Family-Ocean Shores pt. 3

Even with nothing adventurous happens, being with family is always good.  Some of the best memories are created just from sitting around, visiting, and getting to know each other! 

No more bellies, now we have babies!

Andrew and Carina with their babies

The new dads in their matching Ergo carriers

Andrew knitting, and using his beard to hold his knitting needles

Grandpa, also known as the baby whisperer, holding Harper

Scout getting to know Uncle Tyler

Harper and Matthew

Grandpa Bybee and Scout

Enjoying the front porch

Family photo on the dock

Today

Life is busy right now.  But very, very good.

School starts on the 7th and I don't feel ready to give up on summer quite yet.  Did I tell you all that I am back with my same district, at the same school next year?  My job description is slightly different but not so much that I am starting over.  I am very, very grateful!

We are trying to adjust to our soon to-be-new life of me being gone during the day and Andrew taking care of Scout and the house.  I will be teaching full time middle school, plus one night a week at Western.  Andrew will be teaching trumpet lessons in the evenings and on Saturday.  Goal for right now:  figuring out what we need to do to stay on top of everything and make the most of the time that we have home together.

Scout has been getting this night sleeping thing down pretty good!  Two nights in a row she slept 10 hours straight without even getting up to eat.  Naps are getting better but have absolutely no consistency or schedule yet.   Soon I am going to take some time and write down what we have been doing and how it has worked (and not worked!).  That way I will have something to compare to when we go through this again someday!

I got my diploma in the mail this last week....it was very exciting, I officially have my Master's Degree!

I've been busy getting ready for teaching middle school and teaching a class up at Western.  I know I will love doing both once I get started, but it's hard for me to be motivated to plan without knowing any of the students.

Andrew and I have been working hard to get organized.  We got a new filing cabinet and have been cleaning out all of our paperwork.  We have been going through all of our disks (burnt cds, programs for computers, pictures etc), and we have been trying to clean up and organize our computer.  Our hard drive, 250GB, was almost completely full.  We got an external hard drive, 2 TB, that I set up one day this week.  We are nowhere near done, but it feels good to throw out things we aren't using and finish half done projects on the computer.  I'm trying to get caught up on my scrapbooking again, so you will be seeing some finished pages coming up!

Baby Overload-Ocean Shores pt. 2

Cousins!

We had a little bit of baby mania while we were at Ocean Shores.  They were the most talked about subject and definitely the most photographed!  We all felt a little bit bad for Tyler having to put up with all of our baby craziness, probably not his idea of a fun vacation.  This post is dedicated to my favorite baby pictures from the weekend!

Photo shoot number one

Scout sleeping-little did she know it was one of her last naps while being held!

Being awake is a little scary!

Don't you know that diaper boxing is a new sport?

Tummy time is hard work!

Harper is ready for the beach...or a nap!

Scout getting ready for photo shoot number two

Just a little surprised by all of the commotion!

The cousins in their matching outfits...too bad we couldn't get matching smiles too!

Harper is a little tired from all of the picture taking

Scout trying on the sunglasses

Scout trying to figure out what's going on

Happy Birthday Dad!

August 28th-We love you Dad!

These Things We Do-Priest Lake pt. 4

You might wonder what we do to occupy our time while we are camping for so long.  Really, it's simple: 
We eat, way too much!
We relax on the beach
We ski, wakeboard, and tube
We play card games
We have campfires
We play "Would you rather..."
We eat s'mores
We watch the dogs go crazy
We play with Scout and Levi
We talk about how nice it would be to have evening sun
We float on the intertubes
We hit rock with sticks...yeah I don't get that one
We go to the marina to get gas....and ice cream
We sail
We putter with little yellow Evinrude that hasn't worked for the past two years

Ready for the proof?

A little video footage of Andrew skiing

Andrew enjoying the acceleration....I don't like that part of slalom skiing

Levi enjoying eating

How many people can you fit on two tubes?

Levi enjoying a sucker

Levi enjoying the sand toys in the safety of the baby tent

Taylor getting ready to hit some rocks

Don't believe me? Watch this video. See the fun that you can have at the lake?

Soaking up some morning sun

And some afternoon sun

Rachelle, Levi, and I going for a float

Maybe it's silly to take video of two teenagers playing cards. But it makes me smile to watch it. And, not to get sentimental but I wish I had more video footage of Josh doing the little things like this. So enjoy my goofy brother in his game of speed.

Beach Fun-Ocean Shores pt.1

The kid posse-love this picture

We got to spend the 18th through the 21st of August with Andrew's family at Ocean Shores.  It was a fun weekend!  Andrew's parents rented a house for us all to stay in just a few minutes from the beach.  We weren't super adventurous with two little babies (Harper is 3 weeks old and Scout is 7 weeks) but it was fun to spend time all together creating memories.  It was fun to get enjoy the beautiful beach, we even flew kites!  Here are a few (haha!) of my favorite pictures of our beach fun!

