Day Two

Today was our day to explore the caverns themselves. I woke up first and was slowly followed by Brian, then Hudson. Hudson showered and we played UNO while waiting on Reed to get up.

We ate breakfast at IHOP and headed to the park.


These are the cutest park rangers I've ever seen!!!





Reed and Hudson at the opening to the caverns.


On the walkway down...





It stays about 56 degrees in the caverns, so we packed sweatshirts for the boys. I was in shorts and a long sleeved shirt and that was pretty comfortable.


We walked down the constantly (!) steep walkway and turned to look at the opening in which we came- it was pretty cool!





The "whale's mouth" formation...


The boys listening to the audio tour device. They loved it!


This place was AMAZING. The sheer magnitude of these caverns is more than I could believe. They just kept going! We were down there for 3 hours and walked 3 miles! Pictures just don't do it justice and I have only posted a few.








Reed loved taking pictures with his camera- and we loved watching him. He was so stinking' cute!


After we left, we headed to Alamogordo to spend the night. On the way we passed through the Lincoln National Forest. It was a pretty drive.


Hudson didn't care for it. :)


Checked into the hotel, swam in the pool and ate dinner at Chili's. Another long day and a tired little group- but we are having a blast!

Family Vacation Day One

I started planning this vacation - our first just as a family of four- a couple of months ago. We were super excited that it was finally here! Brian and I decided to do a road trip- we thought the boys were the right age... Big enough to tolerate it well and still small enough to think it was fun. We decided to head west and see some fun parks and landmarks. We left Saturday morning, so here I am, up bright and early, to run last minute errands before we had to leave. This is at the booty crack of dawn people...

I threw some bills in the mail, got donuts for the boys and went by Redbox to pick up some movies for the first leg of our trip.
We loaded up the car and headed out. I did a lot of research online for ideas to help your kids enjoy road trips. I made each little guy a bag with a notebook, markers and stickers and put it in the seat pocket in front of them.




I also bought a few toys (glow necklaces, lego mini figures, mini dry erase boards, etc.) at the dollar store and Wal-mart and wrapped then up. When they started to get bored or we needed a distraction, they got to open a present. Then they each had their own bags I got at the dollar store. This was where they stored their headphones for the TV, their games, etc. I stuck their blankets and pillows at their feet.




So we started the drive... And HOURS later, we made it to another state! :)




Our first stop was Carlsbad Caverns to see the bats fly out that evening. It took us 8 hours (driving & stops included) to get to our hotel. The boys had a quick dip in the pool...




... Then it was on to dinner. We looked on Trip Advisor and picked a restaurant called Yellow Brix because of it's rating. We walked in, in all our t-shirt and flip flop glory, and sat down at a white tablecloth and waiters with ties. I felt really weird, but people started drifting in looking pretty much just like us so it turned out fine. We ate and headed to the Caverns to watch the Bat Flight program. I was so excited to take Reed to this. (No pictures because cameras aren't allowed) We had heard that crazy amounts of bats fly out at night to go feed, so we were pumped to see a show! (First let me set the stage for you- we've been in the car ALL day, it's 100 degrees outside and now we're sitting on benches made of rocks.) Sooooo, we got there at 7:15 as asked. We listened to a park ranger tell not so funny jokes about bats for about 30 minutes. It was a little bit informative, but not enough to make up for the sheer pain of listening to this poor girl try to be funny. I'm not trying to be mean, it was bad. FINALLY, she said it was about time to watch the bats come out. She turned off the microphone and we waited. And waited. A few would trickle out, but nothing like what I had heard about or seen pictures of. So we still waited. After 20 and 30 minutes, people were leaving like crazy, but we had just driven 8 hours to see this! In the end, we waited for almost an hour- it was so dark I could barely see the horizon anymore. We finally decided to leave. It was very disappointing. :(
We headed back to the hotel and got ready for bed. We were one tired group- sleep came swiftly, even to Brian, the night owl. :)

