Probing... Ew.

I came to a realization this morning. I no longer get foaming-at-the-mouth excited when I browse the J.Crew catalog, which used to be my bible for years and years. In fact, I almost never buy anything from them anymore. I'm now similarly excited when I see a pair of capris I don't have yet at Eddie Bauer. I feel like such a mom.

We survived another long road trip and actually had a really good time. More cuddling with my sister's baby girl, then over to my in-laws to let my boys get spoiled by them. Matt and I snuck away for a night out with some old friends, where we ate boatloads of sushi. Literally... two boatloads.

I am trying to distract myself from some news we got this morning. Baby Ev (now almost 10 months old) has had an eye problem pretty much since he was born with a clogged tear duct. We have gone through rounds of antibiotic drops, massage techniques, etc. and nothing has worked to clear it up. His opthamologist told us this morning that he would need to probe it (that just sounds horrible!) and my baby will have to be put under general anesthesia and have a needle poked down into his tear duct to clear it out. Just the thought of this makes me ill. The doctor and his staff have assured me that this is a fairly common, outpatient procedure and everything will be fine. But still! My baby!

Excuse me while I go find a pillow to cry in.

This may be my last post, as I may not survive this next week

Lord, help us.

We are headed to Portland again tomorrow. We've only been home about a week, and here we are about to do it again.

That means 6+ more hours in the car.

With the two small children.

Keep us in your prayers.

Post-Vacation Wrap-Up

Matt and I love to travel. Even now that we have two small children, we still have the desire to go to get in the car/hop on a plane and just go somewhere. It's a good thing we do, because the town we live in is hours and hours away from any sort of metro city area, so we are in the car a lot. The alternative would be to stay at home all the time, and that just does not work for me at all.

So when trying to decide how to spend our (ahem, Matt's) vacation time this summer, we decided to eschew flying commercially what with their soaring ticket prices, inevitable flight delays and cancellations, and miscellaneous fees for things that used to be free. Those things are never fun, but add in a toddler and a crawler and they become downright torturous.

Not that travelling in a car for hours and hours with those two is by any means enjoyable, but at least it is cheaper, we told ourselves. So we packed our bags and headed to Portland to visit family for a few days, then continued up the road to Seattle.

Matt and I lived in Seattle for two years after we graduated from college, so we love it to death. I think we will always remember those two years as some of the best of our lives. We lived downtown, shopped almost every day, ate at interesting restaurants, and went to all sorts of rock concerts, comedy shows and theatre performances. It was almost like we were a couple of fancy city kids or something. Which is a sharp contrast to the reality of our lives now: small town, homeowners, two kids and a dog, etc. which I also love... but I'm just glad I got a chance to live frivolously for a while first.

Back to the trip! It was so fun to see Seattle again and walk around in our old neighborhood. Sure, there were plenty of things we couldn't really do with the two little ones, but we found a lot of kid-friendly things that we could do. I felt like we packed a lot into the three days we were in the city.

Here are a couple of shots from the Children's Museum and the Mariner's game, respectively...

After all that we did last week, we are tired and happy to be home. The boys are happy to be out of their car seats. That is, until next week... when we drive to Portland again. Argh!

6 Years

About three weeks ago, my husband and I celebrated our six year wedding anniversary.

I meant to write this post a while ago, but some of the things slowing me down included:

a) finding our wedding pictures, which were completely buried at the bottom of a box in our crawlspace. It has been a long time since I've even looked at them.

b) scanning some photos into the computer to download onto Blogger. Apparently six years ago was The Dark Ages, as we did not have a digital camera and neither, apparently, did our wedding photographer as all of our photos are in print form.

Matt and I were mere babes when we got married. I was about a week away from turning 21 and Matt was 22. We were in love and ready to be married. Looking back, I know that we could have (maybe should have?) waited a little longer, but waiting for anything was never our style.

Here we are at the wedding rehearsal:

That photo cracks me up for lots of reasons. First of all the terror in our eyes. We look so scared, like we are walking down the aisle to certain doom. Also... holy hell THE CLOTHES. What were we thinking? We wore these same ensembles to the rehearsal dinner that was immediately following the rehearsal, which was at a restaurant, which is you know in public. All I can say in self-defense is that we were college students, so not wearing sweat pants was actually a huge feat in itself.

I was so totally clueless about weddings when I got married. I hadn't been to anyone else's wedding for years and years, since we were the first of our friends or family to be getting hitched. I had no idea what "save the date" cards were or all of the other minutiae that can be so consuming during wedding planning. I left most of it up to my mom, and I only had an opinion about the dresses.

Our wedding day was kind of a blur to me. From what I do remember, I had so much fun. There was none of the scariness from the day before at rehearsal, it was just a big celebration. Most of Matt's fraternity brothers were there, so they definitely kept the party pumped up until the wee hours. I remember smiling so much my face hurt.

I wonder now how I had the great luck in choosing the right guy from such a young age. It could have easily turned out bad had I fallen in love with someone else when I was 18. I am grateful everyday that the stars aligned in just the right way to bring us together. So, happy (late) anniversary, Matty. You've made it worth every minute.

Things Lifting My Mood

• Actually getting to watch Project Runway on the night it aired, kids tucked into bed, large glass of wine in hand. Awesome. My favorite designer so far: Kenley. I also think Stella is pretty frickin hilarious with all of her "leather" talk.
• The return of The Husband! The boys were so excited to see their daddy when he got home.
• Taking the dog for a long walk in that hour right before it gets dark... just the two of us... no double stroller to contend with. Very nice way to clear the head and I will be doing that way more often from now on.
• Hearing awesome news from my parents. A huge ordeal that they've been going through for the last two years is over. Thank God.
• Finished putting together Pay it Forward present for Susie at Raising the Boys. It'll go in the mail tomorrow!

Down, Up, Down. Waiting for the Next Up.

I have been sort of down lately. My best friend and her family moved last week and I have been having a much stronger reaction to it than the situation probably warrants. I try to keep perspective and tell myself that it's not like somebody died... and although she is far away, it's not like I'll never see Emily again. And I feel better about it for a while, but then a nice memory of her and her boys will come to me, or I'll drive by a place where we all did something fun together and *sob* it hits me again. She is gone, gone, GONE! (Again... not dead... just me being melodramatic.)

I was in desperate need of some fun, so it was an absolute godsend that a couple of our college friends came to town over the weekend to visit. We spent Saturday night staying up way too late, drinking way too much wine and forgetting that we had little boys asleep in the next room. It was awesome to pretend like we were carefree kids again with these people who were our friends back when we did this kind of thing all the time. Of course, the 'ol bod does not bounce back as easily as it used to. The next morning was not so awesome when we had to get up at the usual early hour with the boys and with splitting headaches.

(It was totally worth it, though.)

Also: I won't be drinking that much wine again. Ever.

Fun stuff always has to end eventually, of course. Sunday came and we had to say goodbye to our friends and go back to the daily grind. Of course, this has to be the week that Matt is going on yet another business trip and I'm alone with the boys for four days. Poo.

PiF Winner!!!

I'm pleased to announce that Susie from Raising the Boys is the lucky winner of my "Coffee, Tea and Crosswords" Pay it Forward contest.

Congratulations, Susie! I look forward to sending you this big 'ol box of goodies. I'm also excited to start reading her blog, as she is a fellow mommy of boys (as her blog title suggests).

Happy Monday, everyone!