Tyler collecting shells

Tyler watching the waves

Me, Scout, and Harper (in the carseat) under the baby tent while Wade lounges in the sun.

Andrew doing his balancing thing

Wade flying his kite

Pretty ocean

More ocean

Lynne wading

Matt, Carina, and Harper

More kite flying

Lucy at Priest-Priest Lake pt. 3

Lucy surveying her domain

Getting to Priest Lake is a little bit of an ordeal. I think it would normally be an 8-9 hour drive from Bellingham, but I'm not sure. Driving there with a 5 week old baby and a Great Dane in VW golf makes it a little more interesting. Scout did great, we pretty much only stopped every 2.5-3 hours for her to eat and get her diaper changed. Lucy, on the other hand, had a few problems on the ride over. We were taking scenic routes which had a lot of very curvy roads. And she rides in the far back on a dog bed. The curvy roads, the lack of space, and the sun coming through the window started to make her go crazy. She started trying to climb over the seats, onto her stuff and Scout. She wasn't listening at all and seemed very crazed. We had a few frantic moments where I was pushing Lucy back so she wouldn't squish Scout (as best as I can, she's big!) and Andrew was pulling over as fast as he could. After a while, we readjusted so I was sitting next to Scout to protect her. We also turned the air conditioning up full blast so that Andrew and I were freezing. With that arrangement, we made it to Priest, even though it took us 12 hours.

Lucy lounging on the beach

Because the ride over was so difficult, we decided just to go Renton on our way back and stay with Andrew's parents. It's a much straighter road and it would be a shorter ride. We hoped we could keep Lucy from going crazy. We also got smart and moved her space out of the hatchback and up right next to Scout and right behind us. She did much better there and we didn't have any problems on the way back. Way more enjoyable and much safer for Scout!

Even Lucy's get tired after too much fun

Despite the long and terrible car ride, Lucy definitely thought the trip was fun. Having your people spend all day with you outside is great fun!  She stayed out on the island and camped with my family so she didn't have to ride the boat back and forth everyday with us. Every night she slept in her portable crate in a tent with my sister Emma and her friend. She spent her days harassing Orion, begging food, laying on her bed surveying her domain, and learning how to swim!  Not just wade and play in the water like she used to, but actually swim.  It took her a few days of panicking and splashing around, then suddenly it just clicked for her and she did great.  Check out the video of her below to see! Despite the differences in their age, Lucy and Orion seem to tolerate each other pretty well. They would have crazy dog play a few times during the day, until Orion would wear out and would have to tell Lucy to knock it off. His biggest complaint seemed to be her bouncing all over him. We were taking to calling her Tigger because she was so "Bouncy, bouncy, fun, fun, fun" when they would get going. He also didn't like if she tried to squeeze in on his food begging.  Other than that, they pretty much wandered around and lounged together.

Orion trying to take over the baby's sun tent. The beach gets hot for snow dogs!

Lucy cuddling on Andrew's lap around the campfire...she wasn't a fan of the dark! Most nights she would beg to go to bed in her crate around dusk!

Today

Another post from me, posted the same day I wrote it, are you surprised?  I'm aiming for one a week, think I can do it?

Ocean shores was perfect, just how we wanted to end our summer.  Today we are home from all of our vacations, have cleaned up and settled in, and are enjoying our last few weeks together at home. We are having some friends over to BBQ for lunch which will be great.  I feel like we have been so busy with Scout and vacations that we haven't seen our friends nearly enough this summer. Vacations are amazing, we loved all of them, but we also like being home. Maybe that's the point of vacations?

We are working on teaching Scout to sleep, we've been using this book which I really like so far.  No more sleeping in our arms or in our bed, she's a crib only girl now.  She is doing great at night, getting up only once or twice in 12-14 hours and going right back to sleep after.  She is still struggling with going down for naps, but that's pretty normal for her age.  I have to say, it has already made her a much happier baby, even if she doesn't nap much during the day.  She is just happier to be around us!

Annoying me today, technical difficulties.  For some reason all the blog posts that went up while we were on vacation didn't get posted to facebook.  So if you only read these through facebook, you missed about 2 weeks of posts and you will have to look at the full blog to see them all.  What annoys me is I have no idea why it happened and it fixed itself yesterday.  Weird.

I also need to take down pregnancy counter and put up an age counter for Scout and fix some pictures that had failed links.  And my google reader isn't updating my new subscriptions to my mobile version.  Cleanup.  Maybe I will get to all that, maybe I won't.

Top 2 posts from this week:
Rachelle's post about Priest Lake
This post about Work Life Balance

Can you blame me for getting distracted by this?

Pictures from 8/16/11