The Last Days in Luxury

I had divided our awesome Hawaiian vacation into thirds with the final third being relaxing in one of the resorts on the island. Most of our friends who vacation in Hawaii rent houses, but we were determined to spend the whole time being spoiled and not have to do anything like cooking or cleaning. ;)

We drove the saddle road (between Mauna Lao and Mauna Kea) back from Hilo. We got rained on the first part of the drive and it magically disappeared once we were on the dry side of the island. Go figure! We decided to stop in Kona for lunch and ended up sitting at a table next to the cutest little lizards. 

This little guy got super brave and was staring at Matt, so Matt tried to feed him. Apparently he is not impressed with human food. He's looking at Matt like "Really dude?" Matt did try to catch him a fly, but we are not adept insect hunters. The lizard finally did get an ant we found for him, but he must not have liked it because he wasn't interested in ant #2.

We finally got to the super fancy resort and it was even huger than what I had imagined. We were met with a tram that ferries you around to the different towers of the hotel! And there was also a series of boats you could use as well. Holy cow!

All of our guides we read pre-trip said the Luaus were totally geared for the tourists, but worth doing at least once. So we signed up to go to one our first night at the resort. I got a good photo of the guys providing the music, but didn't get any good ones of the dancers. The lighting was pretty low and those dancers move so unbelievably fast. I highly recommend going at least once - if nothing else to be amazed at the speed of their hips! :)

Luau selfie for the boys. Check out Matt's awesome Hawaiian shirt with ukuleles on it! What a perfect find for Matt. My dress wasn't nearly as exciting, but it was perfect Luau wear. Plus I finally got my flower lei. I kept expecting someone to give me one. None at the airport, none at any of the hotels, I was starting to despair of ever getting one. Luckily, Matt managed to get me one before the Luau started. Yay!

The resort really was gorgeous! It was so unbelievable huge, but it was all so pretty. Plus there were multiple restaurants and about 18,000 pieces of art scattered on the grounds. We spent a lot of time just wandering around. 

They even had a dolphin cove where you could swim with dolphins (for a fee, of course!). I didn't get the background on whether these were injured dolphins being rehabilitated or captives. I'm going to pretend they were as happy as they looked. The people playing with them certainly were!

But the views. The ocean looked amazing, the sky was amazing. It really was a nice relaxing end to our whirlwind trip around the big island. 

Our room was on the one side of the resort and here is a photo looking toward the other end of the resort. The beach is pretty much all rocks, so that was a small downside, but luckily the pools were all super inviting to make up for it. And luckily our room was on the ground floor, so I could retreat to the safety of our shaded patio when I had enough sun. :)

And one last cool sight before the end of our last day - humpback whales! These guys are supposed to be in Alaska this time of year, but this momma and baby were a bit behind. Someone said the baby was born late, so they hadn't migrated yet - I have no idea if that is true, but it sounded good! Anyhow, it was super windy, so the horizon was almost all dust, but you could see the two whales playing in the water and the faint outline of Maui in the background.

Finally, vacation is over... Our plane is patiently waiting on the tarmac for us (and about a hundred others) to get onboard. We were a little bummed it was over, but we also really missed our two little guys, so we were pretty willing to head home. A lot of fun in the sun was had and given the popularity of the islands, I am sure we will be back. :)

Hilo and the Volcanoes

My coworker Ethan loaned me his Roadside Geology of Hawaii book, so I had made plans of all the cool geologic places to visit. Several of these were around Hilo, so we decided to spend a few nights there instead of wasting time driving every day. We ended up staying in three different spots on the island. I think some friends thought we were crazy, but I am used to moving around on field trips, why not do the same for vacation?

First stop of the day were the Boiling Pots! These stepped ponds at the base of a waterfalls were cool by themselves, but there were even more cool geologic things once you hiked down there. I took a few photos at the overlook, then we hunted around for the trail down.

Except the trail down did not exist. Everything was blocked off with big “Danger” and “Do Not Pass” signs. I kept thinking the trail was hiding somewhere, but every option had a sign and barricade in front of it. I finally came to the sad realization that there was not going to be a hike down to the boiling pots. :(

We headed over to Rainbow Falls instead, which was just downstream. There were supposed to be trails there as well. Guess what? All blocked off again! I was starting to feel like Hawaii didn’t want us to have any fun! Ok, in full disclosure, I googled it. The trails around Boiling Pots were blocked off after several people drowned - apparently those currents were pretty stout and the trails were not very good. 

Fine, Hawaii. You win.

Our hotel was on Banyan drive and was covered in Banyan trees. They were also all around the falls. There was enough of them to form a shaded canopy and it was super cool and so alien looking. If it had been lunch time, it would have been a perfect picnic location. Next time!

My last spot to try from the guidebook was Kaumana Caves - which is a lava tube that had a skylight (roof) collapse shortly after formation and was big enough to walk through and explore. When we first arrived it looked like the caves were blocked off and I was about to lose it!

