Porta Waterpark Trip 2016

Our sixth annual Porta Waterpark Adventure has sadly come to an end. My boys and I cherish this time together every year. Each one of us looks forward to this trip and we all feel sadness as we leave our hotel room for the last time. This year the boys asked repeatedly if we would ever get THIS VERY same room again. They were so upset when I answered, "Probably not."

Here are the boys getting their first glimpse into the waterpark! Kinda hard with the frosted glass.

Here we are, doing our customary JUMPING ON THE BED when we arrived! The boys think this is hilarious. This year Sammy played out "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed," along with actual falling on the floor motions and hitting of his head. :)

My cuties are getting SO big! We always have to climb up to the top bunk and get a picture. This was the first year that Sammy was interested in sleeping on the top bunk, so each boy got a night up there.

This year's hits for snacks: veggie straws and cheese balls. BOTH bags were totally demolished within 24 hours.

The first night we arrived we spent a bit of time in the waterpark. It was nice to have time there when it wasn't crazy crowded. I have to mention that both boys left the waterpark without tears or complaining every single time we departed. This is HUGE, especially for our waterpark-lover Elijah. Yay for maturing!

Look at these cute boys! Both of them were so brave in the water this year. Sammy willingly went into the wave pool AND the lazy river! I was so proud of him. And Elijah went on the BIG waterslide with me, which was really huge for him. On the walk up the 10 flights of stairs I could tell he was getting anxious. He asked me repeatedly if everything was going to be ok. Are we going to be safe? Are we going to go under water? Are you going to protect me? Once we were in the giant tube, all was well. We had a blast! It was one of the highlights of the entire trip.

Even though the boys are too old to be bathing together, we made an exception for this trip just for the sake of tradition. Sadly, it may be the last.

Just like at home, the boys asked to constantly listen to worship music every time we were in the hotel room. Here is Sammy jamming out to one of his favorite songs. I LOVE that cheesy hand in the air.

More worship music time with some snacks and apple juice.

My sweet oldest boy still likes to snuggle.

Sammy kept asking me to take random pictures of him so I could send them to his teacher. :) He took VERY good care of our room key, making sure to keep it in its protective sleeve so we wouldn't forget our room number. Mr. Organized!

Cutie.

A snapshot I keep in my mind every year is of the boys running down the hallway toward our room. They still love to run run run!

And we spent our last night in the arcade, as we always do. We had tons of fun! I reminded Sammy about just a few years ago when he would run and hide behind the arcade machines because he wanted nothing to do with being there. Every year Sammy gets more comfortable and enjoys more parts of this trip. I was so happy to see him truly enjoying the arcade this year!

We earned a ton of points and both boys were super excited to get prizes.

The boys with their loot!

We are super thankful for another adventure together! I love our traditions and that we all cherish them so much.

Elijah has a cardiology appointment right away in the morning. Prayers are appreciated and I will write an update as soon as we get home!

Our week in bullet points

My brain is thinking in bullets instead of sentences/paragraphs, so here is a bulleted recap of our past week!

- Dan and I continue to be overwhelmed about how good it feels to spend entire spring/summer weekends and evenings together as a family. We haven't done this consistently since Elijah was a year old, so it is foreign. And really, really nice.

- Last weekend we went to a movie as a family (Home...SO CUTE!), spent time with family, went to the horse races (we haven't done this since E was 1, either) and visited a few parks.

- We said good-bye to our beloved Fishy-Wishy this week, as he swirled away from us down the toilet. Sammy cried genuinely sad tears.

- We spent one enjoyable day with a caterpillar friend who we found adoring Sammy from his shoulder.

- Elijah had an overall GREAT week at school. He went on a field trip with his class today and got a "great" report from his awesome special education teacher, which earned him a few Pokemon cards from Mama.

- Sammy had another cute soccer game on Thursday. Grandma and Grandpa came to cheer him on with us!

- I have never been so excited for Friday to come! The past two weeks have been crazy!

- I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but Sammy has been really interested in recycling. He has learned which pieces of garbage can be recycled and he is our POLICE. If I throw a recyclable item in the garbage, he reprimands me. "This is RECYCLING! Not garbage!" He has been asking to look at photos of recycling facilities, so maybe we will have to find one to visit this summer.

- Another interest of Sammy's is sea creatures. He LOVES learning about anything that lives in the ocean and retains all of the information so well. He will often say things to me like, "Mommy, did you know that whale sharks are as big as a school bus?"

- Sammy has also been making rules around our house that he wants us all to follow. For example, our pantry door is usually open because we have stuff spilling out of it and sitting on the floor in front of it. The other day he reorganized everything inside so that it could easily close. Then he put a post-it note with the word "PANTRY" written on it on the door and closed it. He told each of us that the pantry door needed to be closed at all times. If one of us leaves it open, he says, "WHO left the pantry door open? WHO?!"

