Ode to Olivia

So I thought that I'd start blogging again. Right after I posted that awesome video which at the end announced the coming arrival of number 4, I went in for my 13 week check up, and found out that the baby had died a few weeks earlier. So August was not the funnest month for me. Anyway, but here I am back. The good news is that I'm not too far behind on the journaling of our lives. I was caught up before vacation, and we didn't do anything in August, so really, it's just vacation and current events. But I was looking through the few pictures that we have, and I thought that there were a bunch of randoms about Olivia, so here is an Olivia post! :)

 First of all, say goodbye to paci face! Olivia must be teething right now, and she started to chew through all of her pacis, so when she chewed on the last one, we were done. It's been since Saturday that she has not had one, and she seems to be doing well. When we took Graham's away, we just stopped giving it to him, and he never asked for it, and that was that. Olivia seems to be doing much the same. She is a little fussy going to bed, but she is not crying for her paci. I think she knows it's gone. But now that paci face is gone, we can make room for cute Olivia face!

 Here she is in the cute dress that Grandma made for her before she left on her mission.
And below, well, here she is channeling her inner Olivia Newton John. In the middle of Wegmans. With the paci.

 Graham started preschool, and Olivia had gone to the open house and now equates the room with Disney World (not that she knows anything about Disney World or anything) She cries so much when we have to drop him off, and she can't stay. Just 2 more years and it's your turn little one!

We read the Olivia books regularly in this house, and it makes it so that constantly I am thinking, you know, you really wear me out, but I love you anyway. She is a highly busy child, but so sweet 90% of the time, so we keep her.

Adventure park

 A few Saturdays ago, Jesse was finishing up a training class that he had been at all week, and so I found myself with the kids by myself. This, of course, is no different from any other day of the week. It's just different when it's a Saturday. You know what I mean? Anyway, Cammi had offered to take the boys to a movie, so that gave me about 2 hours with just Olivia. I had a few places I needed to go, so off she and I went. At one point we were sitting eating lunch, and I realized that we had sat the entire lunch in silence. And it didn't bother either of us. I in fact, loved it! I really could get used to just having this one! Anyway, the movie (Brave) ended up being too scary for the boys, so they left a little before it was over. I met up with them, and then we headed over to Adventure Park USA. It was their birthday celebration, and there were a few extra events going on, and tickets were on sale. I got the boys all day kids passes, and Olivia, being under 3 was free!
Ever since we went to the Zoo with our cousins, Nate and Graham have been asking to get their face painted. One of the reasons that we went was because they had face painting there that day. When it came down to it, Graham decided not to do it, but Nate got this weird green horn mask. He liked it.

 They went on the rides.

 And we got in a few rounds of mini-golf.

 This is how Olivia felt about mini-golf.

 Eventually Daddy was able to join us, and they did everything again, including another round of golf.

 If even Olivia needs to get closer to the ground, how close is close enough?

The kids had a ton of fun, and of course still ask when we will go again. (Next summer, that is the answer.) There aren't a ton of things around here that don't involve a ton of driving, a ton of traffic or a ton of money. It's nice to ignore those things though and do something fun though for a change.

4th of July

 This year our dear friends the Harrison's decided to come up for the 4th of July. They moved a few hours away last summer, and it was sad. But when Ashely said that she was coming up, I though, score! and told her that she was welcome to stay at our house for one or both nights. We planned on them spending the night on Wednesday night, and due to a stroke of luck (for us) the people who had planned to house them on Tuesday night could no longer do it because they needed to take in some family without power unexpectedly. So lucky us, we got the Harrisons for 2 nights! The kids enjoyed each other's company by watching tv. (And the adults watched a movie that night too.)
On Wednesday morning the Harrison's went off to an event in which they would get to see lots of their friends. We opted out of that, because even though the food is good, it's always hot and way too long. So instead we checked out the neighborhood parade, which had more participants than observers, and then went to the pool for a few hours. We had some lunch, and Grammy and Cammi joined us for a while. It was fun, and hot, hot, hot!
When we got home from swimming, the Harrison's were there, so we just hung out for a while until they left to go have dinner with some other friends.
We met up with them again for the fireworks. We have decent fireworks in our town, but it gets really crowded where they are sent off, and parking is often a nightmare. So went to the parking lot of our favorite grocery store. It was actually quite crowded there as well. We had a little time to hang out before it started. There were several friends from our old ward that were there. It was a good time. We brought glow bracelets from the dollar spot at Target. Love that place!

 On top of the cars was a good place to watch from. The boys thought that this was both scary and awesome!

 And here are the crazy Graham photos. #1.

 #2

 #3

 This is what the fire works looked like. They were small and far away, and we could only see the higher ones.

 The strangest thing of the evening? When Graham had Mike hold him for a minute. As far as I know, Graham has never had any interaction with Mike, and we have not been in their same ward for 3 months now. Hmmmm....

 We came home, and everyone was pretty beat. The heat from the morning really knocked me flat. On the way home, I got all of the glow sticks, and made some fireworks of my own.

It was a fun day all in all. I'd really like to actually go to the park next year. I'll need to find some people to go with though, because fireworks with friends is always more fun. But close up fireworks are also more fun!

