Day 133 - The Shiner

Here is the story (because life is about the story):

Yesterday afternoon Cameron fell off his scooter and hit his knee.  He is pretty melodramatic when he hurts himself, and this was no exception, so I laughed at first.  Well, he saw me laugh and this upset him, which I totally understand.  No one wants to be laughed at when they fall, it's embarrassing.  So, of course, now I am feeling bad about the whole thing so I have to initiate damage control before he gets really mad at me.  I check his knee with all of the concern that should have replaced my laughter and realize he has ripped a hole in his new pants.  The knee is a little bloody, but not bad at all, so I decide to try to make light of the situation.  In my best fake mad voice I can muster I say, "You ripped your new pants, I'm so mad at you," to which he laughs hysterically.  Yes!  Score one for Mama.  Then he starts play wrestling with me, which I'm not that into.  It's a Daddy thing.  I'm obviously not good at it either.  He went to fake head-butt me just as I was sitting up from laying down and got me right in the eye!  I saw stars!  It hurt a lot, and I might have cried a little.  The result is what you see above.  Cameron felt so bad that he actually got mad at me again.  Poor thing hurt his Mama!

I took this photo this morning.  It didn't look like this when I went to bed, it was just a little puffy and bruised.  I was shocked when I went to the mirror this morning, as you can imagine.  But, fast-forward nine hours.  The kids are home from school, the other children have left, and we are playing in the driveway.  I think to myself, "The light is great, the kids are happy, I should try to get a group shot."  My thought is to practice with backlight as well as self-portraits.  We had so much fun!  Well, not at first.  At first it was like that commercial on TV where the Mom has to photoshop her Christmas card photo to get everyone looking nice.  To get them in the mood I had them make mad faces, sad faces, silly faces and happy faces until, voila!  A nice family photo!

OK, minus the black eye, a nice family photo.  I truly forgot about it until I uploaded and edited a few minutes ago!  We'll try again in a few weeks :)

Cameron's Day Continued

On Saturday, Cameron got to spend some time alone with Damien and I.  Our day began at Cam's favorite breakfast restaurant.  The chef will make a pancake in any animal shape he wants.  This day he chose a cheetah.  In days past he has asked for a shark, a velociraptor and a tiger.  He started eating his pancake too quickly, so I didn't get a photo.  I did take photos of his drawings and his thank you note to the waitress.  We also saw a lady with a dog in her purse.  It was a spectacular breakfast!!

After breakfast we went to the arcade.  Cameron has so much fun whenever we go, but things were different this time.  He was not interested in any of the games where you win tickets.  He focused on the old arcade games like PacMan and Burger Time.  We played some car racing games, a little air hockey and then he rode on the bumper cars.  The room with the old arcade games had 80's music pumping through it and red lights in the ceiling.  I decided to give all of those photos a little editing to fit the mood.

Cameron really enjoyed his day.  Later that night we had friends over for dinner and he got to play with his old preschool friend, who is now a friend of Olivia's.  It makes it a little difficult for him, but without Olivia there, she was all his!

Thank You For Your Service

My brother on deployment day.

My brother with his beautiful daughters and my two kids.

From my facebook album, joy of LOVE's prompt for the day.

Keene Pumpkin Festival - 2010

Every year for the past five years, with the exception of last year, we have visited the Keene Pumpkin Festival with my parents and the children, born or yet-to-be born.  For a trip down memory lane see my 2006 and 2008 posts.  Apparently I had something better to do than blog about it in 2007.

Upon arrival, the kids placed their pumpkins on the shelf pictured in this first photo.  While doing so, these two nice young ladies came up to them oohing and ahhing over their obvious adorableness and asked if they could have their photo taken with them.  Olivia can be seen here looking puzzled at one of the girls, but it really was a very sweet moment. 

Cameron found a pumpkin with a robot carved into it, which he and Olivia both thought was pretty awesome!

I really have no idea what Olivia sees in this next shot, but she was pretty excited to see it.

Maybe she saw all of these people.  Their costumes were the best of the day.  Of course, they go every year, with the same costumes, so they couldn't be any less than spectacular.

