This year's family reunion

My class is over; my grades are submitted--wohoooo!!! Catching up on blog posts is next up on my hit list of things to accomplish so expect constant blogging this week. My goal is to blog so much that it's my readers who have to play catch up.

My self-diagnosed mini case of OCD insists upon chronological order so next up after the daddy/daughter/neighbors camping trip is this year's family reunion which was on June 16...almost a whole month ago. We all take turns hosting, and this year my aunt Pam volunteered. This is a pretty easy drive for us so we just made it a day trip.

I don't have a lot of stories for the pics since we pretty much just hung out and ate like we do every year, but I feel the need to start by explaining the fighting sticks in the first pic. Eric should really have some sort of toy man nickname because prior to us pulling out of Bemore on any sort of a day trip, he fills the trunk with as many toys as he can squeeze in. Lately he's really into these fighting sticks he has so he threw them in before we left for the family reunion, and once at my aunt's, they were the first thing picked up. Clay loved them, and I'm pretty sure Chip did too.

Since I don't have stories for all the shots, I'll just use captions.

Hannah watching Clay and Chip sword fight.

The scene as viewed from afar.

Kim and baby Mason.

Yard scene--here's how we play.

Chatting ladies scene.

Aunt Erica and Mason.

Devon and Clay tearing it up on the bean bag toss.

Clay kindly helping up Uncle Eric after Eric play fell.

Hannah....doing nothing other than looking intense and adorable.

Bubbles! Grammy, ever-so-kind-and-wise, brought a goodie bag for the toddlers which included bubbles.

This is too much for a caption: when I was a kid, my favorite thing to do when I stayed with my aunt and uncle was to search the driveway for lucky beans. I should be the luckiest lady alive considering how many of those things I collected, and I suppose in many ways, I am. Anyway, I was really excited to share that past time with Hannah. Of course, for the first 4 or hours, she had no interest in looking for these lucky beans, no matter how excited I was. Eventually I gave up and decided to go with Clay, and of course then she sang a different tune. She carried the green bucket Grammy brought, and Clay pulled the little red wagon, and we marched our procession down the gravel driveway looking for lucky beans. I never knew it as a kid, but apparently they're seeds from a cigar tree. I have no clue if that's the real name of the tree--my uncle Bob said that's what people call it because it drops these long brown pods (full of lucky beans) that look kind of like flattened cigars.

We loaded up the wagon and bucket and then headed back to the yard to inspect our booty.

Counting lucky beans with aunt Pam.

Okay, I know this isn't a quality pic, but it totally makes me laugh so I'm sharing in case it makes anyone else laugh too.

Jason and Kim take in interest in sword fighting.

Clay takes over to defend Kim's honor.

In addition to sword fighting, bean bag tossing, bubble blowing, and lucky-bean looking, we did some exploring in the forested area that is part of my aunt and uncle's property. I was bringing up the rear in this group and liked how the others looked in front of me. I think I have a thing for pics of people walking away. I don't know why I have that thing, but I know I take a lot of pics like this.

So, we took off  in the woods and as soon as we were 3 feet in, Devon looked at me and said, "I think we're lost," and he was serious so I couldn't laugh, but I really wanted to. I assured him that we were fine and then I made sure I stayed close and also that Chip didn't get too far ahead which he did at one point and it clearly made Devon nervous--I don't think he liked the idea of being lost in the woods with just me, and really, that's a valid worry. I wouldn't want to be lost in the woods with me either.

Punching balloons were also in the Grammy goodie bag.

Chipster and Mason (who is giggling at the faces Kim is making).

Counting lucky beans with uncle Donny.

Mason spent the entire morning trying to get someone to play the bean bag toss with him and finally, aunt Pam acquiesced.

For never having family reunions growing up, we are totally rocking at it now. I think this was our sixth year...maybe? I'm sure someone will correct me. Anyway, it was another great day with the fam, the kind of day that makes me wish we all lived just a little bit closer so we could do it more than just once a year.

Daddy, daughter, and neighbors go camping

I finally talked Eric into guest blogging about his camping trip with Hannah and the neighbors in western Maryland (I think Green Ridge State Park???). I'm obsessed with chronological order so I'm holding all the posts until this one gets covered, and, as usual, I am incredibly back logged on the posting. This was the same weekend as HonFest so...second weekend in June I think? I stayed home and worked on my class the ENTIRE time. I got a lot done, and it was kind of neat to be alone in the house...It's been about 3 years since that's happened. It was a little freaky though because the neighbors on both sides of us went along so I was the only person in a three row home radius. This is akin to feeling like being stranded on a desert island for a city slicker like myself.

Enough of my blathering: let's give a warm welcome to Eric!! (Clapping and cheers from the crowd.)


Hi. Here's our campsite.

Running around barefoot and playing with Baby Zoey.

Down low....too slow.

John the Chef.

Hammock time with MC.

Lots of off roading adventures and late night storytelling was involved as well.
There was also a huge black cow that was wondering around an empty campsite. It stuck its head in Hannah's window and tried to eat her snacks. We all had a blast and are looking forward to many more camping adventures. Cheerio.


There you have it ladies and gentlemen! I hope you enjoyed your very first, very brief blog post by Eric. If I wrote like him, I probably wouldn't be so behind on posting. Heck, I could probably even find time to blog almost daily. It's amazing how difficult I tend to make my life, especially when compared to how simply Eric lives his.

Songs by Hannah: "I want..."

Hannah sang a funny song on the way home from the farmer's market on Sunday morning. It was to her own tune, so I can't help you with how it sounded, but here are the lyrics:

"I want a star and a baby and a dog and a yard."

