Adventures in Virginia - the other stuff

Although I would have loved to spent everyday at the beach, there are other fun things to do in the area, so we ventured out to see some of them. The first of these excursions was the ever-kid-friendly zoo.

The zoo wasn't much bigger than the one here in Syracuse, but it had a number of animals that we don't have here, such as giraffes. The exhibit was really cool, because you got to look at them from the ground level outside, and then you went inside and up a bunch of stairs where you could look at them face to face! The biggest one they had there was 18 FEET TALL!! As a life-long short person, I can only imagine what the world looks like from up there...

This was part of their prairie dog exhibit (you can see the holes where they run in and out of ). They had this section where you could go underneath the exhibit and pop up through these bubble-covered holes and see the animals, again, face to face. So it's almost like you're IN the exhibit.

The sun kept giving me bad reflections off the plastic, but you can mostly see 3 out of 4 of us in there.

I didn't take a whole bunch of pictures of just animals (after all, you've all seen animals before, and you can see much better pictures in National Geographic...), but I had to get one of our national bird - always so majestic (even with the bluriness here).

And this odd creature that Maria insisted we needed a picture of. It is some sort of critter from Australia (don't remember the name) that looks like a tiny deer. If you look REALLY close, you can see that it even has little tiny horns on it's head, although this animal is no bigger than our dog, Daisy.

We had to wait FOREVER to get a picture on the tortoise - there was some school group there and the kids would NOT get off it. We wandered around the zoo some more and came back when all the brats were gone. :)

Hey, I'm finally in one of the pictures! Too bad you can't see my belly here - sorry guys.

But you can sort of see it here as I ride this wild, WILD tortoise. :)

We found this playground on the way back from the zoo - score! Look how awesome this thing looks!

Josephine giving the slide a test-run. She approved.

The girls trying desperately to give themselves whiplash.

And Lou being a freak.

Man, I love this guy. :)

I don't know why, but I find this picture really funny. Maybe it's the expression on her face. Maybe it's because I was there to see Josephine riding it hard enough to launch it right out of the ground...

Time to head back to the hotel. All of the wrangling with the snail just wiped her right out.

And here is my nasty heat rash. Yes, I am putting a picture of my rash on my blog. Hey - it was a big part of the trip for me, seeing as it started only two days after we got there, covered my ENTIRE body (I'm serious - use your imagination), and lasted the WHOLE trip (it's just now starting to go away). For those of you who have never had this - you should pity me. And for those of you who have had it - I pity you, because this stuff is no joke. It is awful, awful, awful. Not only is it unsightly (it looks like you have tiny pimples in clusters all over), it burns and itches something awful - like poison ivy, only about 5 times worse. I took Benadryl and put hydrocortisone cream all over, but it didn't do too much. The only relief I got was when I was in the cold ocean water or soaking in a cold bath. I tried not to itch, but it seemed impossible. People down there must have thought I had fleas or something. :) I am hoping so much that we don't have an extremely hot summer this year, because I don't know what I will do if this keeps coming back all summer...

Adventures in Virginia - Ahhhh, the beach...

Now there is lots to do in Virginia, but here is the main reason we came -

THE BEACH!!

Check out those deltoids on Josephine - future Ironwoman!! :)


Josephine being a goofball - her specialty. :)

One of my favorite parts of vacation is how much more time the girls get to spend with their Dad. I think it's one of their favorite parts, too.

Searching for sea lice - translation: bait for fishing later on.

Daddy and Maria playing in the waves

Look out, David Hasselhoff! ;)

Simple, but one of my favorite pictures that I took there...

I just never get enough of watching my husband spend time with his little girls.

One of the main attractions of the beach seemed to be running up to the water, fetching a bucket full, and running away before a wave came and drenced them.

Waiting for the waves to die down...

I just love watching little kids on the beach -

one of the most simple pleasures in life.

Josephine rinsed her hands off - a lot. She didn't like the feeling of sand covering her hands for long. She finally got the idea to have a bucket of water entirely devoted to "rinsing off"

On our first night after a long day at the beach, we decided to explore the boardwalk a little. We rented one of those cute bikes where more than one person can peddle (some have up to four sets of peddles!). So for $7.50/hr, we got to peddle around as a family and check out the boardwalk (and get some ice cream, of course) - good times!

During our little biking excursion, we found this little kiddie park with a couple of rides. We stopped and let the girls pick two rides to go on.

First - the MEGA slide!

Weeeeeeeee!!!

Then the ferris wheel - believe it or not, this was the girls' first ride on one.

The weather threatened to turn ugly (rainy with thunderstorms) from Tuesday on (which seriously bummed us out), so Monday, it was back to the beach to enjoy the good weather while it lasted.

Maria did her best to take ALL of the water out of the ocean.

"Hey, check it out, I've got water"

"Hmmm, I think I need more water"

"You won't believe this, but I've got water here"

"Hey, does anyone need water?"
You get the point...

I couldn't believe that Josephine actually let Lou partially bury her in sand...

...but she did!

She even helped a little. But after it was all said and done, she lasted about 2 seconds before she wanted out.

