Travel – Page 63

Easter Day

April 12, 2013

We woke up at the lake bright and early Easter morning only to find out the Easter Bunny had been there! Hot dog! He left some fun goodies for both Maxwell and Spencer…

easter

I think Maxwell’s favorite gift was the egg full of M&Ms..for real. After the M&Ms, his favorites were the new Cars plate (and his brother’s Thomas plate!)..

easter

his monkey house shoes…

easter

and the slinky.

slinky

He has loved his nerf football too! Spencer loved his Elmo rattle…

easter

but Spencer’s favorite was the bendable bunny, hands down. That bunny has been in his mouth pretty much every day since Easter!

easter

Not only did the bunny leave some fun presents, he also hid eggs all over the deck for Maxwell to hunt! By this point, Maxwell was a master egg hunter so had no problem finding all of the orange and yellow eggs…

easter

and even one golden egg!

easter

While all of the orange and yellow eggs had stickers in them, the golden egg had a Twix in it! yum!

I think Robert was hoping to get his fishing line back in the water one more time that morning, but before we could even finish our pancakes the rain came! Oh well! Overall it was a really fun weekend…even if we never did catch a fish! 🙂

Chicks, bunnies and ducks

April 10, 2013

After a morning of pancakes and fishing, we drove into town to check out the marina and grab some lunch at Catherine’s Market. When we pulled up there was a lady with all kinds of Easter animals in an area where the kids could pet and hold them.

bunnies

chicks

duck

Maxwell was really interested…and a little trepidatious! He wanted me to go in with him and kept a tight hold on my finger most of the time!

chicks

He did get brave and pet the chicks though. He REALLY wanted to hold a bunny like some of the other kids were doing…

bunny

He would get down there, but he just couldn’t bring himself to actually pick it up.

bunnies

I was no help to him at first. If you know me, you know I am no animal lover and the idea of picking up a bunny or a chick just…blech. I can barely even think about it without getting the shivers. Yea, I’d be no good on a farm. BUT, if my baby wanted to hold a bunny then, by god, I was going to suck it up and help him hold a bunny! So, when a little 4 year old girl handed me one of the bunnies, I swallowed my fears, bravely grabbed that little creature and held it out for Maxwell to take! AND HE NEVER TOOK IT. He wanted to SO bad but he just wouldn’t put his hands around it. I almost had him in his hands but then the bunny jumped and was back on the ground and that was that. Oh well! I’m sticking to chocolate bunnies next Easter! 🙂

The Lake day 2

April 9, 2013

I finished my last post saying “There’s always tomorrow!” for fishing and that’s exactly what Robert was thinking bright and early Saturday morning. He and Maxwell had the fishing pole in the water before the pancakes were even made!

fishing

Maxwell was again interested for about 2 minutes and then wandered back up the house…

the lake

He wanted the pancakes! 🙂 It was this recipe, and they were good!

pancakes

Spencey didn’t get to have any pancakes but he was still as happy as could be, just like always!

spencey

After bellies were full, the boys gave fishing another go. Robert was nothing if not persistent!

fishing

and Maxwell was still nothing but mildly interested! So Robert kept trying to catch the big one…or any one…

fishing

and I played photoshoot with Maxwell – which basically consisted of me trying to get him to stay in one spot for more than 10 seconds so I could try to get the settings on my camera right and take his picture!

maxwell

maxwell lake

lake

He definitely wasn’t into staying still but I still love some of the shots I got!

lake

Before long, Maxwell was back at his new favorite activity…throwing pine cones into the lake!

lake

He then entertained Spencer for a bit…

lake

Spencer wasn’t exactly amused!

lake

All the while, Robert kept fishing…and not catching anything. Such is life! But, hey, there’s always tomorrow, right?! 🙂

The Lake

April 8, 2013

As I mentioned last week, we went to Lake Martin for the Easter weekend. We usually go to Montgomery but all of Robert’s family was going out of town so we decided to rent a lake house and have some fun. We really enjoyed it and ended up getting really lucky with the weather! yay! If we go back, we definitely need to rent a boat and get out on that pretty water!

