Why?

Why did my Sunday and Monday posts post in the wrong order? Can you answer me that? Arrgh.

The "Big Week": Sunday

On Sunday, we went to church with Chris and Jill, and then afterwards, we all ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant.  The rest of the day was spent at home, with a brief trip to church on Sunday night.  Their church has small groups on Sunday night, but the teens meet at the building, eat dinner, and have a devo.  We only went for the dinner part b/c we aren't very spiritual.  At least, our kids aren't:).  They were ready to get home for baths and bed, and we thought the devo might be a little over their heads, so Jill and I took them home while Greg led the devo.

The kids did all have some fun playing together, though. 

Running around being silly:).

Below are some ones from Monday, before we left for the zoo.

Luke and Jack were hugging.  We tried to make them recreate it for the camera, but the magic was gone:)

The "Big Week": Monday

Does it make us bad parents that we have never taken our children to the zoo?  Probably:).  I don't know why we haven't.  I guess the closest zoo is an hour and a half away...and we just always have other things to do!  Oh well.  We made up for it on Monday when we all went to the zoo in Indianapolis.  This post is going to be mostly pictures b/c there weren't really any stories to tell.  The animals were the main attraction!

First, we went to a dolphin show.

Jack is excited and ready!

Dolphins!

Next, it was onto...well, onto a lot of other animals. Flamingos, zebras, elephants, lions, etc.  You know what they look like.

Awww....

One highlight was the feeding of the giraffe.  Luke first tried to chuck the sweet potato at the giraffe, I guess thinking the giraffe would catch it in his mouth.  He then handed it to him to eat, and cracked up when the giraffe took it.

Next, it was Jack's turn.

Anna was like, "I think I'll pass, thanks."

Ah, the joys of motherhood.  You have your own personal, portable stylist.

Waiting to touch the circling dog sharks.

The kids' arms were just too short!

This might have been my favorite part of the zoo visit.  This walrus bonded with Luke and would follow him to whatever pane of glass Luke went to.  We sent Luke down the whole line of them, just to see if the walrus would come, too.  And sure enough, he did!  I think Luke may have even tried to give him a few kisses!

So as I'm sure you can tell, our zoo visit was a smashing success. 

Stay tuned for the next installation of the "Big Week":  Monday night!

The "Big Week": Saturday

On Saturday morning, we all went to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.  It was amazing.  It is the largest in the nation, and so of course, we only saw a small part of it.  But Luke had a blast at what we did see.  The first stop was the trains, which was basically "Luke heaven."  There were tons and tons of train layouts, a huge train that the kids could walk through, and a little train they could sit in.  We probably shouldn't have done that first b/c it was definitely the highlight for Luke. 

Afterwards, we went to see the dinosaurs.  Luke was excited about it...until he saw the huge dinosaur skeleton in their replicated environment--kind of scary.  He put on a brave enough face as he wandered through, and then promptly announced, "I want to go back to the trains."  Um, well there was a Thomas layout in the kids' play area, so we went there instead.  Luke and Jack had fun playing with everything there, but they were most taken with the Thomas table, which they had to share with many other kids.  What is with the wild popularity of Thomas the Tank Engine?  I mean, I can see why Luke likes it since we have brainwashed him to love trains since birth.  Trains were/are the theme of his bedroom, and my mom inundated him with Thomas paraphenalia at a very young age.  But I mean, I don't see why Thomas would be naturally that popular with non-brainwashed children.  Oh well. 

We then ate the lunch that Jill had packed for us (Thanks, Jill!) in the museum cafeteria.  Then, it was home for naps before my cousin's wedding in Seymour, IN!

It was so great to see all my family members whom I haven't seen in soooo long.  Several of my cousins have kids now, and I had only met one (ONE!), and that was when she was first born...like five years ago!  So it was definitely quite a reunion.  And my cousin, Monica, who got married, was absolutely beautiful.  I mean, just gorgeous!  I hope her husband, A.J., knows he's a lucky man:).  Unfortunately, my camera was being weird, so I didn't get very good shots of the wedding party AT ALL, but I'll post the best of the bunch.

Mammaw and Pappaw

Uncle Ronnie; my cousin, Lyndi's daughter, Katiebel; and Anna.

The only hiccup in the event was that one of my cousin's family were recovering from an epic stomach virus.  That put me on edge b/c I am very susceptible to stomach viruses.  It seems like such a small detail, but it proved to have larger implications for our trip...

The "Big Week": Thursday-Friday

After the herculean task of doing laundry, packing, and getting the house in decent order to come home to all day Wednesday, we set off on Thursday morning for Knoxville, TN. Luke woke up that morning with a really runny nose, which concerned us, but we were hoping for the best. The plan was to stay the night with Greg's high school friend, David, his wife, Laura, and his daughter, Eadie Cate. Unfortunately, David was out of town with work, but Laura wanted us to come anyway. So we had a great evening with her and her adorable 11 month old daughter. They live in this really charming house built in the 40's, with a small flight of stairs leading to two bedrooms and a bath, and then another flight leading up to another bedroom. I say all this because it comes into play later in the story.