Luckily, that wasn’t the case, it was just a bunch of warnings and guardrails. :) We got down the staircase and realized it was super duper dark in the caves. Luckily, I had thought to pack a head lamp, so I ran back to the car to get it. Unfortunately, the batteries were low and the light didn’t really illuminate anything!

iPhones to the rescue! We used the flashlight function on the phones to work our way into the cave. We didn’t get too far back before even they weren’t super helpful. Who knew a lava tube could be so pitch black? I noticed that the walls had a cool yellow or white sheen when the light hit them, so I took a photo. I still have no idea what it is - maybe some kind of lichen? I was trying to get a good view of the lavacicles hanging down from the roof, but most of the ones I found were pretty small. So just pretend with me that they are more awesome than they look! ;)

We headed back to the entrance once it looked like we might have to start crouching down or crawling to get through. We are not quite that adventurous! 

We then headed to Volcanoes National Park. There are plenty of trails and things to see, but I wanted to go walk on the lava that had taken out the Chain of Craters road back in 1983. It looked like just a short hike from the end of the road, so we headed down to the edge of the park.

To be met by this! What?!? Not another blocked off area!! I was muttering under my breath about just wanting to live my life and walk on some lava that had gone over the road. As much as we had picked the island for active volcanoes, there haven’t been any flows this year, so it was pretty darn safe to be walking around. Sigh…

I had to settle for walking around on the lava cliffs on the appropriate side of the fence. The views were gorgeous, the water was beautiful and while it was overcast toward the volcano summit, it wasn’t raining at the coast. 

Plus there were these super green plants dotted along the black lava rocks, so they looked especially vibrant. The terrain in the part was actually super varied. When we were driving down the Chain of Craters road, it was almost jungle-like vegetation. We were so confused as to where the lava was. Then there would be a break in the trees and a vast expanse of black jumbled rock. It was the neatest thing. They had the different flows dated so you could see how much vegetation had grown in the last 30 years or so. 

This park is almost entirely the volcano Kilauea, which butts up to the largest volcano, Mauna Loa. Kilauea is smaller, but is the most active of the volcanoes at the moment. But recent is relative, most of the lavas are pretty old. The maps show which ones that have been recorded and those range from the 1800’s to today. The most recent flows are in the East Rift Zone of Kilauea starting in 1983 and going until today. This picture is of a fault scarp (pali) of Kilauea that shows the more recent flows in gray and black, with the untouched ground (kipuka) in between. You can tell the relative age of the flows - the darker it is, the more recent it is. 

Driving back up the Chain of Craters road, I suddenly noticed an old road below us that was covered in lava! After making Matt stop the car, I finally got to tromp around on lava rock covering the road. I don’t know when this particular one happened, likely sometime in the 80’s, but they left the old road as it was and built a new one higher up the hill. 

I wonder how much lava has to cover a road before it is easier to make a new one than the repair the old one?

We figured this would be a great photo opportunity to use my new fancy tripod and get both of us in the photo. Matt sat down and I went to set up the tripod - only to realize that the connector piece for the camera was missing. We carried it all the way there and won’t even get to use it. Sigh… It would have been a good photo, poor Matt looks so lonely by himself. :(

I don’t remember all of the volcanic geology from my undergraduate days, but I did remember that there are two types of lava, which have retained their Hawaiian names. ‘A’a is the rough and chunky kind and Pahoehoe is smooth and ropy. The chemical composition is the same, but Pahoehoe is much more fluid and smooth, while ‘A’a is jagged and chunky. They are pretty easy to tell apart, even from a distance. 

The Pahoehoe was my favorite. Not only is it much easier to walk on, it had the neatest flow patterns preserved. It looks like the same patterns I see while pour cake batter, so that gives you an idea of how fluid it is. Plus the fact that those patterns are preserved gives you an idea of how fast the surface cools!

On a related note, the cooling effect is how the lava tubes form. “Channels” of lava tend to cool on the outer edges first while the inside of the channel remains hot enough to continue flowing. Once the supply cuts off, the remaining lava drains out of the channel and leaves behind a tube of lava rock - which ca be quite large. The Thurston Lava Tube is in the park and you can walk through the length of it, plus it is quite well lit! 

But it wouldn’t be Hawaii without one more Danger sign! The roof of the tubes aren’t an even thickness and some are covered by future flows, but luckily some collapsing is good as it allows access to the tubes. Other collapsing, like the kind behind this sign, is best to be avoided. :)

The park is also littered with craters (thus the Chain of Craters road), these range in size from fairly small all the way up to the massive craters at the summit that are called Calderas. These form when the magma chambers beneath drain away and the volcanic summit collapses. The summit caldera for Kilauea has an active magma lake just below the surface - it isn’t visible from the ground, but the glow from the super hot magma can be seen at night. So we headed that way before the sun went down.

We stopped at the steam vents on the way to the caldera overlook. There is steam coming out of the ground all over the place in this park, but this particular pull off had an abundance. There were two right at the parking lot that had guardrails around them, so you can safely stand next to them. But don’t be fooled, that steam is still pretty darn hot (and stinky)! And the threatening rain finally made a pretty awesome double rainbow right at the overlook, we were all pretty excited and taking photos. When the light was just right it was reflecting up to four times - which of course was impossible to get in a photo!