I'm not sure there's anything we can do about the star, but the baby is becoming more of a possibility. We removed the goalie this weekend, in other words, we are having unprotected sex, and it is SCARY! My brother was right when he said that Hannah being a surprise was a good thing because if I were to plan it, it wouldn't ever have been the right time. There is definitely no good time to have your life thrown upside down by a baby! At least I'll have a better idea of what I'm in for this time around, and the knowledge that it really does pass every bit as quickly as everyone says it does should help me stay a little more grounded. And if I forget that sage bit of info, I'm sure my therapist will help me remember it. 

Just to be clear: we are not trying to get pregnant; we've just stopped trying not to.

As for the dog, well, that's not happening until we get a yard, and we can't get a yard until we figure out where Eric's next job will be, and we can't figure that out until fall/winter.

So, no star, dog, or yard, but maybe a baby. We'll see.

Belated HonFest pics

I'm REALLY behind with my picture posting in spite of the fact that I haven't had time to even take that many pictures, but those I have taken are piling up.

HonFest was a few weekends ago, and although I was too busy doing classwork to go, Eric took Hannah down and met up with Erin, Ryan, Brody, and Addison while there. Erin took a couple pics and sent them to me.

Here are the kids camped out on a bench displaying their collected flowers.

 

Apparently this scene of the kiddos flanked by the daddies on either side cause a lot of "awwwws" from the crowd. Cute.

Later that day Eric took Hannah camping with the neighbors. Hopefully my next blog post will be a guest post from him describing that....

Hannah's first parent-less overnighter

Grammy failed me last weekend--she didn't take a single pic of Hannah during her very first solo sleepover!! I suppose if I had made a request ahead of time, she probably would have...

I've got to make a dent in The Awakening so I'm going to sum this up as quickly as possible. A friend of mine and Amy's from high school bought and totally renovated one of the area's bars, The Broad Axe. It re-opened recently, and since last weekend was Blues Fest, his band was scheduled to play with a few other Blues Fest musicians at the after hours party they hosted at the bar. I haven't seen the Back Roads Band play since sometime in college (when my presence at their shows was pretty regular), and I haven't been out after hours in Hagerstown since before Hannah was born.

I was hesitant to go since this was the weekend before my class, but Eric was gung ho and Amy was pretty persistent as well. Eric was already planning to take Hannah to Hagerstown for the day to deliver our old washing machine to my mom and to give me some time to work on my class. Prior to coming up with this plan, my mom had offered to keep Hannah overnight and bring her back the next day. (She offers this a lot but I have never taken her up on it.) After some hemming and hawing, I asked Hannah if she'd like to stay the night with Grammy on her own, and she loved the idea so I decided to get over it and let it happen.

I spent the day alone in Baltimore prepping for class, and Amy came to pick me up late that afternoon. We met up with Eric at my dad's house where we staged a psuedo-prom photo shoot. Lame, I know, but I can count the number of times that I've been done up since Hannah was born on one hand, and I needed a new Facebook profile pic. Since the automatic focus on our camera is broken, and since seeing clearly through it is obviously difficult, not many of the pics turned out. Here are two:

We had a very fun, very late night, and I was exhausted the next day, though fortunately not hung over since I stopped drinking early on after three beers. Eric, on the other hand, took two days to recover from his fun. He is more dedicated to living in the moment than I am.

As for Hannah, apparently she did well. Since I wasn't there, I'm going to copy in my mom's post that she put on our family blog:

Saturday was my first overnighter with Hannah.  It went very well.  No crying.  No missing parents.  No tantrums.  But I've realized that Hannah sometimes acts older than I do.

This isn't bad.  She's mature in the precocious way that some kids get.  But I couldn't get her excited about going to the park or much of anything else.  When I asked if she wanted to play a game she'd say, "Um, okay." 

The most excited I saw her is when Ming Ming (Wonder Pets) had a hammock made to look like a spider web.  She thought this was hilarious!

We walked through the toy store, cooked, planted flowers, and watched a movie together.  I think she had fun, but she's just so low key it's hard to tell.

My favorite moment (after the hilarious spider web hammock, of course) was the cheese.  She decided we should have macaroni and cheese for dinner so I gave her a bit of the cheese to see if she liked it before I melted it down.  Her comments were:  "Ummmm, good, tastes like peanut butter."  I have no idea what she meant by that, but I loved it.

She enjoyed the toy store.  Since I told her I'd buy her something, she wanted to be thorough.  We found the Olivia doll (that she eventually got) rather quickly, but she didn't want to commit too early.  We had to see everything.  She loved the mermaid Barbies - but I steered her clear of those quickly so as not to PO her mommy.  She was captivated by the small swimming pools (could barely tear herself away) but I was sure the already had one, so no need to duplicate.  In the end, she came back to Olivia.  Then we just had to decide if we should get the Olivia House, Olivia Car, large Olivia, small Olivia, or the one you could wear on your back like a backpack - which won out because she had on a "twirly" dress and ballet shoes.

All in all - a nice overnighter.  And now that we know she (and Mommy) can handle the separation, we may do it again soon.


(Although Hannah tends to lean toward the serious side, I think her acting older than Grammy was due to a general reservation with being in a new situation. Although she can be incredibly silly and excitable, she's also cautious and contemplative.)

I chastised my mom in the comment section of the family blog for not taking pics, as did some of my other relatives, and her response was "Come on! I'm out of practice caring for toddlers AND taking pictures. I have to focus."  Hahaha! Maybe next time she'll be able to multi-task.