Vacation 2010

The grass is burnt, the flowers are loosing the battle with the summer heat too, we have spent nearly the last 4 months outside and we have just returned from vacation.  What does it all mean? Summer 2010 is nearing it's end...

This summer we trekked north again to our family vacation spot on Cayuga Lake, one of the finger lakes in upstate New York.  Not much changes there, the people come and go, every year the family number seemingly gets lower and that is in a word, tragic. It is however a known reality.  Regardless, our time on the lake and IN the lake is always relaxing and fun!

This year we were lucky enough to work with Chevy and they provided us with a free ride there.  Chevy loaned us a 2010 Traverse LTZ.  This SUV was fully loaded with XM Radio, OnStar Directions and Connections (navigation), a ceiling mounted DVD entertainment system complete with two wireless headsets for the back seats(!)*cue angels singing*, and a TON more! Wow, what a ride this was, the DVD system alone made the trip so peaceful and enjoyable with our two toddlers that I've decided a portable dvd player is a must have before vacation 2011. 

While at the lake we did the usual eat, swim, play and swim, eat, swim, nap, snack, swim, eat, swim/play routine nearly every day! It was glorious!  I got to run on the lake road (awesome view the entire time and wow cooler temps really help... this muggy hot crap we've had for the last 6 weeks NEEDS to move on... my running is suffering)... The kids had fun, Chris and I had fun, the Grandparents had fun and so did the aunt and uncle even though they are lucky to still be able to pass said crazy toddler back to said responsible parent when things get a little out of control.  Everyone lost a bit of their hearing due to said crazy toddlers but in the end I think everyone enjoyed the company of each other.  The kids became much more comfortable in the water, although proper swim lessons are in order next Spring! 

One afternoon the grandparents suggested that we take a few hours and hit up some winerys alone!  Yippee! The kids were napping and Chris had done a little googling and found an interesting place to check out called Three Brothers Wineries & Estates.  It featured three wineries and a brewery!  Jackpot!  We called the OnStar navigation operator, gave her the street address and she beamed the directions to the car! We listened to some hilarious comedy on the XM radio and the navigation system broke in when it was time to change course.  It was GREAT! I had never used OnStar navigation before and I was quite impressed.  It's easy to use and 100% hands free.  That's a big plus! 

The wineries were a HUGE hit!  Three Brothers features three wineries as I mentioned already, there is the top of the hill, high end winery, there is the middle of the road, having some fun in the back seat winery which featured sweeter wines that would easily get ya tipsy if you split a bottle with your husband and there is Bagg Dare.... fashioned after a backwater town on the bayou complete with pirates(?), hoochies, rusted out trucks and misspelled words (lol).  This was some hooch!  but good hooch at that!  I usually like a fairly dry red wine and these were not even close, but who doesn't like sweet cold alcoholic beverages on a hot summer day?  We enjoyed it and had some fun trying new wines and talking with the folks that work there.  We even bought a few bottles to bring home.  Let's just say that stuff is pretty dangerous!

We also stopped at  Americana Winery on the way back to the house and it offered very good dry wines that we also enjoyed.  We had a good time talking to a guy there too - he reminded us several times that "this is America you can do anything you like!"  Love it!


One morning we took the kids blueberry picking - it was super fun, here's a little video you can watch from that adventure:



Picking Blueberries from StartPoint Media on Vimeo.




By Friday it was time to pack up the car, take one last swim in the lake, have some lunch and hop in the Traverse for our trip back home.  On our way out of town we stopped at Lively Run Goat Dairy where we took a tour and tasted some cheese!  They had some kids who were 13 weeks old - SOOO cute!  We brought home some YUMMY French Style Chevre goat cheese too!

 Our drive home was a little less enjoyable due to toddlers and their potty habits and the monkey see monkey do mentality of a JUST potty trained 2 1/2 yr old... let's just say a 7 hour drive with 7 stops... NOT the best combo.


Fall is just a few weeks away, soon Max will be back in preschool (3 days a week this year), I'll be back in school for the semester and we'll have a normal schedule again.  I think we all are in need of a little structure after our summer of fun!


This post is a bit of a hybrid post, a round up of our family vacation and a review for Chevy.  They gave us the Traverse for the week with a full tank of gas and in return they have received some tweets mentioning Chevy and Traverse while we were on vacation. The opinions here are all my own. 

Vacation 2.0

This post is WAY overdue.... in fact really any post from me is way overdue... what can I say, we've been playing a LOT and enjoying the summer. That leaves me with little time to properly blog...

The last week in June, we packed up the kids and the car again and drove north this time to the finger lakes region of NY. Cayuga Lake to be specific. We've been traveling there since before the dawn of time (or at least that's what it seems like). We planned to spend a week with my family. We had some nice weather early in the week, then things got quite soggy... we did manage to get in a decent amount of swimming and water fun during the mornings and early afternoons... then almost every day after dinner things turned gray and either rained or threatened to.

We did have a LOT of fun though, here are some photos to prove it:

In this photo, you are seeing silly towel hats and fart noise instruction.