After a great dinner and some wonderful conversation, we put Luke to bed in his pack-n-play in the living room. Anna took Eadie Cate's nursery on the second level (it's kind of like a small, split level), Greg and I slept in the master bedroom on the second level, and Laura and Eadie slept upstairs. (How sweet of Laura and Eadie, by the way, to give up their rooms.) All went well with putting Luke to bed, though we realized during the process that sound really carries in the house. We all turned in shortly thereafter, and Greg and I got maybe an hour of sleep until around midnight when Luke woke us and himself up with his hacking cough. He was upset to wake up in a new place, and he was clearly not feeling well, and he was, um, loud, so we put him in bed with us. That calmed him down, but he proceeded to give us the "Luke treatment" of fitfully thrashing about for the next four hours. Though he slept some during that time, Greg and I maybe got only another hour of really broken sleep. Finally, around four, Greg tried to put him back in his pack-n-play. That did not go over well. After about thirty minutes of attempting to calm Luke down (he would chill temporarily, but then get revved up again), Greg brought him back in to me, and went to sleep on the couch. Luke liked this idea, and I finally got him to sleep around 4:45. He had just drifted off, and was actually sleeping soundly...

...when Anna woke up screaming. This woke him right back up, and he acted like he was ready to start the day. "Anna's awake!" he exclaimed. "Let's go get her!" Greg rushed in to try and give Anna her paci, but he realized she had a big dirty diaper. So he brought her in to our room, much to Luke's delight, and I changed her. Luke was beyond sweet--and despite my incredible fatigue, I had to laugh. When I opened her poopie diaper, he said, "Oh my gracious, Sissy!" And then he patted her comfortingly, saying, "Be still, baby. Be still." I could not help but laugh at the absurdity of our situation. I fed Anna...and it seemed like both of them were completely awake and ready to face the day. They weren't of course, but we knew it would be impossible to get them to sleep without even more crying, and we were keenly aware that poor Laura and Eadie had probably heard everything up to this point. So we decided to just pack up and go. Gathering all of our stuff scattered throughout the house was quite a task on two hours of broken sleep, but we finally got loaded up by 6:00 am. We just couldn't find Luke's paci anywhere, which is crucial if we wanted him to sleep, which we did. Thus, we had to stop and by new pacis for him. The first stop, Kroger, didn't have any Mams, so I bought Nuks, hoping they would work. They were a no go. Then we stopped at CVS, and they had Mams, but only in pink and purple. So pink and purple it was! We played up the novelty of his new pacis ("Look, Luke, at your cool new pink paci!"), and it worked. He took it and fell asleep, as did Anna.

They both slept peacefully as we wound our way through the mountains, enjoying amazing views. We congratulated ourselves on making a good decision, and anticipated a peaceful trip where our children slept all the way to Indiana. Ha! Now, it must be said that Anna was AMAZING the whole time. Both kids were great on the way to Knoxville, and Anna was a saint on the way to Indianapolis. Luke, on the other hand, was a force to be reckoned with. He woke up before we even got to Lexington with a big crick in his neck (Why do they make carseats the most uncomfortable things ever? It hurts me just to watch him sleep with his head slumped over like that). He was sick, sore, and on less sleep than he's ever had in his life, probably. And he was NOT happy. And he was NOT happy the rest of the trip. We contemplated leaving him on the side of the road:), or at least dropping him off in Lexington with my aunt Linda. Poor thing. We probably would have been more sympathetic had we not been on so little sleep ourselves. By the time we got to Indianapolis, he was running a fever, we were all exhausted, and he was basically delirious with fatigue. It took forever to get him to sleep in yet another new bed, but once we did, the visit went uphill from there.

We spent Friday evening at Chris and Jill's house, and then on Saturday morning, it was off to the Children's Museum.

The Big Week: Intro

 

Well, it has been a little over a week since the "big week" where we traveled to Indiana to see Greg's brother's family and to attend my cousin's wedding.  The week as a whole was very...very..lifey.  Life-ish?  Life-esque?  Very indicative of life.  A microcosm, if you will.

There were some amazing "ups."  For one, we saw a ton of family and had a great time with them.  We also had some great new experiences.  Luke and Anna got to go to the nation's largest Children's Museum and make their first trip to the zoo.  They also visited the "world's largest aquarium" (so I hear.  not convinced).  Luke fed a giraffe, saw a dolphin show, bonded with a walrus, and tried to touch both sharks and stingrays (his arms were just too short:)).  We had a lot of great experiences.

But we also had two rounds of illnesses and two all-nighters.  In one week, our family experienced stuffy noses, hacking coughs, sleepless nights, fever, vomiting, hallucinations, and--b/c of all this--a lot of tears.

So, needless to say, this week is going to take a few posts.  My goal is to post a blog a day until I've covered everything.  We'll see how that goes.

But before I go into all that, here are a couple cute pictures from another trip--this one much more calm--to Gigi and Papa's house back in early August:

I've been meaning to post these for awhile, but you know how it is...