I'll be honest, I hate sharing old old photos (like, almost a month old). BUT, it motivates me to actually sit down and at least do a quick edit of them, which makes catching up on yearly albums so much faster, so here we are. More Hawaii! Yay! We had some fun on the fake animals at a local hotel... and of course, we had tons and tons of beaches and pools, and Riley loved the tiny playground the most... But we did manage to sneak over to the beach a few times! These photos below were not easy to get! Not when you have a toddler that is less than thrilled with the ocean! The next series is my fave. Thinking about ordering one of them BIG. On a canvas. We tried every way we could think to try and get Riley to not be afraid of the ocean. She watched us go in, she put her feet in, we held her close, we told her the dolphins and seahorses and fishies lived in there (yay!), but nothing worked. She is clinging to Mark for dear life here... And poor poor Jacky boy. The kid does not do well in warm weather. And it wasn't even THAT warm, maybe 80? He gets all hot and breaks out in a rash, and he's uncomfortable and itchy, and so I decided to try and help cool him off, to give him a taste of frozen yogurt. Well, not 10 minutes later, his face got all swollen and itchy and he was absolutely miserable. Hello allergic reaction. Luckily it was a wild one, and I was able to get him to sleep by walking him along the ocean, so it wasn't all bad. Sigh. So after realizing the beach was probably not our friend, we spent some more time at the playground. Always guaranteed to get some smiles from this little munchkin!
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Ooooookay, so... it's been a while. So sit back, relax, this is going to be a long one!! A few weeks ago we were lucky enough to go to Hawaii with my parents and my sister and her husband. It was definitely a much needed vacation, although I'm not sure vacation ever really has the same meaning once you have kids!!! A 5 hour flight should seem like nothing after multiple 14 hour plane adventures, but man was it challenging! Now, I say that, but really both kids were pretty darn good, just Riley was a LOT of work to entertain!! She's so go-go-go that 5 hours on a plane in the middle of the day is torture to her! But we survived and landed in Hawaii, ready for fun! So we stayed in a condo, which was nice because both kids could have their own room... only downside was, Riley's room had 2 single beds, which were set up in a way that you couldn't just put them together, but there was only like 2 feet between them.... so I basically stuffed that space with pillows and blankets and turned it into a HUGE bed. Bigger than any bed she's slept in. And wouldn't it figure, that she would fall out of that bed not once but TWICE in the middle of the night. Talk about giving your mama a heart attack, nothing worse than hearing a huge THUD followed by screams at 2am! But she recovered quickly and we were ready to start our days in Hawaii! Now, one thing I totally did not expect? Riley was terrified of the ocean. Not really the ocean per se, but more the waves. She's been around then ocean and water plenty of times in New Zealand, but the beach was smaller where we were in Hawaii, and the waves were pretty loud, and for some reason she was terrified! I was totally perplexed! She loved the pool, loved swimming, was alright sitting in the sand FAR away from the water, but was NOT happy to sit near the water, and wanted to be carried at all times! Jackson, on the other hand, was totally not bothered by the sand or ocean... He was pretty much happy most of the time. The tricky thing with vacation with the little ones is balancing doing fun things and playing outside with everyone getting enough rest and sleep. One day we planned a trip out to the aquarium (more on that in a minute), and there was a miniature golf place right next to it, so we decided to give it a try. Riley loved it for the first 10 minutes, then got pretty bored and just wanted to go on the bumper boats. So I spent the next 30 minutes trying to convince her it was a good idea to wait until everyone else was ready before going on the boats. 30 minutes is a LONG time in toddler world, let me tell you. Jack was well past due for a nap, and FINALLY fell asleep thanks to Grandpa who walked and walked and walked him around until he was out. And Riley continued to make it impossible for anyone else to play golf... Riley is so funny, we told her we were going mini golfing, and she says. "Mini golf? Oh! Not MICKEY golf, just MINNIE golf!" Such a little goofball, that one. :) Can you tell she has Minnie Mouse on the brain? These pictures of Jackson below are before his skin started to freak out. The kid has very sensitive skin, and does not do well in the Hawaii climate. His eczema was pretty bad, and at one point his forehead was all rashy and red. He also does not do well in the heat, and our condo had no air conditioning, so sleep was a bit