And I wasn’t going to complain because that meant NO SAND. 🙂 We had lots of fun with the grandparents!
Katie had quite the aim with the water gun! She was a sneak, too—she’d hide it under the water until she got close enough to you to spray you! 🙂
I had bought these night flyer toys back when we had a big yard (as they can fly up to 200′) but never used them—and our house isn’t really conducive to anything more than 10′—so figured a beach vacation would be the perfect opportunity. 🙂 Tom thought we should do them in the parking lot so they didn’t end up as garbage in the ocean…but after about 10-15 minutes or so, someone came out and told us we couldn’t do it in the parking lot due to liability. Whatever. We were pretty much done by then so we just went inside. But the kids LOVED them and had a great time!
Last year the gang went to Fudpuckers while I stayed home to let Katie get a good nap. This year, we both went along.
They are known for the alligators…and I have to be honest and say they just creep me the hell out. /shudder
Beth and I decided to split this 40 oz margarita-ish drink.
And made mom try it, too. 🙂
Feeding the alligators.
Being a ham.
Attempting to get a cousin pic…and failing. 🙂
More creeptastic alligators.
Owen by his name that he wrote there last year.
Then this happened on the drive home.
Of course holding her new Happy Meal dolly that she can’t let out of her sight since she got it yesterday. 🙂
Tom is away for work so we try to send lots of pics. 🙂

We were there a few minutes early and were able to skip the line because I’d bought tickets a few days earlier…so we had to wait a few minutes for the floor to open.
Look! BLOCKS!
Can you find Katie?
And mere seconds later after I stopped recording…some kids pushed it over and I got this shot:
I love the “flying” shots!
Meanwhile, in the non-toddler dodgeball section…our poser. 🙂
Tom took Owen to a rescheduled-from-bad-weather-last-weekend birthday party today. They had a bounce house PLUS Owen got to break some more boards! He had a blast!

Today marked the SEVENTH snow day this year (and the fourth in two weeks). Tom had a 2-hour delay but actually ended up working from home. Thankfully the kids weren’t ready to go outside until quite late in the morning. I think the major excitement of snow has worn off—though they still like it and want to go out and play in it, it’s not the very first thing they want to do!
Owen was pretending he was a ninja with his new scarf. He actually made me pull it up higher over his face. 🙂
The first thing I noticed was it was actually on the warm side—so I had a good feeling about the snow quality. One quick swipe of the snow on the car and yep—perfect snowman snow!! Time to make their very first snowman!!
The kids were excited…but weren’t much help. 🙂 Owen helped pack snow and find sticks and Katie wandered around.
It’s been probably 25-30 years since I made a snowman. It was hard with such a small yard and because we didn’t have that much snow—and what we had was on top of icy stuff—so it was a lot of scraping from all over. We could’ve tried the backyard but there’s a much higher chance of buried dog poop back there!
The kids LOVED him!


Then it was off to the backyard for more snow after they trampled everything in the front (it doesn’t take long).

But it was really wet and actually turning slushy so we went inside.
Owen LOVES his scarf…and looks quite dapper if I do say so myself. 🙂

We haven’t officially started potty training yet, but every now and again we will ask Katie if she wants to pee or poop on the potty. Sometimes she wants to but nothing happens and other times she wants nothing to do with any of it.
But tonight when Tom asked her she said yes! And then actually proceeded to tinkle!
We all made a big deal about it and she got to pick a toy from the toy bin! I think Owen was most excited, getting out the toy selection and picking her toy—until we told him she got to pick her own toy! To his credit, he was still excited for her!
She picked those growing capsule animals:
Of course I’m not expecting anything to come of this. Owen did the same thing and then it was another two years (!) before he was actually potty trained.
Only 184 pics of playing in the snow this morning. Narrowed down to 30. The best one? Before we got outside! Katie wasn’t much for looking at me today!
Maggie thought she wanted to go outside with us…but of course she can’t stand the cold and snow. Even with a sweater. 🙂
Getting buried by daddy!
The neighbor girl came out while her dad was shoveling. Owen said he liked her after about 13 seconds. 🙂
Owen’s turn to get buried by daddy!
Racing to the top of the hill!
Ten pictures snapped in 10 seconds and not one with Katie looking at me!
Sledding in the back yard (from the neighbor’s yard to ours)!
After almost two hours outside? Hot cocoa!