Finally we made it to the caldera! The caldera was pumping out steam and smoke, but no glow is visible during the day. But the caldera in front of the sunset was quite a sight by itself. 

As an aside, Matt and I aren’t usually too into selfies, but this trip we took a ton of them and sent them to my mom to show the boys. The first few ones we sent got such a happy response that we just kept sending more and more. A good majority of these had silly faces because they made Thomas laugh. In related news, apparently everyone else in the world has already jumped on the selfie band-wagon, I think I saw about 50 different people using self sticks! 

We retreated into the Jagger Museum to wait for the sun to go down since it was raining pretty good. It was pretty interesting to see the old photos and how close people used to get to actively exploded volcanoes - with the caption of “we now know how unsafe this is”. After reading all the displays, we decided to head back outside. The glow was pretty awesome! 

It just seemed to get brighter and brighter, the darker it got outside. It’s so hard to imagine just how hot it must be in the bottom of a caldera that doesn’t seem that far away. It was well worth the wait and the rain to see. It may not have been an active flow threatening to envelop our jeep, but it was a neat sight to see! And a lot safer too! :)

Coffee, Beaches and The Southern Tip

I had initially intended on going on a tour of the only chocolate plantation in the US, but apparently those tours book up fairly fast. Luckily for us, we love coffee just about as much as chocolate, so we headed to one of the many coffee farms for a tour instead. 

Coffee looks so unassuming on the tree. These are all unripe berries - they turn red once they are ripe. We actually found one and the guide let us peel it open to see - gross! Coffee beans look like they are covered in snot before they are dried and roasted. I'll spare you a photo. ;)

The farm was an small organic one with lots of other plants and several other animals. The donkeys were the cutest of the bunch. Apparently the donkey’s were unnamed until a tourist from Canada named them. This one is Paco.

And the slightly shier donkey is Douglas. I don’t think they have any functional use on the coffee farm, but they sure were cute!

This guy followed us around and crowed quite a bit. The tour guide did not seem like he was overly fond of the rooster. Apparently he doesn’t limit his crowing to the morning hours and that has not made him many friends, He was more than happy to pose for some photos for me though!

We drove down to the southern most tip before stopping to eat lunch. The southern point of Hawaii is the southern most point of the US, so it seemed a fitting locale to stop and enjoy the day. The waves spent the whole lunch hour beating on the cliffs, so we even had some nice background music. :)

We, of course, rented a Jeep for the Hawaii portion of the trip. So we spent as much time as possible today driving off road. We also spent most of the day with the top down! We did reapply sunscreen pretty frequently, but it was just nice to have some pretty weather!

We spotted a rickety wooden ladder rising up out of the water and wondered if there was anyone brave enough to be jumping in? Sure enough, we got to watch a few guys jump in. The spot they were jumping in looked fairly calm compared to the rest of the cliffs, but there was no way either one of us were jumping in!

After lunch, we decided to try and find the green sand beaches nearby. There was a single sign with an arrow, but no other directions. Once you got off the actual roads, there were so many jeep trails along the coast you could follow. It was a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure! We drove along, stopping occasionally to check out the sights. And I know it looks like awful weather, but the rain held out on us until we were done exploring! :)

The beaches were mostly rocks and busted up pieces of coral. The Big Island (Hawaii!) is the newest of the island chain and therefore has the poorest beaches. There are some and they range in colors depending on where you are. Here is a big chunk of basalt with abundant olivine crystals. The olivine is what makes the green sand, being more resistant than the basalt.

Also note my fancy new shoes - I made a last minute shopping trip to REI and this awesome salesman picked out this pair for me when I told him where I was heading. I wasn’t in love with the colors, but functionally I couldn’t have asked for a better shoe! 

We finally found the green sand beach! Look how tiny it is!! There were actually a lot of people there and they had planned ahead with swimsuits. We decided we were having more fun driving than we would swimming, so we took some photos and headed back to our trails! :)

We ended up taking longer than we had originally planned to get over to Hilo, so we decided to stop and call home from the Jeep. We’ve been trying to minimize the kids missing us by spending time every day with them on Skype. Thanks to the wonders of technology, we can video chat with them even from the “remote" fields of Hawaii. Don’t they look excited to see us?? Actually Thomas saw me get my camera out to take a photo and started yelling at me not to use my flash - ha!

We are certainly missing each other, but so far they seem to be hanging in there and enjoying the time with their Nonni! :)

Doing Nothing in Kona

riginally we had planned on doing another two-tank morning dive today, but that has fallen through. Matt had a bit of trouble clearing his ears yesterday and they are not happy with him this morning. If you can’t clear your ears, you really can’t dive. I didn’t figure it was worth the risk of making them worse, but we decided to get breakfast and re-evaluate.

I was ambivalent about the dives. I thought it was fun yesterday, but honestly the Mantas were the best part - well and the out of control dolphins that were cruising around with us and literally riding along at the bow of the boat. The aquatic life wasn’t really as good as Cozumel and I was fine not going again. Matt finally decided that his ears were not going to cooperate and we decided to call it off. 