- Sammy is finally getting over his croupy cough that lasted WAY too long. He hasn't been getting as much sleep as usual because of it and has tired eyes today.

- On the other hand, I think Elijah has been sleeping well! I say "I think" because I have stopped recording his sleep on his fitbit since he has seemed so rested. He does still wake up in the middle of the night occasionally and he is ready to start the day EARLY, but nothing like before. We also have our daily struggles, but things overall are manageable. He has experienced regression in certain areas recently, but we have noticed some real progress this spring! "Progress with hiccups" is how his teacher explained the past few months and I think that says it perfectly.

- I am excited for another weekend spent with my awesome boys! We may or may not make it to the dropzone for MY first time this season. Next week will be another busy week, with some exciting things thrown in such as Sammy's fifth birthday and Elijah's last day of second grade!

- Thanks for checking in and for putting up with my disjointed bullets! Have a great weekend!

Waterpark Adventure 2015

I'm feeling a need to get this post done tonight because tomorrow I will be writing about a certain 8-year-old's birthday!

Our fifth annual waterpark trip was a smashing success. Dan and I both agreed that we managed our time better than ever before and we ALL enjoyed ourselves, even more than in past years. This was the first year that Sammy truly enjoyed himself. It was fun to see.

Here is the photo I take every year upon first entering the hotel/waterpark. The boys love to run to the windows to peek into the waterpark and get a glimpse of the "big bucket" and all of the action. This year we found that the windows had been frosted, so the boys had to peek through the cracks.

The first few minutes in our room are always SO EXCITING!!!!

Annual photo with Mama and boys in the top bunk!

Followed by....JUMPING ON THE BED! This year we talked Dan into joining us.

We spent an hour at the waterpark our first night. Both boys had a blast! Sammy willingly got into the water for the first time EVER!

I'm so proud of him. He stuck to a very specific area, but he went down the same slide about 100 times over the course of the weekend. Progress! A few times I tried to get him to extend his territory, but he resisted. I'll take it.

I always get photos of the post-waterpark bathers. It'll be so sad when they don't take baths together anymore! 

 I LOVE this cutie! Yikes, look at his tired mama..

Posing with the waterpark guys.

On our second day, Elijah literally RAN around the waterpark at full speed for hours on end. Dan and I could do nothing to get him to slow down, short of making him leave the place. Literally...he ran from the slides in the kiddie area to the big tube slide to the wave pool to the lazy river (with one of us following close behind)....repeat repeat repeat...without taking a breath. Toward the end of the day, Dan handed Elijah off to me and said, "Watch him!" I took one look at E and knew what he meant. He had worn himself out. He was totally exhausted and even felt sick to his stomach. He literally could hardly stand. I hadn't gotten many photos of him yet (and I always snap a few!), so I asked him to smile and pose since I knew these were our last moments there. After a dozen attempts, I got a smile..

Then he sat down in another area on the way out and after another dozen photos, I got another smile..

Then I realized I was being selfish and had Dan scoop him up and take him back to the hotel room. He was draped over Dan's shoulder like an exhausted baby! Poor guy. I got a partial smile..

We had dinner in our hotel room (a second-night tradition) and by that time Elijah was feeling much better. We headed down to the arcade for a bit of gaming fun! Both boys had a blast. Sammy keeps telling me that the 30 minutes we spent in that arcade were his favorite moments of the entire trip.

Elijah threw a ball into the teeny-tiny 1,000-point bucket in the tossing game (impossible feat), hence the celebrating..

Look! It's Sammy! Participating in games and not hiding behind a Pac-Man machine (yes, he really did that)!

We won BIG at Deal or No Deal! Hundreds of tickets, which earned us.. toy handcuffs (you can imagine how much we've loved THIS) and ring pops (which Sammy calls "Rain Pops").

A few more notable things about our adventure..

It was so much fun to watch Sammy (Elijah wasn't so interested in this) RUNNING through the hallways to get to the elevator, push the button and accomplish absolutely everything before his brother could.

I loved our family nap on our second day. It was a revitalizing intermission when Sammy watched a movie by himself while the rest of us slept like we were dead.

Trips to the ice machine! Who knew this could be sooo exciting?!

Elijah and I made a few trips down the "blue-tube-slide" together and WOW was it fast! I cannot believe how much that boy loves speed. It was a ton of fun, and each sliding experience was followed by a trip around the lazy river and then a jaunt in the wave pool.

Sammy insisted on wearing his goggles in his own Sammy way (of course). The straps folded his ears in half and hung at the bottom-back of his head. He swiped our hands away any time we tried to fix them and refused to take them off, even when they were completely fogged over.