We generally skip celebrating Valentine’s Day, but sometimes we celebrate our day-we-started-dating day instead…which is today! Eighteen years!
We wanted to have dinner out with friends and tonight just happened to work best. They took us to a well-reviewed Korean place by their house. It has been freezing, hence my Eskimo-level parka!
The menu was huge and confusing for us inexperienced gringos. 🙂 We ended up ordering a “meal for two” (with lobster and a few types of bulgogi) that the waitress said would be enough for three, so we also ordered a noodle dish and a few sushi rolls. Then they brought (what we later learned were) the condiment dishes…and the cooking vessel…and we were quickly out of room on the table. And then they brought the noodles and sushi boat and the plate of raw bulgogi! We had plates stacked everywhere!
We weren’t sure what was in all the dishes—or how exactly we were supposed to use them—so we were all cautiously tasting bites of everything, laughing that everyone was probably laughing at us for eating stuff out of order. (For example, one of the platters was lettuce. And it looked like one of the dishes was a ginger-type dressing. We wondered if we were supposed to make a salad?) As it turned out, we were supposed to make lettuce wraps and all the little round dishes were things to put inside the wraps!
Cutting up the lobster:
Overall we had too much food—though we managed to eat it all of course! But it was all delicious and we were glad we got to try a wide variety!
Waiting for Costco to open, Owen got to crawl into the front seat. His reaction? “This is comfy!”
Finished project (taken later at home):
Classmates:
Estimating how many candy hearts fit into a heart shape (math!):
Decorating sugar cookies! Katie was very into this part!
Then it was time to hand out party snacks, eat, and then go home! Since it was the end of the day, we just took Owen home with us!
Sometimes it gets silly. 🙂
Now that the Kinnect is out, they love dancing!
So, remember about two weeks ago when we set up Owen’s new bunk beds? And I thought we made a huge mistake because they were really low? Well, Tom fixed that part and gave Owen more headroom…but then it came time to change the sheets. And…I came to the conclusion that buying the bunk beds quite possibly ranks up there as one of the worst decisions I have ever made in my life.
Hoo boy.
Of course the kids love them—Katie runs in there every chance she gets to zoom up and down the stairs and loves being on the top bunk…and Owen loves his “double decker” bed (like the double-decker couch from The Lego Movie). I, on the other hand, pretty much hate them with every fiber of my being.
The problems started when I realized that I couldn’t use the bed skirt that goes with the sheets. That wasn’t SO bad, but it was just the first strike.
Then I came to realize that I literally COULD NOT make the top bunk. The mattress is too hard and too heavy to lift (from the ground) to wrap the fitted sheets around. The way the bed has to be placed, there’s not enough room for me to walk around the other side—even if I could lift the mattress. (Come to find out later after talking to friends, the mattress we had placed on the top was really meant to be on the bottom; a much lighter and more flexible mattress was supposed to go on top. So I briefly thought about buying a more appropriate mattress—but decided against it as time wore on because I mostly didn’t want to spend any more money on something I already disliked.)
The bottom bunk was somewhat easier to make, but still annoying—because of Tom having to lower it, it sits directly on the floor…which means any time you’re dealing with the bed (changing sheets, folding clothes) or dealing with your kid in bed (reading books, kissing him good night), you’re on the floor. Which obviously I can still do but it is so much more comfortable with a regular size/height bed.
But still, I honestly thought I could power through it. And Tom helped me make the top bunk. And the kids were SO happy playing on it…
And then the cat puked on the clean sheets and I had to change them again the very next day and I decided that even though I love my children, I just don’t think I can live with these damn bunk beds for the next X number of years. I mean, I could easily see myself getting more and more bitter every time I had to change the sheets. I had talked to Tom about selling them, but he didn’t much want to do anything because he just hauled them all up there and set it all up and “fixed” them. But then, he’s not the one that needs to deal with the day-to-dayness of it.
So I made the decision to just list them and see if we had any interest. I posted them on a Facebook sale group, saying we just bought them off the page, they just didn’t work for us, asked for just what we paid…and crossed my fingers. I had a response within two minutes and three more people after that who wanted them. We made plans to pick them up in a few days (today) since I wanted Owen to have them for his sleepover.
