Call me crazy...

but I'm flying alone with kids again. Even though I swore I would never do it again. But, I decided I wanted a good long visit with my family since I haven't been home in over a year. 3-4 days just isn't enough, which is all Mike gets to stay. So, he will be with me for the flight there but not the flight back. I may or may not be able to talk someone into flying back with me. :) But I would just like to be prepared for flying by myself. So...I'm wondering if anyone can suggest a good double stroller to take to the airport. We have a side by side jogging stroller that
I was hoping to take, but Mike thinks it would be to wide and to big of a hassle. Any input???

As far as being prepared otherwise, I learned a lot from my last trip alone. I will be equipped with a dvd player and lots of movies as well as snacks and a couple favorite books and toys (I always let my kids pick out a new toy when we have long trips). Oh and my toddler harness aka leash. haha. Last time I had a 3 hour lay over (which was a nightmare), this time I only have a little over an hour. So I'm hoping it goes a lot smoother this time around.

So ya, any advice on a stroller or other helpful flying tips would be much welcomed. :)

New Addition

Meet Sofia. Sofie for short. :)

We really like her. She drives so smooth. And the kids can easily get in and out of her. I love that it has automatic everything. bwaaahahaha. However, I think they went a little overboard with the drink holders. There are 8 just in the front. I can't imagine that I will ever need that many, but I guess you just never know.

We ended up spending more that we originally planned, but decided it was worth it to get what was going to best suit our needs. It's interesting, though, how we started out with the plan that we weren't going to get anything with a lot of bells and whistles. Our only requirements were that it have a full middle seat, as apposed to the two individual seats and key less entry. On top of all the obvious requirements like a running motor and AC and such. :) We figured we would be able to find a good 2005 or so to fit our needs. Turns out it isn't easy to find one with the full middle seat. So, after sleeping on it and praying about it for about a week, we ended up paying twice as much as originally planned and getting a 2008 equiped with quite a few nice bells and whistles. Like a DVD player and dual automatic sliding doors. It's serioulsy awesome. So far we still feel really good about our decision and are enjoying having reliable transportation. I no longer fear breaking down every time I have to go grocery shopping. It's such a great feeling.

So, farewell Suzi. You've served us well, but it was definitely time for you to go.

Out With The Old, In With The New

Well, Suzi finally kicked the bucket. Sort of. Really we just don't want to spend any more money to fix her. Mike thinks it would probably cost about $800 to fix her. That's $800 we could be putting towards a new car. Soooo, we are officially minivan shopping. :)

If it were up to me we would already HAVE a minivan and Suzi would have been long gone long ago. I think Mike is more attached to that car than he wants to admit. The plan was to pray for her to get us here, then we would get a new car as soon as we arrived. Well, Mike then decided to keep driving her until she died. I was not a fan of that idea, since I am the one who was driving her, which meant when she did break down I would be driving her and would most likely be stranded with kids somewhere. So, I resorted to just not going anywhere unless I had to. Our trips out included the grocery store, church and dr. appts. When Kacey was here though, we drove her a lot more than we normally would. I am pretty sure that is what finally did her in. I am glad Kacey was with me when she did break down...and we were at walmart. So we were at least able to go inside a cool, air conditioned building while we waited for rescuing. :)

Mike came and picked us up and we all had to squish into his truck. I'm pretty sure it was not legal for us to put a car seat on those sideways seats in the back. But we did it. I think Jacob was a little claustrophobic back there. He kept repeating to himself, "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay". He sounded like he was about to hyperventilate. Then me and Kacey squished back there with him and he decided he needed to reassure us as well and says, "It's okay, a ride in da truck" in a sing songy sort of voice. It was pretty funny. We were sure glad to get out of that truck though. Especially Kacey, since she was the most squished and some of her limbs were starting to go numb by the time we got home. haha. Poor Kacey.

Anyhoo...so for now we are renting a nice Ford Escape, which gets better gas mileage than Suzi and costs about the same to fill up. It's been fun to drive and we have enjoyed the extra room. It makes me even more excited to get a minivan. YAY for new vehicles!!

Yipee...

Here comes #3. That's right folks, we are expecting a new addition this coming March. We are very excited.

"Where Kacey go???"

This is what I've been hearing from Jacob non stop since we said good-bye to her this morning. My little sister Kacey came to visit us for a couple weeks. We had lots of fun. Jacob loves his aunt Kacey and became rather attached to her while she was here. I have a feeling he's going to be asking for her at least for the next week or so until it finally sinks in that she's gone home and isn't coming back for a while. Poor kid. While she was here she taught my children many valuable lessons, like how to make it look like gummy worms are coming out of your forehead...