We did the tourist thing and walked along the shops on the main strip, buying a few souvenirs and Kona coffee to take home. After working up an appetite, we got way too much fried chicken at Chicken Holic - it was so cheap that we thought it was going to be tiny portions. Apparently we found the one spot that was a value - ha!

Lunch was promptly followed by a nap. After that, we decided to go get some sun and try the local favorite, Mai Tais! Since we were about the whitest people on the island, we enjoyed our sun under the shade of an umbrella. It was fun to just relax and enjoy the nice ocean breeze blowing in. We have big plans for the morning, so relaxing while we could sounded smart!

Diving in Kona

The wedding in California was only the tip of the iceberg for our vacation plans! We decided since we were already hours away from home, why not just go a little bit further and have that Hawaiian vacation we had intended on taking for my 30th birthday?? 

I think everyone in Alaska goes to Hawaii every year, so we had plenty of people to ask for suggestions. Everyone had their favorite island, so we had to narrow it down. Matt’s top request was to go diving and my top request was to see active volcanoes - the only island that satisfies these two is the Big Island! (You can see the sloping side of Mauna Loa off in the distance.)

We haven’t been diving since we went to Cozumel shortly after I was certified - almost 6 years ago! When I was making plans, the dive shop recommended doing a refresher pool dive. I tried my hardest to get a pool dive in before we left, but given the lack of pool options in Anchorage (and the triathlon training season), I couldn’t fit it in. Luckily, the dive shop in Kona was able to squeeze us in for a quick refresher dive. I’m so glad they did, I felt so uncomfortable when we first got in, but started to get excited by the end of it! I was even waving at people who were taking photos of us through the pool window.

We tried to maximize the diving options by combining a two-tank morning dive and a two-tank manta ray dive that evening. The dive shop affectionately refers to such divers as dive animals - ha! We were killing time between the dives trying to calculate how close we were getting to the nitrogen limits and plan out the last two dives to make sure we didn’t hit it. Luckily the Manta Ray dive was fairly shallow. 

I didn’t end up taking my camera on the dives, so we only have a few iPhone photos from the day, but the dives were pretty awesome. Only a single Manta Ray showed up on the night dive, but it was still amazing. He was a juvenile male named Grayer who is estimated to be about 700 pounds. He didn’t care at all that we were there, he swooped right over Matt’s head several times - it was incredible! 

Plus there were several varieties of eels creeping around that were highly entertaining. One looked like it was stalking the smaller fish, but these larger blue fish would get in between it and it’s prey. The eel looked so frustrated! Haha, I don’t know if it was a coincidence or if there really are “protector” fish, I’ll have to look it up! :)

Wedding in California!

It’s been a rough few weeks in the Hoyt household, but it looks like the kiddos are finally on the mend! Just in time, too! We are headed off for a whirlwind vacation while my mom hangs out with the boys in Anchorage. It’s been a long, long time since Matt and I have had a get-away, so we have been pretty excited about it. I figured the last few weeks were karma’s way of making sure we really, really enjoy it!

First stop is California! Unfortunately there are no Waffle Houses or What-a-burgers, but they thankfully have one of our other favorites - Chick-fil-A. And apparently they introduced a new drink since I was there last year. If you have not tried the Frosted Lemonade, you are missing out!

I spent a good bit of time in advance making plans and booking tickets, hotels and cars. Since we were staying a night in San Francisco, I figured the most logical choice was a nice compact car. This got vetoed by Matt as we got to the rental car company and we ended up in a convertible Camaro. I can’t complain too much, it was fun tooting around and getting some much needed sunshine!

We didn’t have long in San Francisco, but I had a few things I had to check off my list. First stop, Boudin bakery for a quick breakfast!

I love their sourdough bread so much! I may or may not have booked hotels solely on the proximity to their flagship store on Fisherman’s Wharf…

We had a little bit of time to kill before we had to hit the road, so we walked around the wharf and bay area. It seemed like we had travelled so far, but this little shopping center made me feel right at home! :)

When I was trying to remember the last trip Matt and I had taken together (sans kids), I finally decided it was the baby-moon trip we had pre-Thomas. Ironically, that trip was also to San Francisco! I think I was about 7 months pregnant with Thomas and we walked all over the city. We then thought it would be a great idea to walk all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge (and then back!). It was fun, but not the best idea. My poor knees were mad at me the next few days. :(

My absolute favorite spot last time was Ghirardelli! I think I made Matt go there every single day to get some sort of chocolate & ice cream concoction. It was just so delicious and I was so pregnant, how could I resist??

This time we went about 30 minutes after breakfast, but it was on my list and I wanted a sundae! We opted for a slightly smaller one this time, but we still couldn’t finish it. Oh well, it was the thought (and taste!) that counted!

Finally we were off to the event that prompted the trip and following vacation. Matt’s friend, Tom, was getting married! That name should sound familiar to most of you! But for those that don’t know the story…

Matt’s middle name is the name of one of his dad’s military friends that was a pilot. Matt has always thought it was neat and thought it would be cool to name our son after one of his military buddies who also happens to be a pilot. (And a war hero!) When Thomas was born, Matt told Tom the name we picked and Tom thought it was a good name. We weren’t ever sure if he thought it was a big deal or not. Until this wedding:

Not only did we make the Trivia cards, I think Tom told everyone he introduced us to that we named our son Thomas. Ha! His whole family was a little bummed that we didn’t bring our Thomas with us, they were super excited to meet him! 

