vacation–day 11 (thursday, august 19)

first things first, it’s obvious that the positive influence of her godmother is rubbing off. gramma gave hannah some iced latte in a sippy cup. she was thrilled, and I couldn’t have been more proud! (you can ignore my fresh-out-of-the-shower sopping wet hair.)mary and I spent the morning (and afternoon, evening, and late into the night) trashing the dining room and finishing up the paperless paper dolls she was making for layla’s birthday present. more on that later…dave spent some quality time napping with matthew… and later that evening, we had a bbq with the hughes family. it was great to see/hang out with everyone. the kids did more swimming, and we all did a lot of eating of yummy food.

here’s jordan with his godfathers:and finally, matthew was all tired out. so cute!

vacation–day 10 (wednesday, august 18)

okay, well wednesday was actually a pretty eventful day, I just didn’t take any pictures. I stole a few from mary, though.

we started the day with gramma laurie’s famous french toast. apparently, having her cut it for you is one of the most important parts of enjoying this delectable breakfast entrée, so, far be it from me to refuse! everyone ate many helpings, even the kids who had already had cereal!around lunch time, gramma, mary and I took ALL the kids with us to do some shopping. first we stopped by the high school so laurie could show off her grandkids to her former coworkers (and listened to the marching band practice ‘louie louie’ while we waited). then we ate lunch at subway, then headed to kohl’s and costco. it was an adventure, to say the least. oh, and I managed to leave a brown crayon on my passenger seat, which melted while we were in kohl’s. now, if you ride with me, you have to sit on a tea towel to avoid looking like you had an accident… (ahem.)

after that, joe and mary took some of the kids to see jordan’s baseball game at the park. apparently, this is where shane perched to watch.

while they were doing that, dave and I celebrated our anniversary. yeah, I know. our anniversary is in september. no, we weren’t early. actually, we were late! we used the gift card that gary and laurie had given us for our anniversary LAST YEAR to go out to dinner. we also took advantage of the babysitting that staying with them provided! anyway, we had a nice dinner at macaroni grill… and I was an idiot and forgot the camera. oh well. a date night is ALWAYS a good thing!

vacation–day 9 (tuesday, august 17)

tuesday was SUPER exciting! sadly, we had to say goodbye to nana. but before we took her to the train station, we had some fun in old sac. we did a lot of window shopping, exploring, and other fun stuff.the sign in this jewelry shop just screamed for me to take its picture. the horrendousness of the punctuation had me falling over laughing, and reaching for my camera… and, of course, we had to get some salt-water taffy out of the huge barrels! yum – and besides, it’s a tradition!                  then we got to go to one of MY favorite places! I feel a little bit silly about how excited I get over stuff like this. but I can’t help it. I LOVE trains. LOVE THEM! especially old trains. places like this make me wish I could go back in time and travel by rail across the country. back in the heyday of the railroads… pulled by a steam locomotive… I took a ridiculous amount of pictures at the museum. fortunately for you, a lot of them turned out dark, so I won’t post every single picture of every single train, or wheel, or tool…  in a box car, even our group looks small!and then there was the display of toy and model trains!

so much fun! the kids could have stayed there and played all day! (me too!)

vacation–day 8 (monday, august 16)

apparently nothing happened on sunday that is worthy of reporting. I know that joe and mary went to the bay area to do some visiting… I honestly have no recollection of what we did that day. I know we went to church at st. peter’s and had a spectacle made of us by the pastor who recognized dave and joe (and the 4 million rest of us) as we were coming in (late), and then we had to sit in the front 2 rows because that was the only space left that was big enough for all of us!

but on to monday.

there was a lot of this sort of thing:

nothing like virtually beating up your virtual brother to get out those aggressions you’ve been harboring all these years!

monday also brought a visit from nana! she rode the train in from oakland and we went to pick her up at the station in sacramento. and of course, there was much bonding with baby matthew…dinner that night, was one of the looked-forward-to highlights of our trip. seriously. we all cruised over to chick-fil-a for milkshake monday! we did this last year while we were there and fell in love! we don’t have a chick-fil-a anywhere near us, so this is a treat. basically, you buy a milkshake and you get a free order of chicken nuggets. and these aren’t your ordinary mcnugget-types. these are actual CHUNKS of chicken. and they’re yummy! and the milkshakes come with a cherry in them! (I know, I probably need to get out more…)the quality nuggets proved to be problematic for my mcnugget-loving 3rd child, however, who refused to eat them and threw a first class fit (read: loud) about it. i decided to add to the spectacle, by force-feeding him a small bite of chicken. I know. awesome parenting. BUT, I knew that if he would just get past the fact that they didn’t look like pressed-breaded-fried-questionable chicken parts, he would LIKE them. well, he did. HA!we were then able to enjoy the rest of our meal without the accompaniment of screaming toddlers.I’m thinking this one should be submitted to chick-fil-a as an advertisement for milkshake mondays:almost all of our kids. can’t remember where matthew was at this point, but I know he made it back home! there was a little boy that was leaving at the same time as us, who apparently decided we looked like so much fun that he wanted to join us. I laughed and told his dad, “what’s one more?”

vacation–day 6 (saturday, august 14)

saturday afternoon, we were invaded by LOTS of dapelos! uncle bear, mimi and lots of ‘kids’ showed up for a yummy bbq, some swimming, and street baseball.

but first some of the kids had to pose in their ‘matchie’ shirts that gramma and papa brought back from australia. being ‘matchie’ was a VERY big deal. uncle david got to practice his very favorite hobby: sleeping with babies.we ate wonderful food outside in the ‘new’ backyard. everyone ate big marshmallows for dessert! (after the big kids made fools of themselves trying to throw them into each other’s mouths across the yard.and then there was more swimming…and then, the long-awaited street baseball! after some confusion about appropriately-sized plastic bats, the big kids and little kids hit whiffle balls all over the neighborhood! a lot of the balls didn’t survive, but all of ted’s sprinklers did!

vacation–day 5 (friday, august 13)

on friday, we didn’t do much. we were all in need of a ‘nothing day’ after the last couple. so we all just hung out around the house, did a little cleaning up, and practiced being cute – well, some of us, at least!

then, that evening, the ladies (and matthew) got to go to a spa party at the hughes’ house. there were lots of laughs and good food, as well as putting our feet in bags, reducing our eye puffiness, and removing our lip dandruff! LOL.