Fun times with no power

 Over the weekend we were without power. It was super fun! I mean, it could have been an adventure if we had put the right spin on it, and it wasn't, say, 100* with 80% humidity. We lost power Friday night after everyone was asleep. We made it through the night fairly well. I had trouble sleeping, and ended up downstairs on the couch because it was a little cooler. Nate woke up once, but he was able to get right back to sleep. On Saturday morning when we still had no power we decided to go out to town and seek out food and air conditioning. That afternoon we dropped the kids off with Aunt Cammi at Grammy and Grandad's house to go swimming while Jesse and I went and did some clothes shopping and have dinner. We got home that evening, and it was still hot, and there was still no power. That night we all slept in the living room together. Olivia was just in her diaper, but the boys wore pjs. We had one little battery powered fan. It was still hot, but we all got a little sleep.

Sunday we woke up and still had no power. We went to church anyway. After church we decided to go and hang out at Grammy and Grandad's house again. I cooked up all of the meat that was thawing from my freezer. Grandad hooked us up with a solar battery pack, which would run a fan for us. We then went in search of more ice and D batteries. The ox was planted firmly in the mire. After 4 stores, and no battery luck, we finally headed to Target in Leesburg, and Jesse was able to find some. We then headed home. We were first greeted with a working stop light entering PoR. Then we saw the Potomac Edison power crew on the side of the road. Then we saw lights on in the homes we were driving by. The feeling of euphoria was quite evident as we parked in our driveway, in a community that had power restored after almost 48 hours. Everyone was rejoicing. It was still hot in our house, and it took until the next day to cool down, but at least we had fans! The boys enjoyed sleeping on the air mattress in the living room so much that they did it again on Sunday night. (Funny side story, Nate complained to me about Jesse's alarm going of in the morning for a long time and he was not able to sleep because of it. Welcome to my world Nate!) So we lost almost everything in our refrigerator and freezer, which was sad, but we made it through. It is still smoking hot in our neck of the woods, 104* is the expected high tomorrow, but, we can handle it because we have power! :)

National Zoo with cousins

 The day after we went to Baltimore, we decided to go to the National Zoo. It was the exact opposite weather wise. It was hot and humid. (OK, so I guess around here, it's always humid, but it was not cold and rainy this day!) We ended up driving down and parking there. We often take the Metro, but for their family, it was cheaper just to park for the day. I drove down there all by myself, and was very proud of myself.

Shortly after we arrived we had lunch.

 After a fun little lunch, it was back to look at the animals. We spent a long time at the Great Cats. The lions were actually active that day. Plus, across from the one exhibit this little guy came along. I don't know what people thought who were not native to the area, and didn't recognized it as a common black snake, or if they thought that the snake exhibit was missing one of it's displays! Shortly, some people thought that they needed to pick it up, which was good in that it needed to be back in the wooded area as opposed to where tons of people were walking. But it was quite an ordeal.

 (This was not when the lions were being active)

 It was pretty warm that day, and the misters were a welcome sight. Olivia loved them, and could hardly be torn away.

 We visited the great ape house, and it was, as usual, stinky. btw, these two guys are just best buddies. We miss having Dane close to us!

 One solution to the hot weather when there was no mister near by? Take the ice pack out of the cooler, and put it on your head.

As an end of the day treat, we got those frozen lemonades. Everyone enjoyed having them.

 Olivia loved the zoo, and had such a good time pointing at all of the animals.

After two long days in a row, we took a tiny break, and ended up just hanging out at Grandma's house the rest of the week. We had a BBQ on Saturday afternoon with everyone there. The following week we went down to DC on Monday. We did end up taking the Metro that day, because parking is really no fun down by the Mall. We spent the whole day looking at the Natural History Museum. Dave and Jonna and family went down the next day as well to do some of the other museums, but we opted out of it. We did get to hang out with them at Grandma's house again before they left on Friday morning. It was one of our best experiences with having cousins here, and I think that's because Nate and Dane were such great buddies. Next summer we don't have any firm plans yet, so I'm thinking we need to drive to Kansas City to visit them next!

Baltimore with cousins

We were very excited to have our cousins come to MD to visit. They came and stayed at Grandma's house but we still got to see them quite a bit during their visit. On Monday we headed down to Baltimore's Inner Harbor to see the Sailabration. It is the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, which was the war that the National Antham came from, written right out there in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. It's kind of a big deal around here. Anyway, they had all of these tall ships sail in, as well as some grey hulled (?) ships. Right as we were entering they had some sand art on display.

 Most of the cousins in front of the sand art.

 It was a dreary, rainy, chilly day that day. But we had coats and umbrellas, so we survived.

 The lines for the most part were not too bad to get onto the ships, and the kids really loved being able to walk around and look, and touch things.

 All of the masts and riggings were quite impressive.

We had a picnic lunch, and right as we were finishing up, it started to drizzle again. This one has all of the cousins.

 After lunch we headed over to a Canadian War Ship. Yeah, I know, it's kind of weird that there is such a thing! We waited for like an hour and a half in line to get on. I don't know why we waited so long, but it kind of gave us the chance to let the kids run around and explore while others stood in line. It was pretty cool once we got onto it though. The kids got to sit in the Captain's chair.

In addition to the ships that were docked that you could go on, there were some ships that were sailing around in the harbor that all looked pretty cool too.

It was a fun little outing, although we were pretty exhausted by the time we got home.