A related tidbit - Tom was named after one of his Uncle’s that was a military pilot who died and left his Aunt a widow. He sent us the article about it at one point and it felt super neat to have a chain of Thomas’ - I guess this means we need to encourage our Thomas to get his pilot’s license! We even got to meet his Aunt at the wedding and of course we showed her the most adorable photos we had of our Thomas. :)

We hadn’t met Sarah yet and she was just as sweet and friendly as you could have guessed. I think we invited the two of them to Alaska about 10 different times, so hopefully they can make the trek up there soon so Tom and Thomas can finally meet! 

All in all, it was a beautiful backyard wedding and we were glad we got to be a part of it! The best wishes for the two of you on your marriage and lives together! 

Happy Easter

I managed to get the cupcakes finished this morning. I had planned on doing it last night, so the kids would be all excited to see them this morning, but I was pretty worn out. Matt managed to entertain them this morning long enough for me to get them done.

Oh I should also mention that Matt had to go on a Peep hunt. Our grocery store was all sold out and the Peeps were a critical component! He managed to save the day. And came back with so many festive colors too!

I had initially planned on having our friends over for an Easter brunch, but cancelled that once I realized the boys were going to be disease vectors. So while I had all these initial plans for Easter baskets and egg hunts, I did approximately none of that. 

Luckily my mother-in-law saved the day! She mailed them easter baskets that managed to arrive yesterday. The baskets were Thomas the Train fabric and she shipped them along with everything to put in them. The baskets popped right back up and were stuffed full of goodies. The boys seems pretty excited initially with just the cards! Henry was even trying to read his!

We, of course, made them wait to get their baskets until we had the grandparents on Skype. The two of them are getting better about staying in front of the camera for Skype sessions, but utilizing the table seems to help - especially if they have goodies to go through!

Part of the basket was a set of matching World’s Best Brother shirts, which I thought was too cute! Although Henry seemed much more excited about the fact his crocheted Lamb and Chick were secretly hiding an egg full of candy! Look at the excitement on his face! He was shaking them (because obviously they made a ton of noise) when the egg fell out and the look on his face was just priceless! Thomas commenced to prying his out once he saw the trick.

Henry is still super excited about his. Thomas managed to get his open already and is chowing down on skittles. You can see the lamb cover in his hand - they were pretty adorable. :)

I should also confess I didn’t do their monthly photos this month. Ugh, it was just a rough month. I realized it this morning, but decided that the photos of them on the couch would suffice. Surely when they are grown up, they won’t give me too hard of a time about a missing month…?

Finally, it was cupcake time!

I cut Henry’s up into small pieces for him, but he is obviously way more excited about his fork than his cupcake… Those are *not* my genetics! As you may recall from his second birthday cake, he is obsessed with utensils lately. He’s started fussing at meal time if I don’t give him a fork. He can’t really use it yet, but he tries, then puts it down, picks up some food to eat with his hands, then tries again with the fork. It’s pretty cute, but it has made meal time a bit slower…

Thomas was chowing down on his cupcake when he came across a surprise! He watched me make them, but wasn’t there when I decorated them. I cut out the middle of the cupcake and put a mini cadbury egg and star sprinkles in the center before icing them. He was sooooo excited! He started yelling “Stars! Look, Henry! There’s stars!” It was pretty adorable, well worth the effort. (As a side note, one of the guys I work with was just about as excited as Thomas when he ate one. Ha!)

Thomas gives his seal of approval - a big thumbs up. He can’t quite do them perfectly yet, but he sure tries. :)

And I almost forgot, we had a visit from an Easter animal!

No Easter Bunnies up here in Alaska, but we did get an Easter Moose! I happened to see her across the cul-de-sac and she walked over into our yard and across the driveway. Thomas was super excited and was yelling “Moose! Moose!” Henry didn’t know what was going on, but he followed his brother to the window anyhow. 

She didn’t hang around long, but I’m sure the Easter Moose has plenty of kids to go visit! ;) Also I feel the need to point out that these tall elegant creatures look a bit gangly and ridiculous when trying to climb hills. Ha!

I should also point out - we got snow!!! Matt had planned on taking a motorcycle ride with some buddies today and spent all night working on his bike to get it ready. As he was going to bed, he let the dogs out for a potty break and found 3" of snow on the ground! Poor guy can’t catch a break…! Luckily the ski pass is still good, so he did at least get some fun out of the day. Apparently it was some of the best skiing all year. The snow in our yard, however, didn’t even last the full day before it melted.

Crazy Alaskan weather! :)

Still Sick...

The sick days have gotten progressively less fun as we’ve switched from “Have to entertain the kiddos while they miss a few days of school” to full on survival mode of all family members - two of which still have to maintain employment. The boys are overall still in good spirits, but seem to be a more down in the dumps than before. 