Getting over Pneumonia

A couple of weeks ago, Reed had a cough.  He would only last a swimming practice for about 10 minutes and then get out of the pool crying that his chest was hurting.  I took him to the doctor (our doc was out of town, so we saw the other doc in the practice).  She diagnosed him with an upper respiratory infection and we started antibiotics.  He seemed to be doing better, but after he finished his antibiotics, it was the same thing all over again with his chest hurting at swim practice.  He was crying on the way to the car and said "It hurts right here" pointing to a very localized place on his lower chest.  I decided that   was way too specific for my comfort, so back to the doctor we went.  After catching our doc up on what had happened, she sent us over to get a chest X-ray to rule out pnuemonia.  After completeing the x-ray, she did in fact find that he did have pneumonia which shocked me completely!  Evidently is has been quite common this summer and multiple kids I know have had it.   He was supposed to go the the regional swim meet the next weekend and the doc said that if he rested - no running around and definitely no swimming, he might be able to go.  We were only days away and Brian and I just didn't want to take the chance.  He was also competing in a relay and we didn't want to leave the team hanging by not giving them enough time to find a replacement.  Reed was quite disappointed.  So after a week of staying very calm, still and non-active to rest his lungs, Reed, Hudson and I finally ventured out of the house - partly because were all about to drive each other crazy and partly because I wanted to make it up to Reed that he had to miss regionals.  We drove up to the Lego land Discovery Center at Grapevine Mills Mall.  We had an absolute blast.  Here we are at the 3D Lego movie (sorry - all camera phone pictures here)...

Hudson patiently waiting his turn on the car driving ride...

Again, not great pictures...

They had a miniland there that was all DFW themed.  It was so cool.  I love living in Texas - as far as I'm concerned, there are only 2 drawbacks: (1) the extreme heat in the summer and (2) allergies.  Anyhoo, here is (yet another bad picture) of the Lego stockyards...

The Gaylord Texan

The new Cowboys Stadium

Texas Rangers Ballpark

Dallas Skyline

The Book Depository in downtown Dallas

(There was a little playground at Legoland.  Hudson played on it for a while, but Reed came out after only a few minutes saying that his chest hurt.  So I ended up taking him to the doctor the next day where she took another chest x-ray and thank goodness it was clear.  She said that it was probably just taking him a while to get over it.  Low and behold, his cough almost disappeared the next day and he has been doing great.)

After Legoland, we went to eat lunch at Rainforest Cafe.  

There was a woman walking around making balloon animals.  They were so cute!  Hudson got an elephant...

And Reed an alligator (a red one, naturally).

We had such a fun day and were very much in need of it.
If you hadn't noticed this kid loves Legos.  My birthday was last week and he came into the living room to present me with the following:



He said "Mom, I made you this for an early birthday present.  It's our family.  This is Dad with his shovel when he works in the garden.  Next is you with your coffee cup.  Then there's me with a Lego and then Hudson holding a mini-fig."  I thought it was absolutely precious!  That's gonna be a keeper!

What we've been up to lately

We went on a little trip to Dripping Springs with Brian's family last weekend. It was a short trip for us - we got there late Thursday night and left Sunday afternoon because Reed had to be at his swim practices. I didn't take many pictures, but here's what I do have...
Jake LOVES his DadDad. And the feeling is mutual. :). A few of Jake's naps were directly ON DadDad...

On Saturday we went to lunch at the Salt Lick.  I had never heard of it, but evidently it's quite popular.  I can now see why because it was SO good! Super tender meat and great coleslaw and potato salad (which I normally don't like). A must do if you are around Driftwood, TX.  Here we are waiting on our yummy Texas BBQ...

Just a swingin'...

Reed and Brian spent some one on one time together.  The house was near a large creek and they got out on a canoe and paddled around for some man time. :)



Us riding our bikes on the tennis court.  Hudson liked riding his bike here because it was so smooth and easy. DOn't know what we're going to do now that we're home. :(




We had a fun time, but left Sunday afternoon.  It was good timing, because Reed started feeling crummy on Sunday.  He had a fever and just wasn't himself, so we exchanged swim practice for a doctor's appointment. He ended up having a respiratory infection and spent all day Monday and a lot of Tuesday on the couch. After a rough practice on Wednesday, he finally felt back to himself on Thursday... Just in time for Hudson's birthday party that afternoon. H's birthday is in February, but he decided he wanted a swim party in the summer.  It was a LONG wait, but the time finally came.  He loves Lego Ninjago stuff, so we did a ninja themed party. I made the cake look like Cole and the cupcakes had ninja throwing stars and swords made of fondant. He thought they were awesome. :). Sadly these were all the pictures I took- I think I'll have to steal some from DadDad when I get a chance.






The other night we decided to try some glow in the dark bubbles that the boys got from the Easter bunny. The bubbles themselves didn't glow, but the bottles did and it was pretty cool.

Reed had a swim meet on Saturday. Here we are with our little swimmer...

I'm  absolutely crazy about this guy...

We had some time between events, so we ran down to see a little bit of the parade (yeah, the 4th of July parade was on June 30th. Makes total sense, right?)



And we went and watched the fireworks tonight (yes, on July 1st. Weird, huh?). Here we are waiting for it to get dark.



We have been having a really good summer. Busy, but lots of fun. I'm so thankful for my sweet little family and all the great memories that we are making. It doesn't get much better than this!