The kid was sobbing and crying and whimpering and inconsolable.  I am normally a pretty tough cookie about stuff like that - you lose it, too bad - but I'm not normally stuck in a car with the sobbing kid for 6 hours.  Because of this extenuating circumstance, I broke down and bought Ryan another pair of sunglasses on our way out of Myrtle Beach. There is a time to make something a teachable moment and there is a time to save your own sanity. Guess which time this was?

Bye-bye beach

We made it to our hotel in Virgina just fine. We went out for dinner and the kids swam in the hotel pool. No problem. Wesley and Ryan were starting to feel the effects of too much togetherness, so I slept with Ryan in one bed, while Duane and Wesley slept in the other.

The beds were so comfortable that Wesley and Ryan climbed right in to play video games

At about 1:17 in the morning Ryan sat up in bed.  "Mom, could you get me a drink of water?"

"Seriously Ryan? Do you know what time it is?" I muttered.

"But I have a bad taste in my mouth," he whined before leaning over the side of the bed (between the two beds in our room) and threw up all over.  And the smell, sent Wesley running into the bathroom to throw up as well. So at 1:30 in the morning, Duane was scrubbing the hotel floor and I was on the phone with the front desk. Good times.

On the upside, both boys were fine when we got up for real at 7:30. They ate great breakfasts and were fine from that point on. I don't know what triggered it, but I'm not sure I can ever show my face in that particular hotel again.

The rest of the drive home was beautiful and without of incident.

But no matter how much I love going to vacation, the best sight for me is always coming home.

Myrtle Beach Vacation Recap - Day Eight

This marked our last full day of vacation, so we made sure we did all our favorite things - beach, Italian ice, pool, mini-golf, ice cream. Big surprise, right?

 

Grandpa hid some coins in the sand (without telling the kids) and let the boys use the metal detector to find them. Ryan was particularly taken with this activity.

After lunch, Duane arranged for he and I to go para-sailing. I've always wanted to try it, but I'm afraid of heights and wasn't sure I could do it. We found a place that would let us go up together and since that's the only way I was going to be able to even attempt to do it, that's what we did.

Ready to go - I'm totally faking being brave here

On the banana boat that took us to the actual boat

Ready for take off

I had no time to be scared, we were up in the air before I knew it.

And I LOVED it! It was sitting in a swing, and so very peaceful. I'm only sad it took me so long to try it

If you look real closely, you can see us smooching

A quick dip before landing back in the boat

After dinner we went for our nightly golf game and off to buy some last minute souveniers.

This shark didn't cause us any problems

The octopus, however, was another story

This little frog could have sat on a dime. We saw a ton of them

Beautiful sunset

Ryan HAD to get a turtle hat to match his brother. He wanted one so very badly, we even let him borrow against his upcoming allowance to get it.

Unfortunately, we got back to the condo we realized Ryan's new sunglasses that he had purchased that week were missing. We decided not to talk about it too much, hoping he'd forget about them. Think it worked? Read the next post to find out.

Myrtle Beach Vacation Recap - Day Seven

Okay, so we are complete creatures of habit on vacation, so we did something completely radical on this day. WE SKIPPED THE BEACH! I know, it's shocking, but sometimes you just have live on the edge. Instead of getting sand in our shorts, we spent the morning at the pool and then went for ice cream and to play mini-golf in the afternoon. We're party animals alright.

We actually had a little replay of the previous night. We went to Painter's ice cream for lunch dessert and completely avoided the crowds and lines.

Then we went back to Captain Hook golf to play the other course (and because they run an afternoon special and mini-golf in Myrtle Beach is super expensive.)

I am so lucky that this handsome guy is mine

Tiger Lilly

The Tick Tock Crock

My little movie star

Selfie

Cool dudes wear shades

All six of us went to dinner and a really nice seafood buffet. I gorged on prime rib, salmon, and tons of crab legs. Mmmmmmm.

When we came out of the restaurant, we could tell a storm was blowing in. It was still pretty early and I really didn't want to be stuck in the condo all evening with a couple of stir crazy kids, so we decided to do what we did on a rainy day eight years ago - we went to the aquarium!

One year old Wesley checking out the fish

Same kid, same fish tank

There were shark attacks in North Carolina while we were on vacation, but this is as close to a shark as we got

Well, maybe this was as close as we got

Wesley let his brother touch the horseshoe crab first

Just to make sure it was safe

One of the "mermaids" at the aquarium. We saw the other one accidently swim face first into a sting ray. Oops. She was alright though. I asked the boys if they wanted their picture with a mermaid, but they adamantly refused.

The boys were also rather taken with the aquarium gift shop. Ryan bought himself some reflective spy glasses that allow him to see behind him, and they both bought light up pirate swords. Which, of course, means there had to be a sword fight before bed.