Of course, Owen was bummed when I told him we were getting rid of them. I had to explain that it just wasn’t easy for mama to deal with making the bed and it really took up too much room (not really, but at least a decent reason he could understand). He was sad but eventually shook his head and said “Mama, I understand. But I’ll miss my double decker bed.” Awwww. /sniff
But, I promised him we’d do something special in his room when the bed was gone…and let him put up the Despicable Me decals I’ve had for ages but had just never gotten around to letting them put up. (Yes, it drives me absolutely insane that they are placed willy nilly, but I’m saving my objections for things that really matter.)
And then we let Katie put up more Doc McStuffins decals that we’ve had for awhile but have just been holding on to until we needed them for a good reason. They were actually a bunch of duplicate decals from what she already had on her wall, but there was a life-size Doc that was new that she was enthralled with (she likes saying that Doc has a big head!):
Owen’s first sleepover was tonight—and it was the first for both of his friends, too.
The kids played for a bit, then we started Fruit Ninja, which they all thoroughly enjoyed.
It’s somewhat exhausting—and they can only really play one at a time—so then we did Crash Course which they could all play at the same time.
Manuel doesn’t have pets, so he was ENTHRALLED with ours (you’ll see more pics later). 🙂
Getting ready for cake!
Time for a movie! Katie enjoyed the sleepover as much as the boys did!
Getting the boys ready for bed about 9. They lined up for a picture, each with one of Owen’s stuffed animals—and here Owen was realizing that they each had one of the primary colors!
Overall, it went pretty good. The boys were boys (roughhousing and such) but they are all fairly similar—very nice, polite, not too terribly rough, and they listened well. We were most worried about putting them to bed and what happened after that since neither of the boys had had a sleepover before. Of course, their parents were on call to come get them, and I had been updating them via text and pics throughout the night. So they all got their PJs on, brushed their teeth, and decided who would sleep where. We told them they could stay up and talk, but they couldn’t be too loud (since Katie was sleeping next door). I read them a story, pointed out all the night lights, told them that if they were scared at all or if anything was wrong to come get us (and we could call their parents), asked if they had any questions (no), and then turned out the lights, crossed my fingers, and went downstairs.
Within minutes, we heard them coming down the steps. 🙂 Apparently the boys were scared of the big stuffed bear, even though they had all been playing with him. But no biggie, Tom just went up with them and threw it in the guest room.
The second trip down (again with all three of them!) was because the kid who decided he wanted to sleep on the top bunk was apparently suddenly afraid of heights and didn’t want to sleep on the top bunk even though we went over that before. But no biggie, we asked if he wanted Owen to sleep on the top and he said no, he wanted to. Ooookay. Back to bed then, and we sent them upstairs.
The third trip down was to tell us that somehow the top-bunk-kid needed his bed made again (turns out he had pulled off all of his bedding to sleep on the floor). Okay, no biggie, Tom went up and got the bedding issue settled.
At this point, I told Tom we should go upstairs to our bedroom so the kids didn’t have to come all the way downstairs each time. So we did. 🙂
Minutes later (the fourth time out of bed), two had to go to the bathroom—even though they all went before getting in bed.
The fifth time, someone was scared of everything in the room. We added another night light (in addition to the three already in there).
Then we heard them talking quietly and we thought maybe that would be the end of it…but then we heard loud thumping and lots of noise so Tom went down and and found them all out of bed! They got told they could talk but they had to stay in bed. We heard more talking but nothing crazy.
About 10, we finally noticed they were really quiet. Tom checked on them and they were all out! We crossed our fingers and hoped it lasted!
For a tiny while anyway.
Unfortunately, Kragle is sometimes called for (after the string to the drawbridge has popped out four times and gets tangled up).
Owen’s okay with it: Kragle me up!
He doesn’t want to build and then he goes through three bags a day.
Even though we went to Red Robin this past weekend to celebrate Owen’s birthday… AND I took him a Five Guys burger on his birthday at school… We still went out to eat for his birthday dinner! 🙂 (Yeah, we like going out to eat.) 🙂 We tried a new pizza place that’s close to us and it wasn’t too bad. I’m actually getting sick of pizza so I had a Stromboli which was pretty good. And Katie was introduced to the Parmesan shaker. 🙂
When we got home we Skyped with Grandma Marsha and Uncle Rob, sang happy birthday, ate cake, and opened presents.
