Our Mini-Vacation...Part I

Last week we took a mini-vacation to the Newport Aquarium in Cincinnati, the Fort Wayne Zoo, and Fisherman's Cove. We had a great 4 days.  On Saturday we drove to Cincinnati to the aquarium.  We all really enjoyed it.  In the underwater tunnels Scott and I just pretended we were on a dive vacation!  Alli even enjoyed all of the activity and as you can see by the time we left, she was pooped!

We left Cincinnati and drove straight to North Webster.  The kids did GREAT  in the car!  We made the entire 4 hour drive with only one stop for dinner.  Alli was exhausted so she slept most of the way, and Ethan was entertained by his DVD player.  We bought the DVD player last year and I have to say, it was woth every penny!  It is wonderful for keeping Ethan happy in the car.  As you can see, he also insists on holding all of his books, trains, juice cup, cookie, etc at once in the car.  And yes, he held all of that for the entire 4 hours!  And yes, he did frequently drop things and insist I pick them up!

While in Webster we went out on the boat and Ethan took his first dip in the lake.  Scott put on a lift jacket and float cushion and jumped in first....  Once in the water, Ethan was not too thrilled with the experience. He loves the pool, but likes to be able to touch bottom. Hopefully in a year or two he will enjoy the lake a little more.

The experience did not traumatize him...once was out of the lake he was very happy to watch Daddy and Aunt Kristy in the water!

Baby Faces

Alli was helping me today in the kitchen when I decided to start snapping away.  She proved to be quite the expressive model!

Scott will probably say this is a preview of what we have to come with raising a girl!

Big Boy Bed...Not Big Enough!

Ever since he was about six months old, Ethan has been a good sleeper. (Before 6 months is a different story!) He is a good napper and a good night sleeper. Back in January when we were getting ready for Allison we bought Ethan a big boy bed. Over the next several months he thought it was great to play on, but wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with sleeping in it. We tried everything we could think of...books about big boy beds, bribery, tough love and many other things. Everytime we tried to put him in it he would scream bloody murder and he got to the point when we would get him ready for bed he would point to his crib and say, "Night night! Night night! Night night!" until he was sure that is were we were going to put him. So, finally in June we decided to resort to drastic measures. I took Ethan out for a couple of hours and Scott disassembled the crib and put it in our shed. We told him he could take a few of his toys to bed with him and the first time we put him in his big boy bed he still cried for 15-20 minutes and the second time for just a few minutes. After that, he decided that getting to take stuff to bed with him is pretty great and his number of bedtime must-haves continues to grow (despite our best efforts to minimize it). He is now up to two pillows, two blankets, two stuffed animals, more trains and cars than will fit in his Elmo basket (the Elmo basket is how we carry all of the trains and cars to bed), and about 4 books. Needless to say, some nights he will stay up until 10 or 11 o'clock playing in his bed and every now and then we will hear him playing in the middle of the night. But how can you blame him when he doesn't hardly have enough room to sleep?!?

This is what I found when I went to get him up this morning. He wasn't happy that mom was starting the day by snapping pictures!