Austin

The only picture we got of all of us. Look at my little vampire on the right.

A cool picture Mary took of all of us on the boat. She's right, it's a nice shot even if my rear end looks gianormous.

BATS! Seriously, how cool is that?

The kids and I to Austin this weekend to visit my sister. What fun. It's a good thing I didn't know about Austin sooner or I might have really made some sort of push to move there. Forever. What a fun town, friendly, quirky people. My lack of pot smoking probably makes me an anomaly there, but I think I could live with it. The kids were on great behavior, partly because we only went to restaurants with playgrounds. Dallas, are you listening to that? Restaurants with playgrounds. What a great idea! We loved being able to visit while the kids could eat, play, eat, play. Props to my college friend Julie who gave us the names of all the places in town with playscapes built in.

The highlight though was a boat cruise to see the bats come out of their colony under the town bridge. It was so cool and a little creepy to see two million bats flying out in rows at dusk to go hunting for their breakfast. Then we watched them fly off into the sunset looking more and more like a huge swarm of bees than bats. They must have flown out in organized rows for 20 minutes. It was pretty awesome. So awesome that I didn't have time to notice the woman breastfeeding her potty-trained, two year old child.

Ranch trip

Jennifer and her baby. She's a regular Angelina Jolie.

Bjorn and Andy on the four wheeler. It was so. much. fun.

The Super Moon. On the clear night out in the country near Brownwood, it was pretty magnificent.

Dad and Andy after climbing the cliffs not far from the house. Andy absolutely loved climbing. Dad and I were cringing and giving him all sorts of advice and he just did it his way and it worked out.

Dad helping Andy shoot the .22. Andy declared that shooting guns with Pop was more fun than playing Wii. That's some seriously high praise from the six year old.

Bjorn mowed around the house and fence line, killing the stickers that are a real nemesis down there.

It was a little dusty down there. It was very dry, the river was low and there was a burn ban in effect so no outdoor fires or s'mores. This time.

Dad and Andy walking through the take out spot on the Colorado River. Normally, there's a river there and not a dry bed. We still had fun skipping rocks in parts that had water and chasing frogs.

Like I said, the four-wheeler was a ton of fun. The roads are still hard to find and in some cases, hogs have torn then up, so I couldn't go too fast, but it was still good fun to tool around on them. I usually had one kid with me which meant I was even more alert than usual.

We also found time to kayak upriver, spotlight animals (we saw seven deer the first night and two armadillos; five deer the second night), cruise around in the jeep, chase wild turkeys (we counted at least 10) and watch college basketball. It was a fun trip. Looking at the pictures, I'm reminded how much we did. No wonder I'm tired!

On the go

Oh heavens. The last few weeks have been so crazy I'm not exactly sure where to start. So here are the highlights:
1) We spent two weeks in Hobart, Sydney and Melbourne, Australia.
2) We flew back to Dallas and put an offer on a house. Despite multiple offers, we got it!
3) I flew back to Washington to finish out a week of work and pack up the house.
4) The kids and Bjorn stayed in Dallas with my folks who have been amazing.
5) The kids started a new preschool/camp where my sister teaches and her kids go.
6) With the help of awesome friends and family (and paid professionals), I got the house packed and moved. 
7) Bjorn flew in and we drove my minivan with the two cats 1,300 miles to Dallas in two days with a stayover in the less than glamorous Dickson, Tennessee.
8) Our house back in Virginia closed.
9) I started working from home as a 25 hour a week part-time employee.

Yeah, I think that's the highlights. Pictures to come later. We also close on our new McMansion next Wednesday and move in the Wednesday after that. Yeah, it's been a busy summer.

Birthday!

We drove to Cape May, New Jersey, yesterday for a 20 hour visit to surprise our friend who turns 40 next month. It was so great to see them after they abandoned us for New Jersey last year so it was great fun when her mother invited us and some other friends up during their family vacation to surprise her. We had a blast catching up with friends, but Andy had the most fun riding bikes with Mia and Liam, playing emergency and jumping on the air mattresses. It was so great to see them playing together like no time had past. Meg was also lapping up all the extra attention of all the additional family ready to hold her, play ball and tell her she was so beautiful and perfect.

Meg had a hard time settling into sleep in the pack and play and probably wailed for about 45 minutes before finally going to see. Andy finally conked out on the air mattress around 9:30. The big kids were exhausted. After an exhaustive reading of Texts from Last Night over many glasses of beer and wine and lots and lots of laughs, I finally turned in around midnight. Just in time for the town air raid noise to go off for the town's volunteer fire department. Meg then woke up and refused to go back to sleep for anything. I tried to hold her in bed, I gave her water, I tried putting her back down, I tried feeding her, I tried a bottle of milk, I tried driving her around. Nothing. With a house full of 15 other people, I couldn't really just let her cry like I might have at home. Instead, Bjorn took her into the car and she finally conked out and so did Bjorn. What a hero, seriously, sleeping in the car. We were all exhausted today.

We are planning another trip to the beach with friends later this summer and I'm a little worried that she hates the pack and play so much that we're doomed. I have thought about letting her sleep in it in her room a few nights to get her used to it. Any other ideas?

The most disgusting car ride ever

We drove down to Norfolk this weekend to visit Jennifer and Mark at ODU. It is a simple three hour drive. Just take 95 all the way to 64, through the Harbor Tunnel and you're there. Or not. Instead, it took us 5 1/2 hours down and 5 hours back due to ridiculous traffic on the way down followed by accidents and bad weather coming back. Was I prepared for that extra time in the car? No.

My new, beautiful car has now been christened a family wagon in ways I did not expect. On the way down, Andy spilled chocolate milk all over the back seat. That was bad enough, only to be followed today by his sister. We hadn't even gotten on the highway when she threw up all over herself. Outside of Richmond, Andy decided he had to pee and poop RIGHT NOW. So Bjorn pulled over and took him into the woods (most likely through poison ivy). He did one, but not the other (thankfully, and thankfully he didn't have to later).

Then about 3 1/2 hours in during a particularly bad stretch of bumper to bumper traffic, I felt her and realized needed a diaper change pretty immediately. I quickly pulled her out and laid her on the floor of the car for a quick change only to have not noticed that the diaper was completely full of poop so I managed to get it all over myself fixing it (a poor Thomas towel Andy was using as a blanket had to temporarily be sacrificed). Then because traffic was so horrible, we couldn't pull off the highway the next time Andy demanded to pee so I just took my empty Starbucks cup and let him pee in it. I'm not proud of it, but it did get the job done. I never imagined that boys really could pee in a jar or whatnot on a road trip, but it really did work.

Horrible drives aside, we had a nice visit with Jennifer (Mark was working most of the time so we didn't get to really see him much). We took nice walks through ODU and saw the mysterious monorail that was built on campus, but never used, saw the restaurant where Mark works, ate in Ghent and hung out briefly on Virginia Beach. It was a very busy weekend.

Meg, meanwhile, continues to have spurts of throwing up her whole dinner. About once a day, she coughs so hard it brings up the works. It certainly concerns me (as does her recent bout of not sleeping through the night again), but her doctor has it's not a problem so I'm trying to take a more zen approach that she's growing fine, she's healthy, she's not dehydrated, it's just that temporarily she is a laundry problem. Plus, she has her six month visit next week so I plan to bring it up again then.