My favorite.  The Cowardly Lion.  He played the part very well.

Olivia and Cameron both found their favorite pumpkin.  The tiniest one there!  They both found it while the other was not looking and I thought it was pretty cool that they both liked the same exact one the best.  I mean, this happens a lot, but usually because Olivia sees Cameron like something and she just has to like it too.  Not this time!

"Mommy, take a picture of me with the kitty!"

Cameron loves soup.  Any kind of soup.  It's pretty great and has opened our dinner options up to a whole new realm of possibilities.  Plus, I never worry about what he will order when we go to fairs or restauraunts.  Here he is pretending that the soup is really hot.  It was not.  He's a pretty believable actor!

Olivia with her favorite pumpkin... again!

After both kids chose very healthy lunch options I rewarded them each with their own cotton candy.  Now, I am the mom who takes them to fairs and amusement parks and says no every single time they ask for cotton candy or any other high fructose corn syrup-esque food product.  The glee they expressed when I said yes.  Actually, it went something like this:

Cameron: "Mommy, can we have cotton candy?" in tone that said he already knew the answer would be "No."

Mommy: "Actually, because you chose and ate healthy food, yes."

Cameron:  "Aww, Mom... wait!  Did you say yes?"

Mommy:  "Yes.  And you can each have your own."

Cameron:  "What?!?!?!  Olivia!  Did you hear that?  We each can have our own cotton candy."

It really is the little things in life, isn't it?

But, we probably should have bought the cotton candy before the family photo session.  If you zoom in, you will see they are covered in orange stickiness.

Yup, there it is!  The money shot!

The sugar rush kicks in pretty quickly with these kids.  Cameron is pretending to be a zombie in a graveyard.  Don't know where he gets that from... Damien!

I am so glad Olivia shared hers with Cameron!  

Ugh...  All I can do now is let go and enjoy them enjoying their cotton candy.

Now that is one happy little girl!  Here's to letting go and a wonderful day at the ?last? Keene Pumpkin Festival.

Where Fantasy Lives

Oh Storyland!  How could we let a fall go by without visiting this beloved place?  The Humpty Dumpty wall, the Tea Cups, the Old Lady who lives in a shoe...

Look at the smiles on these kids faces.  From the moment we walked in to the moment we left all four of these kids were grinning ear-to-ear.  In past years we have not made the trip with our good friends the Lynch's.  I think we all agreed that having buddies there definitely made the day go smoother for everyone.  Kids, moms and dads.  We all had a buddy and we were all happy!



Our first stop is always a photo on the Humpty Dumpty wall.  I need to print these out from the past five years and frame them.  

Exiting the Old Lady's shoe.  Wouldn't it be fantastic to live in a shoe?  Well, maybe not Olivia's shoe.  Her feet really stink.  Then again, so do mine.  Maybe shoe dwelling is not such a good idea...

   

One of the many places Olivia made me stop to take her photo.  I just love the head tilt!

Benji on the antique German carousel.




Dads and kiddos on the Bamboo Chute.  Mia had a bad experience, but everyone came out alright.  I don't think it did any permanent damage.


Mia with Mother Goose.  Love this picture, so sweet.





And we always end with a family photo in the Story Land frame.  It was a very cold day in Glen, NH.  We were all looking forward to the car ride home with the heaters on.  We ended our wonderful day with our wonderful friends having dinner with their family.  Ah, the good old days!  So glad they are back!

Bi-Plane

A few weeks ago my Dad cashed in on his Father's Day gift from my Mom.  A ride on a bi-plane!  The kids, Treasure and I were lucky enough to be able to watch him enjoy the experience.

The plane.

The propeller.

The family.

The old guy.

The other old guy (a family friend).

OK, so here it looks like the pilot is winding up the propeller.  I swear, I think that's what he was doing, but I do not know anything about bi-planes so I cannot be sure.  It was a little freaky.

Start your engine (or propeller!)

We have liftoff!  

See you in a little bit guys!  They took off from Laconia Airport and flew over Gilford Beach where the kids were having swim lessons.  It was pretty cool to stop and look way up in the sky and yell, "Hi Grampa!

