The Virginia Living Museum

~It's been awhile since I've posted any of the new recipes I've tried. This one is DEFINITELY posting worthy. 100% Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls. My track record with anything 100% whole wheat is not very good. While making these, my hope was that they wouldn't turn out being hard wheat rocks, but I really didn't expect much better. In the end, they were SO good. Soft, great flavor...deliciously perfect to go along with a bowl of soup. Do yourself a favor and go make these.

~Three and a half weeks later, we finally got our car back yesterday. Half a week longer and we would have had the rental car just as long as we had our actual car. We started to feel like the rental was ours, it was a bit sad saying good-bye to it yesterday. $5,500 in car repairs--$650 for the rental car--A couple hundred or so for the few days at the tow yard and actual towing--that was one expensive rear-ending. Thanks to car insurance (and the fact that we got rear ended), we ended up paying a dollar. Unfortunately, we now have a car that's been in a wreck, but thankfully everything has turned out just fine.

~A few weeks back Shae and I went to the Virginia Living Museum with our sweet friends Flavia and Sara. It was a really fun morning outing. Shae loved looking at all the big dinosaurs, "roaring" at them the whole time.

He could have stayed and played here all day. Future archaeologist right there. 

We're on a pretty good looking dinosaur below, you can't see it, but we're pretty good looking too so why not post the picture anyways.

Labor Day

Three day weekends are always great, especially when you are on "vacation." They're always great that is, until you have to go home. Monday came around and we hadn't decided what time we were going to make the trek back down to VA. Part of me wanted to leave as soon as we woke up to try and avoid traffic and not be tired, but part of me wanted to stay and actually enjoy a bit of Labor Day with family and then leave later and still hopefully miss traffic. We went with the latter.

We both worked through the morning/midday and after Shae woke up from his nap around 2pm we convinced the fam (not that we really had to convince them) to take us somewhere to go swimming. They took us to a darling lake that was "just over the mountain." 

(Darin after about 25 minutes into our drive: "Glad that I'm realizing what your mom means when she says, 'It's just over the mountain.'" We arrived a few minutes later, but yes, "close" for my family is very different than "close" for us.)

We had a lot of fun, Shae loves the sand but he's starting to run fearless right for the water now too.  We didn't end up staying too long because some rain and thunder rolled in (which was probably good anyways so that we could shower and get on the road). And now for more low-quality phone pictures because our semi-better camera is acting up. 

Grandpa sure knows how to make a splashing baby happy. He was cracking up the entire time he was in the water.

 

He never seemed to have much water left in his bowl by the time he got back to the mote, but he just kept going back and forth from the water to the sand. Daddy's little helper.

Then there's these crazies... 

We left around 6pm, made a quick stop in MD for Darin to talk to a professor who studies Myanmar and got home around 12am. We didn't hit any traffic which was a MIRACLE. 

Oh! Sunday night we had a little summer/fall birthday celebration. We "celebrated" (as in we ate more cheesecake) my mom's bday from July, mine in August and Darin and A.J.'s whose are coming up in September. We were each allowed to blow out one candle. And that is just what we did.

Kipona

I finished the survey translation! Hoo-ray! Now if the survey could actually get submitted some time soon so that I can have my husband back...that would be very nice...

So let's catch up a bit.  On Saturday we snuk away (sneaked away?) from the lap tops for a bit and went down to Harrisburg for the Kipona Festival.  We're still not exactly sure WHAT the Kipona Festival was, but it was fun nonetheless. It seemed to be a montage of distinct festivals/activities which made it quite interesting.  There was an Indian Festival, a Native American Pow-Wow, a Chili Cook Off, a Karate Marathon, and lots of food/souvenir stands.

It was on City Island in Harrisburg so we got to cross over the gorgeous Susquehanna river to get there. From the island there was a great view of a lot of really cute Harrisburg homes right across the river, and being the baseball suckers that we are, the minor league stadium for the Harrisburg Senators was right in the middle of the island which we thought was really cool. All of the festivities took place in a huge circle around the stadium.

We ran into the Indian festival first. It was kind of crazy with people dancing all over the place, a MASSIVE line of people waiting for free curry and this beautiful monstrosity that didn't know which way it wanted to go. 

Shae clearly thought it was really cool. We watched for a few minutes and then almost got run over a few times and moved along.

We stopped at this little play area for a bit and let Darin's shoulders take a rest (not very smart to forget the stroller on a day like this...).

He really loved the "choo choo."

This stare down lasted for a good 30 seconds. "Don't you come any closer to my ball."

It was a hot day. Darin was a trooper for carrying our little bowling ball around without complaint.

Next stop was the Native American Pow-Wow. We kicked back and hung out here for awhile and watched some different Native American dances. We watched a few different hoop dances which are absolutely amazing. I also love how enthralled Shae was with it all. He sat calmly and couldn't take his eyes away during each dance.

Then of course, we got ice cream, because who goes to a festival on a hot day and doesn't get ice cream? 

MIA

My goal is to blog AT LEAST once a week. Saturday may be the last day of the week, but it keeps my goal. Phew. 

It has been pretty crazy up in here as of late. Not a lot of spare time and a lot of this:

This poor boy has been teething for what feels like years but in reality has been a week, maybe two. We can usually tell when he's teething because he starts waking up at 5:30 a.m., then comes the drool and the not wanting to eat. We knew he was teething but then things got serious last weekend (and a day or two before the weekend). He came down with a really bad fever and was so cranky, like the crankiest I think I've ever seen him. We had about three nights where none of us got much sleep. It was pretty awful. I felt so bad for him. He just seemed so miserable and nothing seemed to give him the relief he needed. The teething rings seemed to help a bit...