After this went on longer than I felt was reasonable, I finally took Thomas in to the doctor. I had called them last Monday after about a week and they told me to call back if it went on another week or they got worse. 5 days later, I felt it was getting worse and took him in. After waiting over the weekend for the lab to be open, we got back the test results - turns out he has Rotavirus.

Rotavirus is super contagious, so the standard procedure is for infants to be vaccinated against it. We follow the standard schedule of vaccines and both of the boys are vaccinated against it. Apparently we have super bad luck, because they both got it and passed it along to us. I read up on the virus and it is not the easiest thing in the world to kill and likes to hang around on any surface it touches. So a full scale house decontamination was in order. All the toys got either a bleach bath / spray or dousing with lysol. Everything that I could got washed in super hot water. The rest was put in a corner in “quarantine” until the surface survival period had passed. 

In doing this, we realized the kids toys have gotten a bit out of control. So we’re going to take it as an opportunity to clean out some toys - especially the ones they don’t play with or had outgrown. The upside to the sick days is that Thomas got a new movie - The Lego Movie. I had rented it when I needed to distract him while working from home and he loved it! The movie even came with an Emmett that lights up. Thomas was a little bummed he didn’t fit on his duple Legos, but he found a way for Emmett to ride on the train anyhow. 

A bit last minute I realized that Easter was this weekend (in my defense, it’s been a pretty distracted two weeks!), so we decided to make some Easter cupcakes. I let him pick the cupcake mix and the liners, but that was all the help he got to provide this time. No reason to risk more contamination than necessary… “/

And since we are all feeling bad, I figured a little hot chocolate might perk up our moods. I asked Thomas if he wanted any and he immediately starts negotiating with me to get whipped cream on it - ha! I at first told him we didn’t have any, but apparently we had a whole can left over from the ski train waffles, so he lucked out (big time!). Look how proud of himself he is! He did lose the negotiations to put the whipped cream on by himself. 

Henry again missed out on the hot chocolate, but was more interested in the goldfish anyhow. I gave him a pretty large pile to snack on and had no idea why he was so upset a few minutes later. Apparently he wanted more and the fact that he could see the box right behind him was just too much torture! Look at that poor face!!

On the other hand, Thomas has pure satisfaction all over his face. Can’t blame him, that was a pretty good cup of hot chocolate. We had intended to make enough to share with Matt, but somehow there was none left when he got home. No idea how that happened…

Luckily the boys finally seem to be improving, so hopefully the boys will be back to their normal routines soon. We’ve managed to make it work even though we’ve both had tons of stuff going on at work, but it was not the most enjoyable two weeks. Can’t wait for the normal level of hectic versus the super crazy levels we’ve had…!

Sick Days

I think it's just a given when you have kids in daycare, they are going to get sick. I think it's also a given that when one kid is sick, no matter how careful you are, the other one will catch it. Because they loooooove to share germs! I bet you know where this is going...

They are both sick. Sick enough that they can't go to school, yet not really feeling sick, so they are in great moods (99% of the time). Matt and I have been taking turns staying home with them - Tuesday and this afternoon were mom time. We decided today to switch mid-day because if I go in super early and he stays late, we can practically both get a full day in. 

It also means that we had such a fun day yesterday! We couldn't really leave the house thanks to what they have, but I was pretty darn creative in entertaining them anyhow. Henry decided to sleep in, so Thomas and I made breakfast together. As soon as I started pulling out the ingredients for his "can-cakes!", he ran to go get his red spoon to help me. Don't judge on the Bisquick, I bought so many different mixes to test out waffle recipes that I am going to use them. Also note the laptop - had to try and stay up to date with work since we are in between drilling sections - Thomas didn't seem to mind the occasional interruption (whew!).

Henry finally decided to join us after we finished off our breakfast. Luckily there were still plenty of pancakes. And Thomas was super absorbed in his magnet play set that he's only allowed to use at the table (because stray magnets terrify me with a baby that tries to eat everything).

First order of business was to build a slide with the couch cushions in the front room (aka the kids playroom). We did this yesterday afternoon when I got home and they had a blast. This time I took a little more time in set-up so there weren't any gaps or slides that would topple over.

Thomas had a BLAST!!! He climbed up, jumped / slid off over and over and over again. I think he spent a good 20 minutes going at it. Like I said - they are not acting sick, they are full of energy for some reason...

Thomas decided the slide was "too dangerous!" for his little brother and was trying to keep him from climbing back up on to the couch. Henry did not appreciate the "help". These two are going to be wrestling opponents and best buds if today was any indication.

Luckily Henry never stays mad for long! :)

On to the next activity, which was me pushing the boys around the house in the laundry basket. First it was Thomas, then Henry, then they both wanted in, then they wanted to switch front and back (I say they, most of this was dictated by the vocal one...). I figured I wasn't going to get a workout in anyway, so I did as much pushing as my legs could take before I gently dumped them over and claimed the basket was broken. So sad. :(

I made this awesome dinosaur headband while Henry was eating breakfast, but Thomas had to wait for the glue to dry to wear it. He was convinced I was making him Christmas trees when I was cutting out the spikes and would not listen to my explanations of "cool dinosaur hat". He wore it and seemed to like it, but then Henry was trying to touch it, lost his balance and ripped it in half. I'm sure you can imagine the chaos that ensued...

