September's Stories

September has gone by surprisingly fast, probably because we've been keeping busy with school starting back up, Zach beginning T-ball, the nice fall weather coming, and establishing a new routine! I lost the charger for my camera's battery at some point during our exodus out West, and have yet to find it, hence the crummy pictures lately from my iPhone. (I suppose I should just be grateful I have something to use as back-up, but I miss my camera!) The other night we hit Cracker Barrel for dinner, and I thought all 3 looked cute in their little rocking chairs.  Cheese!

A few Saturdays ago we decided to visit the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, as we hadn't been back since Zach's 3rd birthday two years ago. It's really not that far away, all things considered-- maybe 45 minutes, and it's really quite nice. It's HUGE though-- it's more of a reserve where all of the animals live together in a huge enclosement, than the traditional zoo with each type in their own cage. I'm sure this way is much more environmentally correct.

Besides being enormous, the other problem is that it is soooooo hot here. When you're walking miles to see everything, you sweat and sweat and sweat. I'm so over living in a swamp! Luckily, we decided to buy an annual pass since we'd only have to visit twice for it to pay for itself, so we didn't feel pressure to see everything that day.

We stayed for a couple of hours and played and visited all the animals in the Africa part. My kids seemed more excited about the metal statues than the real animals. Go figure!

 Leah started majorly melting down, and we knew it was a good time to move on.

We checked out the monkeys, snapped one more picture, and got the heck outta there before Mt. Leah erupted. At least we now have another place to add to our list of Things-To-Do on weekends, and another place to go with visitors. I think they are getting tired of Costco and Chick fil A, ha, ha!

Zach is doing SO WELL with preschool this year! Hooray! I hope I don't jinx it, but so far it's night and day from his experience last year. We just passed the point where I ended up pulling him out, and so far he's learning his letters, liking his teachers, and making lots of new friends. Just this last Saturday he asked if he was going to preschool that morning, and when I told him "no," he said, "Aw, man! I wanna go to preschool!

I don't know if you can read this, but here's what Zach says: "I would like to have five cats. I would call them Sun Rootbeer, December, Zach, Pencil Reader, and Dogger. I would feed them cat cookies." They did a unit on pets, and mind you, this hung on the bulletin board outside of the class. I wonder what the heck his teacher thinks I feed him for breakfast. He cracks me up!

He started playing T-Ball this month, and it has been really, really fun for him. He's naturally kind of shy, so between preschool and this, he's definitely coming out of his shell more. His coach is super easy-going and nice, so it's just been all about having fun. They had their first game last night.  

 Of course Lucy and Leah came to be cheerleaders-- okay, just kidding, Leah came to crawl into the busy street and shove old cigarette butts into her mouth that she found in the dirt. Aaahhhh! She's our craziest one yet. And that's saying something! 

Zach played great! His first time up at bat he swung so hard and missed, that he whirled around in a circle and landed in the dirt. Classic. Luckily the next swing he knocked it to the pitcher's mound and made it to first base. I can't believe how fast these little guys are growing up!

Labor Day Week! Dun, Dun, Dun...

Well, the "dun, dun, dun" part is really only because Saturday morning when we went outside, all the spiders in the whole world went insane building webs overnight and our bushes and lawn were COVERED in webs! It was really freaky!

You can kind of see in the corner on the lawn little white spots which are actually spider webs too. We counted over 20. 

We actually looked it up because there were so many, so suddenly, and discovered that there are tons of funnel web and grass spiders in North Carolina and they are most active right now before it starts to get cold. You can see this one's funnel built right into the bush, by a spider about the size of a ping pong ball, and if you dare peek in closer you can see its beady little eyes shining. We call it Shelob's Lair in honor of Lord of the Rings. 

Anyway, we wanted to do something fun to celebrate the official end of summer, so we picked Saturday to drive into Charlotte for a little play day. I looked up some foodie recommendations online and again and again "Dish" restaurant popped up as a great place to try. It features Southern comfort foods with a twist, and was recently featured on "Diner's, Drive-Ins, and Dives." Certainly looked like a "dive" from the outside!

Holy moly! SO YUMMY! They weren't very busy with the lunch rush yet, so they stuck us outside on the patio basically by ourselves, which was fine by me since sometimes we get dirty looks when we haul in our 3 kids, so there was no pressure to be quiet. We let Leah crawl around and it was the most relaxing meal out we've had in a long time!

We started off with the Potato Poppers (pictured above), which were basically the insides of a twice-baked potato battered and deep fried, and then Jon ordered the BLFGT-- a bacon, lettuce, and fried green tomato sandwich which was super yummy. Lucy is our little future foodie and she got the chicken and dumplins.

I've been living in the South now for over 2 years and still had never had Shrimp and Grits, so I finally ordered them and I certainly didn't regret it. They were fabulous!!

Jonathan had searched for fun things to do in Charlotte before we left, and found a little indoor Splash Park only a couple of miles from the restaurant. We ended up being like the only white people there, which was cool and culturally enlightening, but more importantly it was cheap and the kids had a blast!