And sleeping in our bed, or in our arms on the couch or bed or rocking chair or wherever we could get him to fall back asleep and stop crying. 

By Sunday he seemed to be a little bit better so we went ahead and brought him to church, which means leaving at 6 a.m. so that Darin can get to his morning meetings. We knew he was sleep deprived so we brought the pack n' play just in case. Good thing we did because by 9:30 a.m. (half-way in to Sacrament Meeting) he was dying. Darin found a room that no one uses, set up the pack n' play and he was OUT. Darin sat outside the room and listened to the meeting from the foyer microphone. I took over guard duty during Sunday School. We had planned to wake him up at 11 a.m. if he wasn't up yet since we were both teaching lessons in YW's and EQ's, but I really wanted him to sleep as long as he could so I put this little sign on the door and taught YW's in the room right next to him so that I could hear him if he woke up.

The end of church came and he was STILL asleep.  We just let him keep going while Darin took care of tithing and other things. At 12:45 p.m. when Darin was done we went in and woke him up. He slept for over three hours! Poor boy, he was SO tired. I'm so glad that Darin thought to bring the pack n' play because there is no way he would have slept like that in one of our arms.

Of course the downside to Shae sleeping all morning was that he wasn't going to sleep in the afternoon. Darin and I were dying for sleep as well after the terrible nights sleep and waking up at 5:15 a.m. to get ready for church. Thankfully, Shae was still out of it enough to just lay on me and watch Phantom of the Opera while I snoozed. Needless to say, we put Shae to bed at 6:30 p.m. that evening and Darin and I were out on the couch by 7 p.m. We moved up to the bed around 9 p.m. We haven't felt that exhausted in a long time.

On top of the fever/crying/teething...what made all of this really hard was work. Both Darin and I have been insanely busy with work over the past week and a half, which made the lack of sleep that much harder to handle. 

Darin's big survey goes out next week. Last week he averaged about 12 hour days in the office and then came home and kept working till about 12 a.m./1 a.m. while trying to help calm Shae as much as possible. The end of the month always gets busy with my editing so I had more work last week and this week than I have the rest of the month. On top of that, the Spanish country partner that Darin works with told them last week that she wouldn't be able to do their translation of the survey. They asked me to do it which was really awesome and I was super excited about it...and then the fever came. It's a really long survey (108 questions with multiple responses for each question) so I've been staying up late working on that in between cuddling with my baby.

Bottom line, it's been bizzz-eeee. We left on Tuesday of this week to drop Darin off in D.C. for a conference where he has been busy doing conference stuff PLUS survey stuff.  Shae and I came up to PA where I've been able to get quite a bit more accomplished with others to entertain Shae (who is feeling SO much better and now has four pointy little canines to call his own). 

Darin is now with us and we're hoping we can put the work aside for a few hours to enjoy Labor Day weekend before going home on Monday and finishing off this survey for good (thank goodness!). 

Birthday Weekend

Is it just me or does 27 sound SO much older than 26?

My birthday weekend started out a little differently than I would have thought.  Saturday morning looked a little something like this:

I think we are not meant to have a car this summer.  Maybe we should look into some good bikes...

The story is pretty simple. I was going to pick up a friend who was selling her car and needed a ride home. Yellow light. I slow down. I stop. I get hit. The end. Needless to say, I did not give my friend a ride home. The car was towed away where it waited to be inspected by an adjuster from the other dude's insurance.  

My actual birthday on Monday was spent talking to the adjuster, the body shop about estimates and a rental car company. We were told that it will take about 3 weeks to get it back, so we are now driving a newer, nicer Camry that is going to make going back to our Camry a bit hard.  But can I just say how smoothly this entire process has gone. I was pretty nervous that I was gonna have to fight with people to make sure that we didn't pay a dime (I've never had this happen before so I really didn't know the procedure). We have been taken care of SO well thus far. The other insurance company has been great. So far I've had to pay $1 to the rental car company because they needed a card on file just in case I run away with the car or something like that. If all I have to pay in the end is $1 I will be very happy. I considered all of this to be a pretty awesome birthday gift (besides the initial accident of course, but how smoothly everything has gone since).

My apologies to anyone driving down Jefferson Ave. Saturday morning...

We didn't let the car situation ruin our evening plans. Luckily, we had planned our birthday date as a double so our friends were kind enough to drive. We first went to Tucanos and used our buy one get one free birthday certificate (!! Who would have thought that out of the 10 Tucanos in the nation that there would be one half an hour away from us! We were so surprised when we found out). Then we went southwest just a little ways further where we watched the Norfolk Tides (Orioles AAA minor league team) take on the Gwinnett Braves (Braves AAA minor league team). It was fun watching this game because we'd seen a handful of the players play in the majors and were slightly familiar with them, unlike other minor league games we've been to. The stadium was really big. It was so beautiful with the water in the background and Navy ships all around the area.

Monday was pretty chill. I spent the day with my teething toddler. Darin got me the second season of Dr. Quinn Medicine Women and I made Shae watch an episode with me. As I squealed through the sappy Sully/Dr. Mike moments he would look up at me in utter confusion.  

That evening we had some friends over to eat cheesecake and play games.  

Great action shot right there, with Ezra helping me the whole way. Sarah made me a divine Raspberry Chocolate Cheesecake.  It was the perfect way to finish off the birthday celebration. I am one lucky lady.