As always, I LOVED our first hour in our hotel room. It was pure happiness and excitement for all of us. Elijah kept asking me, "Is this a dream?!" We all cherish this trip so much every year. On our way home, both boys whimpered constantly.. "I MISS OUR TRIP!" Me too, boys.. can't wait till next year!

Uniquely awesome day

I'm going to try to be so much better about writing down the things that make me laugh. On our way home from our friends' baby shower tonight, the boys were playing on our phones in the car. Sammy was apparently trying to purchase a new app, so when the little box popped up to enter my iTunes password he said in total seriousness, "Mommy? How do you spell 'I really want this game a lot'?" He was totally ready to type it in. :)

Today was very strange in a good yet tiring way. We started the day off with a Hope Kids event at the Mall of America. Hope Kids is an incredible organization that provides opportunities and events for a select number of kids who have life-threatening health conditions and their families. This event was awesome. It was held at an arcade inside the MOA, so the kids were able to play endless games and also make crafts, decorate cookies and get their photos taken with Santa. Sammy was particularly excited about seeing Santa for the first time and made a point to say to him, "Look at my monster shirt!" The boys had a blast and we even ran into their cousins, who are a part of Hope Kids, as well. We also saw a kindergarten teacher from Elijah's school who was volunteering for the event! I recognized her, but had never talked to her before. Just like the other kindergarten teachers at his school who we love so dearly, she is awesome! We let the boys ride on a few rides at Nickelodeon Universe and on our way to the car I ran into an old coworker who I hadn't seen in years!

After a family "nap" in our cozy, pillow-filled bed, we headed out again to the north side of the Cities for a baby shower. Two of our skydiving friends are expecting their first baby and are back from Florida for a few days, so we couldn't pass up the opportunity to see them. It was such a fun treat to spend time with them, as well as the rest of our skydiving family. Elijah and Sammy (and us, too!) were EXHAUSTED at the end of it all, but it was such a unique day filled with different kinds of fun and people from different parts of our lives.

And that is all! I'm off to work for a bit and then snuggle with my hubby!

State Fair 2014

I have the most handsome boys on the planet! Sorting through these pics, I'm realizing how many close-ups I took of my three boys at the State Fair this year.

We had such a fun trip there this week, as we always do. We counted out years and figured that Elijah has been to NINE Fairs (including when he was in my tummy) and Sammy has been to five. 

We always start out with a massive Pronto Pup. :)

Then we move onto Sweet Martha's Cookies. The boys' favorite.

We tried a few new things this year, like this dreamsicle smoothie that the boys sucked down in 60 seconds. Another new favorite: reuben bites.

Sammy was so excited about seeing Cowwy's (his favorite stuffed animal) family! "LOOK! It's Cowwy's family! Take a picture!"

Our standard Oink Booth crown pic that I take every year.

Sammy was excited to see the "Daddy Pig" (MN's largest boar).

Aww, love this one.

It took MUCH effort and many tears to capture this photo. I'm glad we made it happen.

Waiting in line to get my age guessed.

Sammy, snuggling with his new I-Love-You-Monkey.

In previous years only Elijah has wanted to go on the ferris wheel, but this year Sammy joined us. Can you spot their cute faces?

Last year Elijah would not go on the Giant Slide because the previous year had traumatized him. I talked him into going this year and he was a little scared, but loved it once it was done.

The boys' first time ever eating snow cones!

As usual, we ended with the kid rides. The boys have a love-hate relationship with the Winky the Whale ride. They love it once it gets going, but anticipating the strange noise it makes drives them just about crazy!

Elijah rode on the little swings alone while Sammy watched.

Then Sammy decided he reeeeallly wanted to go, too, but only if Elijah could sit right behind him. Once the ride got going, he reached back for Elijah's hand and they held hands for the duration of the ride. It was the sweetest thing ever, and it totally calmed him.

My favorite pic of the day.

Note to self: buy THREE sheets of ride tickets in advance next year. Now that the boys are older and enjoying more things, we go through them quickly.

Super excited to be exiting the Wacky House.

The boys each won a handful of toys and had plenty of sugar in their bellies at the end of the day.

We spent a family record amount of time at the Fair--FIVE hours! That's a lot for us.

Dan and I had saved money up specifically for the Fair and had a tiny bit "extra" in the end. So we caved when the boys pleaded for us to buy them a fluffy unicorn from Despicable Me.

Fluffy Unicorn is treated like royalty in our house. She gets tucked into her bed in the loft every night and is gently awakened every morning.

It's so sad that our Fair time is done this summer! That means Fall is near. :( We had such a fun time and we are thankful that we are able to do this as a family every year.