In this photo, this is what you would call a Toddler Burrito with a side of Silly Sunglasses.


Lots of family fun.


And even a photo shoot with a "supermodel" for a centerfold. Courtesy of my brother, Jesse.

More photos can be found here.

this is going to be a long one

ok, cleaning house a bit, a few lists:

andy stats:
he's sitting unassisted for a minute or so at a time.
he's up on all fours doing that thing where they sway back and forth and he sometimes does a little crawling in the backwards direction.
he's eating a load of cereal.
he had fresh zucchini from my cousin's garden while on vacation and fresh picked blueberries and some banana.
he will go down for a nap or to sleep at night without being asleep, i can put him in his crib and if he's sleepy enough he'll fall asleep in about 10 minutes. if he's not, he lets you know by screaming, i go get him we play for another 20-30 minutes then try again and he usually goes down the 2nd time.
he has become baptized to the religion of the lake goers.

max stats:
he is feeding himself really well with utensils. he has mastered the spoon for cereal and ice cream and other spoon friendly foods.
he is potty training himself.

yes, i said potty training himself. he's been peeing on the potty for quite some time. not at any really regular intervals during the day but before and after naps and bedtime and any other time we change a diaper (he doesn't always go when we put him on there but he understands that if he goes, he gets to flush! big fun!) so while on vacation we were eating a late dinner and he was giving us a hell of a time basically he didn't want to eat. we didn't fight it. we let him get down from his chair, he went to the other room to be private then quickly came back to let chris know that he had pooed.

it was just a little bit so chris put him on the potty to finish. he went some more and exclaimed that he was "all done!"
the next day the same thing happened except all of the poo ended up in the potty.
this was a few days ago, we haven't changed a poopy diaper since.
fastforward to today, we had lunch he started to play, i was cleaning up and he runs in and says, "mama, this!" and grabbed his crotch. so we went to the potty, his diaper was wet but not warm so i know he hadn't peed lately in it. i put him on the pot and leave the room (he won't do anything in there if you're in there with him). at this point i hear him trying to go. wouldn't you know it, i then had to go too.... so i leave him there and run to the basement. i go. (i know tmi) then run back upstairs to find him still going... so i stand outside the door and listen. then i hear a plop and he starts to whine so i go back in to find that he went a TON! i gave him a big kiss, cleaned him up and let him flush the toilet! big excitement! we aren't close to getting rid of diapers all together because he still pees there quite often. i'm fairly certain that i could train him if i took the time but i need chris to be here on a somewhat normal schedule and frankly that's not going to be the case until the end of august. so maybe we'll attempt it the week of his birthday.

vacation wrap up:
ahhhh the lake! we had some crappy weather, especially early in the week. it would be sorta clear in the mornings but by 10 or so it would cloud up and rain off and on for the rest of the day only to clear around 7 pm or so... then mid week there was one day it rained all day. then thursday and friday it was pretty nice and then saturday it was sunny until about 1 then got cloudy again just in time for us to pack up and leave. regardless of the weather we still had fun. and got a good amount of swimming and lake lounging done too.

andy make his lake debut!
here he is with papa! both look pretty happy to be there!

max played with his bucket and rocks! this is my favorite photo of the entire week!




i relaxed in a chair in the water....


we had a great time not doing a whole lot. my mom and i did manage to go shopping in a small town one afternoon, i found some great antique buttons. three pearly white ones that are square and are angular and 9 dark blue ones that are pearly. i also got some super cool antique post cards from around 1906 for chris. one is of the intersection of 4th and wood downtown (right where he works) and the other is a view of 1st ave taken from station square. both are pretty neat.

another day my mom and i also went to pick blue berries! we got there kinda late and they were going to close in about 20 minutes. but between the two of us we each filled a 1 gallon ziplock bag! we had enough blue berries for the week and we both got to take home about half a bag each! we're still eating fresh blueberries! for those two large bags, we paid $8! can't beat that! i can't wait to do that again next year!

i also made a lot of progress on my FLS. not quite done with the body yet. i did have to fix a mistake (thanks amanda for that technique! i did it all by myself! yay!) i am starting to worry that i need to buy two more balls of yarn...

as for traveling with this kids. this trip was a little easier. we left the house about 5 on our way up. we stopped around 7 for breakfast then again about 2 hours later so that could feed andy again and so that max could run around a bit.
then about 30 minutes after that the kids were both having fits... so i crawled into the back seat and proceeded to read to them... all the while i felt like i could have yacked....

as for the ride home.... we were supposed to leave early sunday morning. chris has a job scheduled for about 3 pm that day so we had to hustle. we then decided late afternoon on saturday that we would just scrap that and instead pack up the car and the kids that evening and leave around 8 pm (aka bedtime). so i cleaned, chris packed the car, max helped us both ;) then we left! my parents stayed until the morning then traveled early. we got home about 2 am... we were very groggy. the kids slept through the whole thing. it was awesome! we didn't have to even stop to pee, we only made a quick stop at a T & A for a caffeinated drink for chris. then we kept going just like the old days b.c. (before children).

the lake

i'm swimming..... so is andy, max and chris.

be back in a week!