Or nose. Nice!!

Unfortunately, I wasn't a very good hostess while she was here. I was laying on my couch sick most of the time. But we did manage to make it to the beach before she left. Everyone had a great time. The weather was perfect!! One of Mikes coworkers recommended Wilmington beach and also told us of some places to see while we were there. Even though we didn't have time to see everything, we weren't disappointed and can't wait to go back.

Jacob is not a big fan of the ocean so he stuck to dry land most of the time. But that's okay, he was perfectly content digging and playing in the sand.

Lizzie had a love hate relationship with the water. When she wasn't in it, she looked at it longingly and asked to go back in it. When she was in it, she cried to get out.

Kacey and Mike spent most of their time in the water. I went in for a bit, but I got sea sick just standing there. So, I too opted to stay on dry land and play in the sand with the kids.

Here's Mike waiting for a wave. He was like a little kid. He had a lot of fun.

Kacey was a good sport and let us bury her legs in the sand. At first Jacob didn't get it and kept trying to un-bury her. Soon he caught on though and joined in the fun.

After Lizzie looking at me long enough with those puppy dog eyes, I finally gave in and took her back out to the water. We sat down and let the water come to us. She didn't at all appreciate how the water came at us from that level. She actually attempted to run away when she saw some of those bigger waves coming at us.

We all had a good time, but soon we were hungry and decided to go find food. It took us a while to get changed and get all the sand off. FYI, baby powder works wonders for getting sand of.

We found a little "bar and grill" to eat at, which really was more like a diner, but it was good food and we even had live entertainment. The kids LOVED it.

After dinner we made our way to an ice cream shop that we heard was awesome. The kids fell asleep on the way there.

I volunteered to stay in the car with the kids while Kacey and Mike went in, so I didn't get to see inside this place, but I hear it is a chocolate lovers paradise. They got to sample different kinds of fudge (they didn't even bring any for me. Rudeness. :)) and there were several different kinds of chocolate ice cream. Ironically, Mike got peach ice cream. But Kacey and I enjoyed the chocolate. I had chocolate brownie chunk and Kacey had chocolate peanut butter...I think.

Lulu woke up when they got back in the car and Kacey was nice enough to share her ice cream with her. She was pretty cranky after her nap and was pretty impatient with how slowly Kacey was feeding her the ice cream. I should probably work on teaching her manners. lol. I got some good pictures of her though. With the awesome hair and chocolate covered mouth she was looking fabulous!!

It was a pretty fun trip. We were sad for it to be over.

The two weeks Kacey was here seemed to fly by so fast. I wish we could have kept her longer. Her flight home was pretty early in the morning so we headed up to Raleigh last night and stayed in a hotel. I made sure to wake Jacob up to say good-bye before she left so he would be confused to find her gone in the morning. Nevertheless, he still keeps asking where she went. We miss her already, but we get to see her and everyone else in a couple months when we go home for a long visit. We can't wait!

Picky Eaters

Where did these strange kids come from? They can't be related to me. They have got to be the pickiest eaters ever. I have the hardest time feeding them. I can't even get them to eat your typical kid favorites. I've tried, pb&j, grilled cheese, mac n cheese (boxed and homemade), hot dogs, fish sticks, corn dogs, chicken nuggets, spaghetti...they don't want anything to do with it. I can get them to eat ramen noodles, canned peaches and tater tots. That's about it. Shopping is a nightmare. I have NO idea what to feed these kids. Lizzie usually eats a little of what I make for dinner and Jacob occasionally eats what I make, other than that, I'm surprised they haven't starved to death. I dread lunch time. I take forever trying to figure out what to make for them. I swear smoke comes out my ears.

Stupid Salesmen

And stupid me for getting sucked in. Normally when sales people come to my door, I pretend no one is home. Unfortunately, our big kitchen window looks out on the front door and I was in the kitchen when he knocked and he could see me standing there. Not wanting to be rude I decided I better answer the door. As I'm walking to the door I'm thinking about how to quickly send him on his way. But when I heard he was offering meat at a great price I decided to listen. We had a nearly empty deep freezer in our garage that we have been planning to fill with meat and I thought this might save me a trip to the store. haha. He was offering a case (which included 6 boxes of meat) for one fixed price. Now, this would have been a GREAT deal if I'd gone with just steaks. But I decided there was no way we would go through that many steaks, so I decided to get some fish and chicken as well. Well, not thinking, I went with the cheapest kind of chicken. So, really, I didn't get that great of a deal. Sometime I wonder about myself. I really do. But on the bright side we now have a freezer FULL of meat. We will be happily dining on various kinds of steak for a few months. :)