Then I gave Owen his gift certificate for the Magic School Bus monthly experiments. Before he opened it I explained it was from mom and dad, Gramma Jean and Grandpa David, and Papa and Grannie—and I was sure he’d be over the moon!! And of course he couldn’t have cared less, LOL. He just couldn’t understand that it meant 12 new experiments (like the volcano he just did) and kept looking at the paper like Aaaand?! I kept trying to explain it and I think he finally started to get an idea…but he probably won’t fully get it until the packages start arriving (it should be mid-month).
Things never turn out as you expect when kids are involved. 🙂
This was a Christmas present from Aunt Beth and Uncle Jim and today we finally decided to do it. Owen was SUPER excited: “This is going to be AMAZING!”
Reading the instructions. We should have done this part before getting Owen involved. 🙂
As you can see, the “test” explosion wasn’t very crazy and the goggles really aren’t warranted. 🙂
The compilation video:
The PTO had a pizza dinner/Bingo event tonight and we all went! Unfortunately we didn’t win any bingo games, door prizes, or raffle items…but we all had fun! After almost every game when someone else won, Owen would say “OHHHH! I ALMOST WON!” Even if he was five numbers away. 🙂
Two out of four looking…that’s about right. 😉
With Aden, one of his classmates (and the one he went to the martial arts event with and broke the board):
The picture taken by the school principal (she’s at every event and walks around taking pictures with her iPad!)—again, two out of four looking:
Aden’s family (our table mates):
Afterwards, since the kids had been so good, we stopped and got froyo on the way home. 🙂
Level 8 of the parking garage across from the aquarium. Owen was pretending to swim like a turtle when I snapped this!
On the drive here, I saw that there was a Capital Grille very close by—a restaurant we both miss from Troy—so we decided to eat lunch there! We stopped at Panera first to get the kids a bagel, and then it was a few doors down for our fancy lunch!
The kids enjoyed the bread basket, Tom had a lobster and crab burger with truffle fries (which Katie ate most of), and I had scallops with wild mushroom risotto and a side of lobster bisque (and the obligatory food porn shot with the single lobster piece for mom):
And then on to the aquarium! (We actually bought a family membership because tickets for today alone would have been about $100 and if we want to go again within the next year—which we will!—it would be even more because Katie will be over the “free” admission age—and we got a discounted membership for $155. It also gives us discounts on parking and gift shop purchases.)
The kids spent the whole time running from exhibit to exhibit like crazy people. Pretty much all Owen said the entire time was “COME HERE! LOOK AT THIS! OH WOW! MOM! DAD! COME HERE! DID YOU SEE THAT? LOOK AT THIS! COME HERE! COME HERE! OH MY GOSH! LOOK AT THIS! COME HERE!” Katie was a little less vocal but enjoyed everything but LOVED all the turtles and the penguins and puffers.
The octopus actually looked fake but was definitely real!
Super cool looking star fish! I just want to squish him!
This was the view from about the third story. That turtle was HUGE—probably 6-7′ long. The guide told us she was only 16 years old!
Heading up into the Amazon Rainforest: “It’s raining! It’s raining!” (They had misters at the very top of the escalator so it did feel like it was raining!”)
Owen loved all the escalators!
Then it was time for the 4D Spongebob movie ($5 extra per person of course!). We couldn’t take pictures during it, but it was AWESOME. I hadn’t been to a 4D movie since Honey I Shrunk the Kids at Disney probably 20 years ago! This production had bubbles, rumbling, lightning, wind, snow, and jellyfish tickling our legs! 🙂 OWEN LOVED IT…but was confused when it was over so soon because he only knows movies to be LONG.
And then my favorite exhibit—jellyfish!
Owen had a bit of a meltdown after our trip through the gift shop because everything he wanted was either too expensive or stuff we just didn’t want to get (he just didn’t need MORE cars or stuffed animals or a $30 T-shirt or cheap plastic toys). We offered a handful of different items (books, a Lego-ish type shark to build, etc.) that he could get but he didn’t want any of them and was just in a total snit about it. We explained he didn’t need to get a surprise every time we went anywhere and we did have limits on what he could get, and if we was going to act this way after a big day full of special things, then we just wouldn’t do stuff like this anymore. By the time we walked back to the car he apologized. 🙂
Katie was out before we exited the parking garage:
On the way home we both decided we didn’t want to cook dinner, so we were going out to eat. The place we wanted to try at the mall had an 1:30 wait—NO THANKS!—so we went to a 4-star Yelp sushi place across the street where we were the only patrons! The kids made do with rice but balked at the shrimp and veggie tempura we got them (who doesn’t like deep fried anything?!). Owen made a puppet out of the bag from the chocolate we bought earlier:
And then after a whirlwind day…we finally headed home.