Maybe when I'm old I'll do some daring things...

A Weekend Away

We packed up the kids and took a little trip to Burlington, VT to spend some time with family for the extended holiday weekend.  We booked a hotel with a pool hoping it would be warm enough for the kids to practice their swimming skills and boy, are we glad we did!!  It was so hot!  We pulled into the hotel and got into the pool before we even checked into our room.

After our quick dip in the pool we went to downtown Burlington's Church Street Marketplace, one of the many, many reasons I would LOVE to move to Burlington!  If you haven't been to Burlington, Church Street is an open air mall with stores from "Old Navy" to a really awesome second-hand store called "Second Time Around" where I bought a really awesome summer outfit for $16 bucks.  There is a Ben & Jerry's (of course) where we stopped for an ice cream treat.

There are hundreds of things to do on Church Street.  You can eat, dance, shop or just find a quiet spot to rest and read a book.   My kids loved the cow statues.  We had to stop at each one while they posed for a photo.  

Much to my delight we arrived in Burlington just in time for the Farmer's Market and artist showcase.  They set it up right in the park.  There were local growers and artists selling all sorts of delicious and beautiful things!  I love our NH farmer's markets, but I have yet to find one around here that compares to Burlington's.  Just another selling point for moving there!

In the early afternoon we headed back to the hotel for, yup, you guessed it, another dip in the swimming pool.  My kids are fish.  They just love to swim.  

After finally dragging the kids out of the pool (for the second time that day) we headed back to Church Street to meet Damien's cousin Darcy, her husband Keith and their two adorable kids Samantha and Dominic.  On the way to our parking spot we spotted the other two Sevin clans and asked if they wanted to come along.

After some debate we headed down to a restaurant on the waterfront called Breakwater.  We had to bully ourselves into a table, but Keith did a fine job and scored us a really great one.  We later left that table which made Keith a little bitter ;)

After dinner we waited for the fireworks.  There was a bouncy pirate ship, complete with a pirate!  At one point a father came looking for his son Nicholas who he thought was in the ship.  The maidens searched the ship but could not find him.  The pirate had the line of children yelling for Nicholas and the scene started to get a little scary and frantic.  One parent asked what Nicholas looked like.  The father said, "Blonde and he's wearing a red shirt."  "You mean that kid in line right there?"  Nicholas was in line yelling his own name!  A scary situation turned completely hilarious, thankfully!

The sun setting over Lake Champlain is simply breathtaking!

And the fireworks were just awesome!

The next morning it was back in the pool for us.  We had to get our money's worth, ha ha!  Cameron is slowly getting over his fear of jumping into pools, although even with his life jacket on he would not go in the "deep" end.  (The whole pool was over his head).

Then it was off to the July 4th bash at Aunt Dawn and Uncle Brett's house!  This was our second time making the trip to the party, and this year did not disappoint.  There were softball games, volleyball games, water balloons, an egg toss and lots and lots of delicious food.  

The hammock was the hit of the party for the kids.  All the kids in attendance took a turn in the hammock at some point during the party, but I'm pretty sure Olivia was in it the most.  I think we need one for our yard.  

Damien is a super fun Dad, and of course a super fun Uncle too!  Charlotte ran over to him at the end of the game to give him a hug which ended with a toss into the air.

The party was so much fun!  It was great to see family we haven't seen in years.  The food was delicious and the kids were entertained the whole time.  Cameron and Dominic really hit it off and never stopped playing.  Could this be another reason we should move to Burlington?  We left the party just in time to go home for a sunset swim in the awesome pool.

Olivia's new thing when she gets out of the water is to shake herself dry like a dog.  It is so funny!  She does it every time and it never fails to crack me up.

My love affair with Burlington had to come to an end.  Let's review the reasons I would like to move there.  There is Church Street, the awesome Farmer's Market, and cousins.  Did I mention that Magic Hat is my favorite beer and their brewery was two minutes from our hotel?  Plus, all we could find on the radio were 80's stations and country music which made me happy!  I was sad to leave, but we will be back.