By Sea or By Air - Adventures of our Family: July 2008

Monday, July 28, 2008

I am inspired

Hello Laptop Lunches......

http://www.laptoplunches.com/

I have found Will's lunchbox for preschool (starting in just a few short weeks - gasp!!) it's called a Laptop Lunchbox and it's inspired by a Japanese Bento Box for lunch. Here's a short blurb about their product from their website.

"Laptop Lunches are American-style bento boxes designed to help families pack nutritious, environment-friendly lunches for school, work, and travel. Our sustainable lunch containers--which come with a book of healthy lunch ideas and lunchmaking recipes--are reusable, recyclable, and dishwasher safe. Our lunchboxes do not contain phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA), or lead."

Here's the product:

Here are some sample lunches:

Check out some of these ideas - it's awesome. I can't wait to get started.

And a great blog to help give me ideas. Check out www.lunchnugget.com

Saturday, July 26, 2008

19 days and counting...

Until my sweet boy's daddy comes home. Poor Will has really had a hard time adjusting to Todd being gone. Not that I blame him, TDY's are hard. Thankfully we passed the halfway point today and we're on the downhill slide. I'm hoping once his daddy comes home the night waking and begging for daddy will stop.

Then right after Todd comes home we're all heading to the beach for a family vacation. I guess it's safe to say that with daddy being gone for 38 days before vacation, that mommy isn't going to have to do a thing at the beach. Someone is going to be daddy's boy the whole time. Hopefully that'll give me some much needed rest.

Friday, July 25, 2008

I'm finally caught up

HA HA HA - so leave me alone already!

Silly faces and 3 year molars

I've taught Will to make some new silly faces.

And had I been paying more attention, I would have found the root cause of his night waking earlier - you can see that pesky 3 year molar back there in this picture. He's got 1 of them all the way in and 2 of them are cutting through the surface now. No wonder my sweet boy has been waking up so much at night lately.

Kayaking is fun

Our squadron had a lake/beach party last weekend. Will had a blast. That kid swam in the lake and played on the beach from 12:30 until 7:30 - when he finally collapsed.

Liz brought her kayak and (of course, her sweet dog, Mocha). Will learned to love kayaking.

Liz and Will heading out

Liz and Will coming back w/ Mocha swimming alongside them

Liz, Will and Mocha in the kayak

And Liz with a kayak full of kids - Will, Ava and Will (2 Wills!)

The saga of the big boy room

I'm torn between excitement and extreme fear. I want to move Will into his big boy room. But the idea of taking him out of the crib scares the pants off of me. I know there will be a bedtime fight every night and he's liable to quit napping, too. But at the same time, I know he'll be really excited with the transition.

I already have his bedding for his big boy room purchased and I have furniture picked out. I even have some wall hangings/pictures/decor for what I want to do in his room.

Here's the bedding.

Here's the furniture that I've picked out that I really, really want.

I want to get a wooden airplane propeller to hang over his bed.

I just don't know what color I want to paint his walls. Red? Camel? Blue?

We've gone back and forth on where Will's big boy room is going to be. We finally decided on our current guest room. We figure between my parents moving up here and Todd's parents saying that they were going to start staying in a hotel after we have another child, our guest room just isn't going to get used that often anymore. So we decided to give Will the largest bedroom and move the guest room to the smallest.

So the other night I got a wild notion and decided to switch the junk in the spare room with the furniture in the guest room. The new guest room still needs to be painted brown (just like the old guest room), have the pictures/plates hung on the walls and the curtains moved from the other room. But for the most part, our new guest room is complete.

Here's the before on the spare room - it'd become a junk pit for the last several months. But hey, shut the door and it's out of sight, out of mind.

Here's the new guest room. I actually got everything moved in just a few hours. Dang that treadmill was a biotch to get down the hall by myself.

Here's the current junk/exercise/scrapbook/craft room that will soon become Will's room. What will become of everything in the room? I don't know - we have completely run out of storage space in this house and there's nowhere for everything to go. I think there's a huge purge in our future.

All of the stuff between the table and the chest of drawers is going in the attic really soon. I just don't have the nerve/ability to get it all up into the attic right now by myself. Todd'll have to do that when he gets back from OK. (In only 3 more weeks)

Okay, so I joined the gym

Shut up - quit laughing. I needed to do it - badly. It's time to get healthy and quit screwing around. So I signed up for a 1 year membership and even paid for 3 personal training sessions.

I know, who is this and what have you done with Michaela? LOL

Anyway - so Sarah, my trainer, she's the devil. I'm fairly certain of it. She's 22, gorgeous, blonde and tan. I want to hate her, but she's really sweet - even if she's evil. I've met with her twice so far and I have one more session to go.

I'll keep you updated on my progress - I've been going for 2 weeks and I've lost about 3 lbs, so I'm pretty happy. Of course I've got about 50 to go before I'm really happy.

Oh yeah, when you're at the gym, watch out for the hip extension machine. It used to be my favorite - but not anymore.

This was just after my injury happened and the next picture was a few days later.

Girls night out

I get together 1 night a month with my girlfriends for a night of cards, talking, food and usually wine. July was my night to host - so we had our night out on the boat. I brought the camera and then never picked it up, so my friend, Shannon, was kind enough to snap a few pictures for me.

As you can tell, Shannon loves to take pictures of the sunset even more than me.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - nothing is better than sunset from the boat.

Last day at the lake

Todd left for Oklahoma for 5 1/2 weeks just after the 4th of July. So we took our last available day together and, of course, went to the lake. Little did Will know that this day was the last time he'd see his daddy for a long time.

Boy, lemme tell you - going to the lake on a Monday is B-O-R-I-N-G, there's nobody here.

Just me and my sandwich (sammich)

"What kind of sandwich are you eating, Will?" "Ham and CHEESE!!"

My boys - happy and together. What is that glint in Will's eye, though?

Whoops - daddy paid the price - AGAIN. He's never going to learn, is he?

"Okay, daddy! My coming to save you now!!"

Do you suppose he's contemplating what life is going to be like in Oklahoma again?

Whoops - I got busted.

Once we got back to the dock, Will decided he wanted to feed our popcorn to the blue gill. :)

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Rockin' the Docks - 4th of July Edition

Second verse - same as the first. :)

Once again it was time for Rockin' the Docks, so we packed up the boat and the little man and headed down to the dam in Lenoir City for live music, hundreds of boats and fireworks after dark.

We anchored with our across the street neighbors and their friends. Will was in heaven because we tied up to "Pickles Boat" aka "More Than Pickles II" which is Howard and Nancy's boat. Will was thrilled to death to be given a tour and then Ms. Nancy gave him a cookie and turned on a movie for him. He got to watch Shark Tales on Pickles Boat. He was beside himself with excitement.

We grilled burgers and dogs and had yummy key lime pie for dessert.

Braden and Hunter on their boat