A Visit with 'chelle

This past weekend we took a quick trip to Leavenworth to visit my friend Michelle.  We left Saturday morning and arrived before lunch, so we loaded back up in the van and went to the Legends shopping center to enjoy a Cheeseburger in Paradise and some window shopping.  Neither one of us bought anything!  Aren't you proud?  (and a bit shocked?!?!)  We then went back to her house and the girls watched "The Tigger Movie" with Michelle while I (and Matt too, I think) passed out on the couch (4 hours of sleep the night before was definitely not enough!) .

After the movie was done we took the girls to a nearby park to burn off some steam.

Matt making silly faces at Claire

We then headed back to Michelle's house and Matt played grill master to the chicken, baked potatoes and corn on the cob Michelle had ready for us.

Then we went to bed.  Claire and I shared an air mattress and she spent a good portion of the night sleeping like this.

I would have to say, for the girls at least, that the highlight of the trip was Michelle's dog Beanie.  Melanie completely associates Michelle with Beanie.  Whenever I mention Michelle she immediately asks if Beanie is with her.  And on the drive home Melanie informed me that "We go see 'chelle and Beanie again tomorrow!"  Ah, if only it were that easy. 

The girls feeding Beanie some of her food

And this wouldn't be a true post about Michelle and Elizabeth if there weren't some pictures of us doing something silly, so here's a slide show of us sliding with the girls (how appropriate). Oh, and to add to our nerd quotient, we are wearing the mirror image of each others outfit - Michelle in a blue tank with a white lacy cami underneath, me with a white shirt and blue cami underneath.  Completely unplanned, of course.

Michelle!

We took a quick trip to see Michelle this past weekend (Charles was back here in Wichita for their goddaughter's birthday party, so we didn't get to spend any time with him. Maybe next time our schedules will coincide a bit better). We hadn't been up there since Melanie was 6 months old, so it was high time we made a trip. That, and she was having a CHOCOLATE PARTY (yes, my friends, such a thing does indeed exist) and she has a new house for us to see, so what more motivation could we need?

We drove up Friday afternoon/early evening and that went very well since neither of the girls had taken a nap, so they just slept basically the whole way. Very nice indeed. The drive back wasn't nearly as easy, but we won't focus on that.

We went out to dinner at Famous Dave's at the Legend's shopping plaza on Friday, where Melanie made us take her to the bathroom about 50 times (or maybe it was 6. I lost count) which is her favorite thing to do when she gets bored or thinks you aren't giving her your undivided attention. Trying to have an adult conversation? "I have to go potty!" Feeding the baby? "I have to go potty!" Taking too long grocery shopping? "I have to go potty!" (And by too long I mean more than 10 minutes) Updating the blog? Well, you get the idea. I'm glad she's starting to learn, but she's turning into the toddler that cried "potty!" All in the name of independence and not going to kindergarten in diapers, eh?

Anyhoooo, went to dinner, came back to the Buford Estate, slept, got up, made A LOT of food for the chocolate party, Dove Chocolatier lady got there and set up her stuff, listened to her spiel, ate A LOT of food, played outside a bit, made a toddler cry when we said it was time to leave, drove home and here we are! Thanks for having us Michelle! We'll have to come another weekend when we have time to shop :)

Oh, how Melanie loved "Beasy" as she referred to Beanie.
They were quite the site to watch together. I have a video I will hopefully post soon. (I need the technical support of my sleeping spouse for that one.)

Melanie was very sad to leave "Shell and Beasy" but is excited to go visit again.

I was able to finish knitting this hat during the ride up and back.
It was intended to be a smaller size, but it isn't, so I'll just have to make another smaller one for the original intended recipient. It matches Melanie's jacket from last year that still fits her, so I guess I should say it matches Melanie's jacket for this year. Anyway, it seems she has inadvertently gotten a new hat for this year.

Modeling while eating her before bed snack.

When she realized what was going on she decided to give me one of her new "See, I'm smiling for the picture!" grins. I'm hoping this passes before we get our Christmas card pictures taken. Oh my, how priceless those would be!

Vacation Pictures (Finally!!!)

So I realize we've been home for over 2 months now, and I'm just now getting around to posting pictures from our vacation. A combination of my normal blogging time being Melanie's nap time (and more recently, my nap time) and the fact that she somehow removed the "period" key from the computer keyboard have both contributed to my lack of motivation to blog. It wasn't until this evening, spending time waiting for Matt to call me from California that I decided to finally get around to doing it. So I posted all the pictures using the "main" computer and am now typing on the laptop, since having to use the tweezers whenever I want to end a sentence would more than likely get on my nerves using the other computer and all the pictures were already loaded on the other computer.