There was a lazy river, a hydrotube slide, and lots of fountains and things to climb on. Here we are taking a break because someone had to go and barf in the pool, so they made everyone get out for 30 min. while the lifeguards cleaned it up. Just glad it wasn't one of my little pukesters. Ha, ha!

We then headed over to IKEA to spend the rest of the afternoon shopping and dropping the kids off at Smaland-- the little play place inside. I stocked up on all things Swedish-- cooking utensils, kiddie cups and bowls, and their chocolate bars of course. We had a great time.

A big treat for my kids is that every so often we let them watch a movie in bed instead of reading a bedtime story. Since there was no school on Monday, we let them have a movie party in bed and they were pretty excited. See that huge handful of popcorn Leah nabbed before she got kicked out?

 Our Labor Day fun didn't end with the weekend either. My parents flew into Richmond, VA to attend the BYU game in Blacksburg that weekend, and on Monday evening drove down from OBX to spend a few days with us in Pinehurst. After my dad got his round of golf in Tuesday morning, we picked up Zach-O from preschool and headed to Panera for lunch.

 We then toured the Shaw House, which is a historical site in Southern Pines I've driven past a million times but never stopped to check out. It's an antebellum cabin of one of the first three families to settle this area-- the Shaw family, and was built around 1820, and features period furniture pieces and pottery. I happen to love history, so it was actually pretty cool even though it was pushing 100 degrees in the shade! 

 That night we took Grandpa to Rita's for our favorite cold treat-- he'd never been in all the times he'd visited us in Philly or Pinehurst, and I'm not really sure how that happened?!? We love Rita's!

We spent the rest of the week enjoying Grandma Joanie's company. She's so good to get me motivated to work on projects and crafts I've been putting off, so we finally painted Zach's dresser, which turned out so cute! We were inspired by all of the cute shabby-chic projects we saw while antique-ing out in West End. All too soon Friday rolled around, and after I made her come to my Body Pump class that morning, we got to enjoy one last supper at Bone Fish Grill. We sure love having visitors! All in all, it was a fabulous Labor Day Week!

Little Leah- 10 Month Update

Little Leah is growing like a weed, or rather a flower, since that sounds a little bit cuter. She just had her 10 month check-up and here are the stats:

Weight: 19 lbs. 9 oz. (50th percentile)

Height: 29 in. (80th percentile)

Head Circumference: 46 cm. (90th percentile) 

She still has very unusually colored eyes-- and that's the first thing people ask me, "What color are her eyes?" They're greenish-blue with brown around the pupil, so they're kind of all three colors. Her hair is brown with some definite red, especially in the sunlight. Her personality continues to grow and blossom as well-- and she's definitely still a diva.

She's entered the stage of "stranger danger" (I dread this phase!) and is a total beast for anybody but me or Jon-- so we see a lot of this face. Once while I taught my class at the gym she literally cried the entire 60 minutes I was gone! The girl babysitting her was nearly in tears when we went to pick her up. She doesn't take a binky or a bottle, and doesn't have a blanket or other comfort item so I'm kind of out of luck with that. If Lucy is there at the gym, Leah let's Lucy hold her, and my mom said while she was here and I left to take Lucy to school, that Leah even picked Zach to hold her over Grandma as a very sorry second. She has a naughty streak! 

She is a very, very competent crawler and crawls up and down stairs and furniture, and stands unassisted every now and then, but doesn't seem too anxious to figure out the whole walking thing. Phew! When Lucy and Zach were crawlers we lived in a very tiny 2 bedroom apartment, so having her in a house with several bedrooms and hallways and bathrooms and stairs is CRAZY! This girl goes everywhere and I end up having to go look for her because she's gotten lost somewhere while exploring.

She looooves getting into stuff! Especially the dishwasher. She is like a moth to the flames when the refrigerator door opens, and heaven forbid the kids forget to close our makeshift gate to the upstairs or she's halfway up before anyone notices! It's only a big piece of cardboard slid between the stair railings, and since she's like those velociraptors on Jurassic Park she's already figured out how to move it. She also cracks us up because she likes to chuck stuff behind her back as she crawls around. It reminds us of that part on Star Wars where Yoda chucks all of Luke's stuff out of his backpack (sorry, Star Wars humor).

Every weekday morning we drop Lucy off at school and then wait around Zach's preschool for about 30 min. before he can go in. Luckily there's a playground and Leah likes the swing! But only if I push her not too high, otherwise she's a chicken and holds her breath. She loves to hear herself talk and squeal in a very high-pitched voice when Zach or Jon pretend to chase her. She says "Mama" and "Dada" and waves goodbye.

Leah working at her new favorite pastime: BUGGING ZACHARY! Isn't it funny how the youngest always seem to know how to push the buttons of the next in line? Just comes natural, I guess. I am constantly being yelled at, "MOOOOOM! She's getting my stuff!"

She loves any kind of music-- that's her silver bullet. She likes to sit with Jon when he plays the piano, or listen to the radio in the car. She's even started dancing-- where she bounces on her feet and shakes her head. So cute! She is definitely sweet and sassy and just growing up waaaaay too fast!