Road Trip!

The boys and I headed out on a road trip adventure up the 101 to visit my best friends from college and their families in Healdsburg last week. I've found that the more time I spend at home and running around town with the kids and going about our daily routine, the more reluctant I am to stretch myself a little and do something different. It's also been a long time since I've traveled without Jared, and I started feeling like I needed to challenge myself a little bit. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to spend time with friends and to shake things up a bit. The boys were pretty darn good, with a few low points here and there, but nothing much more than what we experience at home in a given week. The driving days were actually surprisingly easy, and I accomplished staying at a hotel alone (with the kiddos) for the first time :) We spent the night at a hotel in San Luis Obispo on the way up and back and spent two and a half days at a virtual Disneyland of fun and happy times. Thank you to the Morks and Moores for a wonderful and crazy fun visit!! I think the boys would have exploded if they had too much more fun...it was definitely an idyllic summer camp experience that we will hopefully repeat every year :)  

Watching cartoons at the hotel on our night on the road heading North...a treat to unwind after our first five hours in the car.

Ready to hit the road for Healdsburg the next morning; they both packed their own backpacks with toys for the trip--Levi's was insanely heavy ;)

Picking up brochures at the hotel for entertainment in the car--Parker decided that he has started a "brochure collection," among his many, many other collections...he would spell the words to me as we drove and I would tell them what they said.

Parker documenting the trip with his camera (which I very sadly lost on our last day there...)

Parker really wanted to help wash the windshield whenever we stopped for gas...unfortunately, he could only reach a few inches of it on either side!

Truck-stop lunch...it served its purpose...

Levi fishing for already-been-thrown pennies in the fountain at the Healdsburg Plaza

Kids! Between the three of us, Mel, Em, and I have produced seven children...from Left to Right: Levi, Parker, Alice, Ella, Owen, Josie, and Chiara. Cuties!

Reunion :)

Fast friends...more like family...

Bubble Mania!!! 

Serious bubble craziness...

Baby Alice with her bubble beard

Chiara and Parker

Parker and Levi got their first water balloon launching experience...they both LOVED it! The Morks have a serious launcher set up to shoot balloons out into their lake.

Preparing to launch

Levi loved throwing his balloons into the plants, and then graduated to loading his balloon into the launcher while I shot it into the lake.

Parker interviewing Josie for what will sadly be his "lost" documentary...

At the Sonoma County Fair...Josie and Parker heading hand-in-hand into the Fun House. Too cute. They are such sweet friends.

Parker and Levi learning how to milk a cow...

I see a bright future for him on the farm...

Child of the Corn

They had the best petting zoo ever! 

Parker and Josie on the trampoline

Zonked! 

A lot of people asked me how on earth Parker and Levi entertained themselves in the car on the drive up there...here's Parker (and his dirty feet mere inches from my face) drawing the road signs that he saw along the way...

And here he is educating himself on Paint Ball wars...

And here's Levi ever-so-briefly entertaining himself with a book...both boys did amazingly well in the car! I did have to tickle a lot of toes, though...

Mommy and Parker

Here is Parker's school photo from this year (his second year of Preschool), and my Kindergarten school photo (from when we were living in England). Lately I've been seeing a lot of myself in Parker, as well as my brother Ian, and one day I thought of this photo of myself and just had to see these two pictures side by side. I love Parker's freckles these days :)

Happy Halloween!

Heading to school for Costume Day on the Friday before Halloween. Parker was pretty into all of the decorations that people put up in our neighborhood, so we put up a few of our own this year. We started off small, but he was excited by our ghosts, spider webs, and spider! Here he is in his pirate costume...

Having his picture taken in his classroom.

Our pirate in the costume parade with his classmates.

Parker and Levi getting ready for all of our trick-or-treaters on Halloween. 

Levi absolutely loved playing with all of the little candy packages! I think he crawled around with a mini wrapped candy bar in his hand for quite a while before I finally pried it out of his little fingers.

Grammy found a perfect costume for Levi--jammies that look like a cowboy outfit! Considering that he was totally oblivious to the entire occasion, it's nice that we will be able to have a good pair of pj's for him to wear after the fact! He managed to keep his cowboy hat (which we got for Parker in Oaxaca, Mexico when he was 10 months old) on for about 30 seconds so we could snap this photo. I really should have cleaned the lasagna off of his face first, though...

Pirate Mommy and Pirate Parker

My mom and dad came over after dinner to celebrate Halloween with us this year--Grammy held down the fort for us and passed out candy while we were out trick-or-treating, while Grampy joined us and pushed Levi in the stroller. Our neighborhood gets super busy for Halloween--each street feels like a block party. There are people everywhere, and it is so easy to trick-or-treat up and down each street. This was the first year that Parker was really excited to go out trick-or-treating; we didn't have to twist his arm to get him to walk up to the front doors and knock and say trick-or-treat. There were a few houses that were a little too scary for him, so we just passed on those. He was perfectly content to do just a few blocks before heading home to "organize" his candy. Overall, I think Parker had a pretty fun Halloween this year.

Batiquitos Lagoon

Do we have the most charming, photogenic son in the world, or what?