I broke the pictures down into two slide shows for your viewing enjoyment. The first includes pictures of the family enjoying our vacation. Somehow Matt's mom managed to avoid being in the pictures, but I guarantee she was there with us the whole time.

Just a brief summary of the events from Alaska:
-Matt and John both played in a couple Texas Hold 'Em tournaments, John won the first one, Matt took second in the one held the following day (or vice versa on their winnings, I can't really remember now - I've slept a lot since then - I just know they both won some money)
-We saw both the Hubbard and the Mendenhall Glaciers. Hubbard we saw from the boat, and the water was especially icy that day, so we were still about 5 miles away when the captain decided to turn around since it would have taken too long to get up close and would have thrown the entire schedule off. For the Mendenhall Glacier Matt, Gordon, Melanie and I went on a walking photo tour that ended with a boat ride where Matt got the nice shots of the eagles and the whale tale, as well as the pictures of the seals. This is also where a lot of the scenery pictures came from.
-As a family we went on a wildlife photo safari (along with about 50 other people). We were lucky enough to have some excellent whale watching opportunities, with a very playful whale that breached (jumped out of the water) quite a few times and just hung out playing for us. We also saw some more bald eagles, as well as the raft (group) of sea otters that are pictured in the slide show.
-Matt, John, Katie and Gordon went salmon fishing in our final port in Alaska, and they each caught at least one fish and had a good time. Matt's foot is in the picture of the fish for a size reference - leave it to him to think of that! Stacey, Melanie and I stayed on dry land and ran around shopping instead.
-We went to the Butchart Gardens in Victoria, Canada as a family, which were quite lovely. We kinda had to hurry though, since we docked at 7 pm and it was dark by around 10, so I'm sure we would have enjoyed the gardens more if we had had more time with better light. There was an outdoor concert going on while we were there, and Melanie enjoyed sitting on a bench and swaying to the jazzy music they were playing (quite a few Michael Buble' covers)
-There were crazy amounts of food! Dinner every night was 5 courses, which I normally only ordered 2-3 of since quite a few of the dishes were too adventurous for my 1st trimester stomach to try. Melanie really enjoyed the bread they brought at the beginning of the meal, and would often eat the middle out and leave the crust behind (as is pictured). She also got to try "cleansing her pallet" with sorbet between courses - we all had a cranberry-ginger sorbet, but they brought Melanie a plain one so she could be in on the fun!
-Melanie got lots of quality family time. We were normally back on the boat by 1-3pm, so there was time for a nap before dinner. Matt took full advantage of asking his family to watch Melanie so I could rest. She had a blast playing on their beds and running up and down the halls with them, and the stairs were a particular favorite. She definitely had a rude awakening when we got back to Kansas and she just had boring old mom to entertain her all day!

So that pretty well sums up our vacation. Sorry for the delay in getting it posted. Maybe if you're lucky it won't be 2 months before I post again!

Alaskan Experiences

Alaska Scenery

Finally!

So I'm not sure the two pictures below from the cruise were worth all that effort (photobucket was apparently less than happy with me for some unknown reason), but they're up now, so I hope somebody enjoys them in some little way.

We're Leaving On a Jet Plane!

All our bags are packed, we're ready to go. They're sitting there, right by the door. Already I'm so giddy I could burst!

Shortly after 9:00am tomorrow we will be heading to Seattle to start our vacation with Matt's family (so if you think of it, please say a prayer for us while we're in the air, or on the boat for that matter - I'd appreciate it!). We'll spend a couple of days on Bainbridge Island with Matt's Aunt Karla and her family and hopefully get a chance to see our friends Bryan and Bri. Then Friday we board the ship to begin our Alaskan cruise. Our cruise both begins and ends in Seattle, stopping in Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka and finally Victoria, British Columbia.

I'm pretty excited, seeing as I've never been on a cruise before. If nothing else, for all the FOOD. That's the main thing Matt has talked about from his previous experience, is all the piles and piles (literally) of food - especially fresh fruit, which has been a pretty regular craving of mine. And it will be great to get to spend so much time with Matt's family. Melanie really loves seeing her Grams and Gramps, as well as Auntie K and Uncle John, so there will be plenty of people around to help Matt and I keep her occupied! And there's a kiddie play room on board, so that will be a fun adventure on our day at sea.

So this is it. The last 3 weeks of running all over town trying to get everything we might possibly need for this trip - most of which turned out to be clothes for me -has come to an end and we're packed and ready. Now if someone would just assure me that flying with a 15 month old will be just as easy as flying with a 4 month old was...