KTJ

We went to Charlottesville on Tuesday. I met two friends and their kids there. Get this - I originally made the acquaintance of these ladies on FT. At the time, R had one child, M and I had none. We were all TTC. Now we have eight kids between us. M left one with her mom so there were seven on our trip. We went to the Discovery Museum on Tuesday and the kids played for several hours. We took a break for ice cream on the Downtown Mall and then they played some more. After we checked into ...

We got home from Hershey Park yesterday. It was exhausting but the kids had a great time! We arrived Tuesday afternoon and checked in to the hotel. We relaxed for a bit, then had dinner in Chocolate World. We went in to the park with a "Preview Pass" on Tuesday evening from 8PM to closing - at 10. Then we were there for 7 1/2 hours on Thursday. We were trying to herd the kids toward the exit but they kept finding more rides to ride. Plus we were in a section with no lines - so it ...

We came home from the beach today. Charlotte has a lingering cough, and obviously Joe is still suffering from his allergies, but they're mostly better. I, on the other hand, was sick the whole week. Achy, low energy, bad cough. I started using Joe's nebulizer on myself yesterday! It's a great appetite suppressant - that'll be my new diet plan - ha ha ha. I'm going to go to the doctor tomorrow. I was afraid to call this morning because if we had hit bad traffic anywhere I didn't want it to ...

Bad nights in parenting land two nights in a row. It's like having babies again. My poor Joe and Charlotte. Last night Charlotte had awful diarrhea. I'm not sure if it was from her antibiotic, or a virus. One of her school buddies was home with diarrhea on Thursday - so it could be either. She just kept crying that her tummy hurt. At 9PM, I was nebulizing Joe for his cough, and she was on the toilet just crying. They both finally zonked out right after that and slept until 8:45 this morning. ...

I have two kids with a bad, bad cough. Poor things. We're headed to the doctor at 10:30. I nebulized Joe at 3 AM when he crawled into my bed coughing. Then Charlotte came in at 7, crying because she couldn't stop coughing. So I nebulized her, too. I wish I'd done her when I was awake with Joe at 3.
Now they seem "okay" - not great.

Went to my Mom's yesterday. She wanted to have a "pre-beach dinner". She said she was going to cook seafood, and then when we're all eating seafood at the beach (we go in a week) that we can discuss how much better it is at the beach! My cute Mom. Anyway, I took the girls and Joe stayed home with dh. My sister had my 6 1/2 year old niece "L" there, my BIL came later. My niece always seems to be a pistol when her parents are around. She's prone to these screaming fits that ...

Today I watched Campbell swim all the way across the pool in the deep end! She did it on her back, also. I was such a proud mommy!

The twins started "All Stars" camp at preschool today. Drop-off was relatively painless. Campbell had swimming at 10:30. She took "Starfish" in the spring, and graduated to "Seahorse", but we haven't done any lessons since she completed "Starfish". I reminded her occasionally to practice putting her face under the water but otherwise she's just been having fun in the pool, and practicing floating on her own. Today they had about 15 kids and they split ...

It's August! This morning we went hiking at Great Falls Park. We've been a lot this summer but today we drove over to the MD side of the park. It was very picturesque but very touristy and crowded. I think the problem is that they only have ONE big overlook of the Falls, and the VA side has many. You walk on a boardwalk out to the overlook and it's just packed with people going both directions. It reminded me of the tourist hell I encountered when I visited Niagara Falls in 2004.
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We had a play date yesterday - one of Joe and Charlotte's buddies from preschool. His name is ALSO Joe - no confusion there. Turned out he was afraid of dogs. He was at the wrong house! So the boys stayed in the office almost the whole time playing "Cars" on the Playstation with the doors shut so the dogs couldn't go in. I apologized to the mom but she said he was just thrilled to not be hanging around his big brothers.
I fed him lunch and I had to shut Sam (dog #1) upstairs ...