I fixed it up for Thomas, but he refused to wear it the rest of the day if his brother was around. In related news, I think I might make myself one!

As you can probably guess based on previous posts, I had switched to ideas from Pinterest. I swear, that website has the most creative craft ideas. I scoured my list to see what else was feasible with the limited (ok, endless... don't judge!) craft supplies on hand. And I found the Rocket Balloons! 

This one is where you put a straw on a string, string it up, then attach the balloon to the string and let it rip! It worked so well on the first test string, that we strung a longer string across from the front to back of the house. The boys loved it!! I did too, I got dizzy from trying to get more and more air into the balloon. :)

I even rigged up a clothespin to shut the balloon so that Thomas could get in on the fun. We didn't quite manage to make it to the front door, but we did get to the tile entry! Also note the change in balloon. Thomas was trying to help me by blowing up the balloon for me. When I went to get a new balloon, he was all concerned.

"Momma, what happened?"

"You tried to blow up the balloon and got germs on it. I love you, but I don't love your germs."

"I love my germs momma!"

Ha - no wonder he is so happy to share them with Henry...! :)

Today, when I was hanging out with Thomas in the bathroom, I noticed the roll of toilet paper was empty (imagine that...). So while I was giving them a snack, I looked up ideas for the toilet paper rolls I collected around the house. And I found two activities that I combined into one awesome color sorting / fine motor skills pom-pom / tube activity. They both loved it, though Henry was much more interested in trying to tear it down. I need a little more adjusting on the tubes to get them to fall back into the box, but it wasn't bad for a first attempt!

The blocks even got some play time today. They never seem to want to play with them unless I start playing with them, so I pulled them out and started making a "castle". They, of course, both wanted in the castle. Henry waited until I took Thomas to the bathroom and bull dozed the castle. After rebuilding it, I instituted a 4 minute time-limit in the castle. Thomas loves having a timer going when I tell him he has "a few more minutes" and he doesn't argue when it goes off (please let that last forever!). After his four minutes, I put Henry in the castle fully expecting to have to rebuild it all over. I was shocked, he just sat there and enjoyed his time in the castle. He pulled off a block or two to hold, but otherwise left it alone. Awesome! After a few rotations, we called it a day and headed over to eat dinner. 

All in all it was a fun day (and a half) with the boys and while I am sorry they are sick and not loving the crazy hours to make up for them being home, it was a great time hanging out with them. So glad they are such happy little guys! :)

And since I was on a Pinterest craze, I have a few photos from older activities that I never got around to posting, so these are some other things we've tried recently!

Getting ready for some footprint art! Thanks to daycare, he loves doing handprint and footprint art. And there are *so* many ideas out there. Plus it's usually pretty easy. Win-win!

He was pretty proud of his painted foot! I actually had to do both feet, but did them one at a time. I do not need a stray foot covered in paint dangling around, thank you very much.

Footprint dinosaurs! So if you look closely at the inspiration photo on my phone, I totally did the footprints backwards. Whatever, Thomas loved them even if his toes were in the wrong spot. :)

Truth be told, I was trying to do footprint hearts for valentine's day and was failing miserably, so we changed it to dinosaurs. Hey, dinosaurs can be romantic!

Nothing says "I love you!" like a green dinosaur face full of teeth! Also, it's really hard to get all of his toes on the paper, I don't know what he does with his feet when I am holding him up, but it usually looks like he is missing a toe. Silly Thomas!

The activities for babies are much more limited, especially a baby who will try to eat everything. So I decided to try a sensory bag, which are all the rage apparently. The first one was a huge fail - not surprising that baby oil and colored water was more exciting to me than the baby. So I gave it another shot with pom-poms and water (much safer for leaks!). Also side note - who knew pom-poms had so many uses??

He wasn't too sure what to think of it, but I thought it would momentarily be a good distraction while I was trying to finish the laundry. He didn't immediately throw it on the ground like the paint bag, so that was a plus. 

But I think this photo sums up his feelings about it. "Nice try, mom. I'm not impressed." Ha - it did at least manage to keep him distracted for me to fold the load of clothes and get back to real playing. Babies... so hard to please!

Birthday Cake, Take 2!

I apparently missed the memo on how cake smashing is all the rage these days for baby's first birthday. After Henry's birthday, my friend Theresa started asking for cake and prop ideas and she sent me to all of these cute photo shoots online. Argh! How did I miss this?!?

Then I decided that there was no shame in having a second birthday cake for Henry and trying to get him to smash into it! Second child, second chance cake - makes total sense! (Theresa's youngest, Meredith, turned one in the mean time and the photos Theresa got were so awesome - way to set the bar so high, dear friend!) So after some plotting and planning, we gave it a go this weekend:

I debated the most over color choices, and settled on something colorful - it is almost spring after all! And I figured soft and tasty was the best call for icing, so I made a cream cheese icing for his yellow cake - yum!