of an issue for him during this trip, but you never would have known it during the day, he was a pretty happy little dude! The boy LOVES to jump. And jump. And jump some more. Only minimal amounts of sand were consumed while he was sitting there, surprisingly! This is Riley's GET ME AWAY FROM THE WAVES face.... just before full blown meltdown. All I wanted was one photo of the two kids together on the beach. Riley was too scared, so we cheated. It think Jennie is holding Jack, and my mom is holding Riley. And we got buildings in the background instead of beach. But they are sort of on the sand, so whatevs. Jacky boy was not yet crawling, but he was so so so close (don't you worry, he is full blown crawling now, there's no stopping him!) It's probably a good thing he wasn't crawling, since now he doesn't stay still for more than 2 seconds! These two bottom pictures show just how awesome my kids' hair is... Jackson's little fluffy mohawk and Riley's ringlets. We made it to the aquarium and of course, Riley LOVED it. She loves all the fish and the ocean animals, so she was in heaven. We could have stayed there for a very long time! It has taken me so long to go through all these photos, and the ones in here a just small selection from the first few days of our trip! I have so many more cute ones to go through and sort, PLUS today this little cutie patootie turns TEN months old, so I have an update coming for him too! So more Hawaii photos, some videos, and a 10 month update coming soon!
Well, we had our first "vacation" with the two little ones this weekend. And I use the word "vacation" very, very loosely. Basically we had to report Jackson's birth to the US consulate up in Auckland (45 min plane ride up north), and also apply for a US passport and social security number, and we had to actually do it in person rather than by mail. I could've just gone up by myself (with Jackson), but we decided to make a mini vacation of it and go as a family. We had plans to go to the zoo, the aquarium, do some swimming, stay up late and watch movies in bed in our hotel room, etc.. Well, I won't give you the play-by-play of our trip, but all the following things happened:
-Riley had her first day EVER without a nap -it rained, canceling zoo plans -we forgot Riley's beloved "gray gray" (pink blankie) at home -Jackson screamed bloody murder for what seemed like forever in the car as we couldn't find our freaking hotel and i just about lost my mind -we lost one of riley's minnie mouse toys somewhere along the way -jackson had his worst night of sleep so far -i forgot some forms/evidence for our appointment at the consulate- luckily it was no big deal -had the wrong size passport photos- had to get them re-printed the morning of our appointment -we heard multiple times in the car "hurry hurry daddy i need to do a poo poo on the potty!" Number of poops? ZERO. But we sure got some smiles as we stopped at a McDonald's, a cafe, and a random gas station and sprinted in with our toddler demanding the nearest toilet! -I left all the swim stuff in the hotel dryer. Including Riley's brand new cloth swim diaper. -Riley spiked a massive fever at the airport/on the plane, and was absolutely miserable. Right at the same time Jackson was super tired and hungry. Two sad babies on the plane. Riley only wanted mama, Jackson could only be fed by mama... which baby do you let cry? The sick or hungry one? Riley was so sick that she basically passed out in misery while laying on me. -Took Riley's temp when we got home, thought her fever had gone since she was feeling much cooler than on the plane... 103. Shudder to think what her temp was on the plane. -Riley's cough takes a turn for the worse, we say a little prayer it's not croup, and snuggle her to sleep for the night. -Crawl into bed to get some sleep. Cue Jackson waking up. Write this blog post while nursing/snuggling with him. There were good parts too. I even took a few pictures. But for now.... sleep. At least for some. Today we skipped out on the beach, and decided to spend a day at the pool. We found a little baby pool full of other little babies for Riley to check out and sort of play with, but it wasn't long before she wanted in the big pool. And, to make things even better, there was a playground at the very same place. It was like Riley's dreamland. And I may have taken way too many pictures of Riley with her daddy, but they are just so cute, and my two favorite people, so how could I not keep snapping away??? And LOOK! Our first family photo in a really long time! Thanks to my mama for that one. :) So after a fun filled day in the sun with lots of swimming and climbing and playing, we decided it was time for a special treat- Riley's very first ice cream cone. Now she's had ice cream before, but we've never given her a cone and let her go nuts... So we decided today was the day. Chocolate. I think she liked it. Maybe we should just move to Tahoe???
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