A little caveat here – you’re about to get bombarded with pictures this week because I took a ton. A ton, like 789. It was a combination of a beautiful setting, 3 cute boys, and a photography class I’m taking! 🙂 I needed to get in lots of practice shooting in manual and was so thankful to have such great things to take pictures of. I definitely got LOTS of practice and am proud to say all of these shots were taken in manual. go me! 🙂 If you’re looking for fantastic photography classes online, check out Define. I just finished “Auto to Manual” and am already signed up for “Light + Life” which starts today. Can’t wait!

Ok, on with the zillions of pictures…

The one thing Robert really wanted to do during our time at the lake was catch a fish with Maxwell! But, you gotta learn how to fish first…

fishing lesson

Lesson over and out they went!

fishing

Fishing held Maxwell’s attention for about 2 minutes! After that, he just wanted to check things out…

exploring at the lake

lake

fishing

Spencer just enjoyed being out in the fresh air!

lake

Robert kept fishing and caught all sorts of things – driftwood, a chair, the dock… 🙂

fishing

Maxwell kept exploring and soon discovered his new favorite thing…

lake

throwing pine cones into the lake!

lake

By the time we left on Sunday, the yard was almost cleared out of pine cones thanks to Maxwell! These sweet boys had a great time just seeing what they could see!

lake

We spent the rest of that afternoon and evening just hanging out and enjoying the change of scenery.

the boys

boys

Pretty nice!

lake

That night, Robert and Maxwell gave the fish one last chance to bite before dinner but, no luck.

fishing

Oh well, there’s always tomorrow!

Massive FL post

January 11, 2013

Ok, I need to recap our trip to FL and I’m just going to do it in one giant post so get ready. Robert, Maxwell, Spencer and I flew down to Naples to visit my parents on the 28th. ..

We took the car seat for Maxwell to sit in on the plane and Spencer was comfy in the sling – it worked out great!

Robert came back to AL on the 2nd but I stayed down with the boys until the 7th…that means a full 10 days of pictures so this is going to be a long one!

I took my big camera with me down there but didn’t take one single picture with it. Sick babies = no time for camera. Besides, my iphone was always right beside me! When we left, Maxwell was just getting over his Christmas cold and Spencer was just catching one. Poor guys. Despite the stuffy noses and congestion, we were happy to be down in the FL sunshine!

Unfortunately, one day into the trip, Spencer just seemed to be getting sicker so we ended up taking him to the pediatric ER just to make sure it wasn’t an ear infection or RSV. He was such a trooper about it all…

Thankfully he only had a cold and they sent us home with some albuterol breathing treatments to help with the wheezing. Poor little guy just wasn’t his happy self and was pretty needy all week. boo.

With the help of my mom, we were still able to do some fun stuff though like bike riding…

and visiting with an old friend at the zoo! I was so excited that my friend Nancy happened to be in Naples and I finally got to meet her babies! I think Maxwell had a little crush on Abigayle…

and I think this giraffe had a little crush on Robert! 🙂

We couldn’t really leave the house as much as we wanted, but that didn’t bother Maxwell at all. He had a ball running all over the place and playing with any toy or household item he could get his hands on! He also loved bossing all of us around and tell everyone where they could – and couldn’t! – sit!

Good times with the toy car…

and the real car…

blowing bubbles…

and playing with Susu!

We did try to get down to the beach a few times and Maxwell loved it. He would hit that deck and start running to get to the sand!

After the new year, Keath, Jen, Delaney and Nate came over to celebrate Nate’s 2nd birthday on January 4th! We had a fun little Mickey Mouse party complete with hot-diggity-dogs and mouse ears for everyone!

Nate then got to open his birthday presents (with plenty of help from Delaney!). After all the Christmas present opening he had done, I think Maxwell was a little sad to be left out of this round of presents! His face cracks me up in these pictures – he wants to get in there so bad!

Ha! Happy birthday Nate!

The kiddos had a blast playing together…

By Saturday, January 5th, Spencer was still pretty pitiful so I actually took him back to the doctor just to make sure he hadn’t developed an ear infection. Luckily he checked out just fine and still had nothing more than a cold with lots of congestion.

After many nights with not a lot of this…

he finally got some good snoozes in…

And that made all the difference! My little guy started to look more like this…

and this…

Happy baby!

Some quality time chatting with Susu was good for him too!

By the end of the weekend, we were all feeling better and having fun!

We even made it out to lunch where Maxwell got quite a few umbrellas and literally ate butter by the spoonful! I can’t blame him – it was cinnamon flavored butter and it was really good!