As soon as we plopped him down, he got his foot in the cake. Icing all over the toes! He immediately reached for the icing. I was pumped, this was going to be the best cake smash!

Ummm....

Or not. He took off! 

We picked him up and put him back. I had read several places that people had trouble getting their kids to even try the cake, but once they had - they tore into their cake!

So I scooped up a bit of icing and put it in Henry's mouth. He looked a little confused as to what was going on. And took off again...

This time when we put him back, he accidentally got his hand in the cake. Oh surely this will lead to more smashing!

Nope.

As you can tell by the floor, it mostly led to finger painting with the icing. Maybe if we gave him a fork? He doesn't generally use one, but maybe...?

Nope.

I didn't want Thomas to feel left out, so I made him his own tiny cake too. Maybe if we let Thomas show his younger brother how to do it, Henry would go after it!

Instead, Henry went after Thomas' cake. I'm sure you can imagine how well that went over with Thomas - you might notice he's pushing his cake out of Henry's reach. :)

We told Thomas he was welcome to smash into his cake. We even told him there was a surprise in the middle (strawberries!) My mother-in-law gave me these cool mini cake pan that you can use to make a cake with an indention in the center. I was going to use two pans to do a double layer with a big cavity in the center, but ran out of batter, so he just got a single layer... Sorry Thomas!

Thomas declined to get messy with his cake - he's a pretty tidy little guy, so I wasn't all that surprised. He was pretty excited about the strawberries in the center though!

Henry is now making a bigger mess with the icing, but still no eating. I decided to cut a piece of the cake out to see if that would help. Maybe he was just having trouble breaking through to grab cake. You can see it off to the side of the cake where Henry just ignored it. 

Then we had the brilliant idea to take his fork away, so he would pay more attention to the cake!

He was not impressed with that idea! Poor guy was devastated without his fork!!

We obviously gave it back after that reaction! And I pretty much gave up on him eating his cake. As long as he was having fun, it was a win in my book!

And he certainly had fun playing in his icing! He had bits of orange icing smeared all over himself and the floor. 

And possibly he was enjoying smearing it on the backdrop as well. His finger painting skills are improving, no matter the medium of choice. ;)

Now there's a happy Henry! I should also point out that some of those finger paintings are in chocolate icing - he did manage to lay hands on his brother's cake at one point. Our baby wrangling skills weren't quite up to par today... whoops!

Oh and he is a standing up pro these days! He even took a few steps to me at daycare the other day. I was crouched down as he was walking while holding the gate in his room, then he just let go and kept walking. I didn't even realize what he was doing at first because he was so steady! He only made about 4 steps, but I was still super excited! Yay for Henry!

Off to the bath with you, little man! You may not have tried your cake, but you certainly accomplished the messy part of it. Happy Birthday again - you really are growing up too fast!

That's the end of the fancy photos! Theresa posted a few behind the scene photos on her post, so I thought I would do the same. It really was an entertaining photography "session"! But if you just visit my blog for cute photos of the kiddos, it's ok to stop here. ;)

The backdrop. I originally was going to go with plain white and ran out of time to order a fancy vinyl backdrop online. So I went to Michael's to see if they had any large rolls of white paper. They didn't, but I found some wrapping paper I could splice together to make a wide enough span. But then I found poster paper rolls and this super cool cloud pattern! I thought that would be way more fun!

Until I unwrapped it this afternoon and realized my clouds were sideways to the direction I needed. Argh! Turns out I was going to get to splice paper anyway. Luckily the width was perfect that the splice ended up right at the floor and not visible in most of the photos. (The photo above is pre-splicing, the final product reached down to the floor and out about four feet.)

I didn't have any fancy frames or stands to use the paper with, but I realized that the upper counter in our kitchen was about the same height, so I taped it up there instead. It was perfect for the lighting and I had plenty of room to maneuver around with the table out of the way. 

I had a lot of late nights this week with work, so I hadn't had a chance to make the cakes until last night and they weren't iced. So when I put the boys down for a nap, I had to make the backdrop, the banner and ice the cakes. And as soon as I started, I realized I didn't have enough powdered sugar! Double argh!!

Luckily I read somewhere that you can make your own by blending the sugar until it is the same powdery consistency. I've never done it, but figured if anything could do it, the Vitamix could. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty darn close! Whew!

There might have been a mini-bundt cake for the adults. I conned Heather, Brittney, and Duncan into coming over for the cake smash, so I figured I should have a cake for them that wasn't covered in baby or toddler germs. This thing got devoured!

Brittney helping with cake placement. We thought moving it closer would entice him to eat it.

Duncan returning the runaway Henry. I can neither confirm nor deny if this was right before Henry's hand landed in the icing... ;)

Henry near the end of the session. He was must more interested in attacking the paper than the cake. You can see the seam in this photo right at his knee level. It would be easy enough to edit it out in Lightroom, but it was pretty unobtrusive it was for the most part. I might edit it out for photos if I was printing them out. And the nice part about it being paper was that clean-up took seconds. It took longer for me to get Henry clean than for Heather and Brittney to clean up the whole area.

Thanks for all of the help, I don't think it would have been possible without you all! :)