Tom was scheduled to receive an award at work (the Meritorious Service Medal) and we had decided we would ALL go, which meant taking Owen out of school. Since Tom knew he’d get the rest of the day off, we decided to make a special day of it and do something really worthwhile of missing school—take the kids to Baltimore to the National Aquarium!
A family selfie before we headed out:
Thank heavens for the HOV express lane—this was the standstill traffic on the way into DC (well worth the few bucks it cost us):
Then we had about a 3/4 mile walk in to the Pentagon from the parking lot. Yeesh—Tom has to do that twice a day. Tom was obviously already cleared, but the rest of us had to go through a metal detector and get wanded. Then once we were inside the Pentagon, we had to walk clear to the other side. With my horrid sense of direction, there’s absolutely NO way I would not get lost if I was on my own.
I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t what I was expecting. 🙂 There were lots of wide open hallways and empty corridors with nondescript doors and exiting one ring to cross a “street” to get to the next ring. And while logically I know the Pentagon is HUGE, it didn’t seem as huge as I thought it would (if that makes sense).
And then we were in his office. No windows in the whole thing, of course, and a tiny cubicle:
Before the award ceremony we had a brief meeting with Tom’s commanding general (the Senior Communications Officer of the entire Marine Corps) where he met me and the kids and had a few get-to-know-each-other minutes. Owen was really great with him and shook his hand and answered questions.
Then it was off to the conference room to wait. The kids had fun checking out the big room and seeing themselves on the big TV:
And as more and more people filed into the room, Owen got more and more shy and hid behind me the entire time. Katie was shy, too, but at least sat quietly in a chair.
A coworker of Tom’s offered to take pictures so I wouldn’t have to worry about it so that was nice (even though I hated to give up control).
The general welcomed everyone and jokingly asked what time people were thinking of leaving and there was a pregnant pause while no one said anything so I piped up “9:07” (implying we’d be leaving as soon as the award ceremony was over) and everyone laughed and the general said Tom was welcome to leave and go celebrate and everyone else was to leave at noon. 🙂
The kids with free reign to run through the halls on the way back to daddy’s office:
The view as we are leaving Tom’s ring and heading directly across the courtyard to the other side to exit the building and head to the parking lot (this is where it seems much smaller than I thought it would be):
Letting Owen ride the escalators on our way out (since he loves them so much):
Then Tom gave us a mini tour of the food court area, some of the shops on that level, and we stopped at the chocolatier for some yummy treats! Then it was the long trek back to the car!
Then it was an hour’s drive to Baltimore for the next part of our adventure…
Daddy couldn’t Skype on duty so we texted funny faces instead!
The tank has slowly been getting up to speed and we finally decided it was time to add some more life. Unfortunately, Petco screwed up the order and what we were supposed to get Tuesday (when Tom was home and could handle everything) we didn’t get until this morning (when Tom had overnight duty and couldn’t handle anything). I managed, but it wasn’t in my comfort zone (I’ve acclimated fish before, but not saltwater ones)!
One of my favorites was a sea star… Unfortunately he arrived in less-than-stellar condition and we aren’t sure if he’s going to make it. But, he’s so cool…as soon as I put him in the tank, he burrowed into the sand. From sitting on top to completely buried took about five minutes!
And I had forgotten how cool feather dusters were, too:
And some corals…
And the kids’ favorites—the clown fish!
Or Nemos as Katie calls them: Katie was excitedly showing them her Nemo: “Look! They’re the same Nemo!”
And another favorite, the anemone:
They are intelligent creatures. I put him in the tank where I wanted him to be—where I’ve circled in the photo below. It was a nice little shelf in the current where I thought he’d look great. But he had other ideas. When I came back to look at him about 10 minutes later, he had flipped himself off the ledge and was upside down in the sand! I figured I’d help him out and flip him back over and then just leave him for Tom to deal with when he got home. The next time I came back and looked at him, he had scooched across the sand and wedged himself under the rocks (where he then stayed)! Simply fascinating.
After everyone is settled I’ll actually clean the glass and try to get better pictures!