And here is where we dug our own lutrine since there were no porta-potties on the beach.

Just kidding - that's just a hole Lou dug to put Josephine in, to which she did NOT agree this time around. Bummer, Lou.

Anyhow, we ended up being really blessed with the weather. Our first night there, we mentioned in our family prayer that, although not really important in the grand scheme of things, we would REALLY like it if the weather held out while we were there, since we only do big vacations every other year. Thankfully, our prayers were answered. It rained only one afternoon (and it started after we had already spent all day at the beach) and the rest of the time, it was absolutely gorgeous. :)

We didn't just spend all our time in the sun and sand, though (although that would have been fine with me!) More adventures in Virginia to follow...

Adventures in Virginia - starting out

On Friday June 5th, at about 6:30pm, we set out on our drive down to Virginia Beach for our family vacation. The whole drive was clocked by Mapquest to be about 9 hours, and we decided to drive half-way Friday night, stay at a cheap hotel, and finish the rest of the drive on Saturday, arriving in Virginia somewhere around lunchtime. The whole idea behind this was that we could actually have part of Saturday as a vacation day, instead of just driving all day and getting there just in time to have dinner and go to bed.

Okay, so after picking up a Little Caeaser's $5 pizza for dinner in the car (gotta love those things), we had an uneventful drive down to Wilmington, Delaware, where Lou had reserved us a room at the local Motel 6. Now I've stayed in Motel 6's before - not a bad deal for $50 - not the Ritz, to be sure, but not a total dive.


Um, yeah, so apparently, Lou and I are not familiar with the cities of Delaware, and didn't know that Wilmington is pretty freakin' ghetto, with a ghetto Motel 6 to match. It was probably the skeeziest motel I have ever stayed in. It took us over 30 minutes to even check in, because the girl working the front desk "didn't know how" to check people in using the computer, which begs the question: "How can you work at the front desk of a hotel and not know these things?!" Then we get to the room. It was supposed to be a non-smoking room. Well, I guess at this Motel 6, the room becomes a non-smoking room by flipping the ashtrays over and putting a no-smoking sticker on the bottom of them. I kid you not. The room reeked of stale smoke, and there were no fewer than 3 ashtrays in the place, all flipped over with a "no smoking" sign sticker on the bottom. We had already switched rooms once (the first room they put us in had half-unmade beds and old food take-out containers all over the place - ewww), so we really didn't even want to bother trying again. At this point, it was 11:30 at night and the girls were exhausted and grumpy, so we decided to rough it. After Lou pulled back the covers in the girls' bed and discovered a cigarette burn hole in the top of the sheet, he decided that they should just sleep on top of the blankets and that we would use their blankies that we brought from home as covers. There were also several cigarette holes burned into the top of the television, curiously enough...

The two other treasures that we discovered at this hidden gem of a place were a chunk of broken glass on the floor that Lou said looked like part of a crackpipe (don't ask how he would know this - that's a story for another day...) and a beer bottle opener built right into the bathroom sink - now that's a classy joint for ya.

The pillows on the bed appeared to be filled with sawdust, they were so stiff, but I was so tired from the long day that I fell asleep anyway, only to be woken up at 6am the next morning by the cleaning staff in the room next door to us, chit-chatting in voices so loud they could have woken the dead. We all tried to ignore them for about an hour and a half before we gave up. Oh well, time to get moving anyhow, right? I got a shower (which was quite the interesting experience because the water consistently alternated from scalding to freezing without my even touching the dial), we packed the kids up and bid farewell to the Motel Sucks, er, um, I mean Six.


Yay, we made it!! On Saturday afternoon, we were in Virginia Beach. Our suite at the Ocean Key Resort looked like the Taj Mahal compared with where we had stayed the night before. But seriously, it really was a cute set-up. The hotel was recently renovated, and so our room was brand-new. There were two brand-new flat screen TV's in the suite, and even a DVD player to go with one. We got a one-bedroom suite with a kitchenette, so we wouldn't have to eat out all the time. The cute little galley kitchen was fully stocked with almost everything you need to cook, and even a dishwasher with dishwasher soap! What can I say, I'm easily impressed with some things. Our room had a king-size bed (score!) and a balcony with a view of the ocean (we were right across the street from it), which was a nice perk, too. The whole set-up was just so stinkin' cute - cheery yellow paint, a big tub in the bathroom, a pull-out sofa-bed, brand-new furniture all over the place - our girls were so excited to be in such a "fancy" hotel. ;)

It was Lou's birthday, so that night we had a little birthday party in our room. After dinner, he opened presents (we wrapped them all beforehand and brought them down with us) and had dessert, complete with the blowing out of the candles and the "happy birthday" song. I had made a strawberry rhubarb pie the day before (Lou's favorite), and we brought it down with us. The picture above is the fam in our room after we finished our celebration. It was really cute, because Lou said it was one of the best birthdays he had ever had.


After the "party", we went out exploring a bit before bed. The girls found these cute HUGE turtles at one of the beach entrances and just had to "ride" them.

Now, I try to be a law-abiding citizen, but I truly did not notice the "PLEASE DO NOT RIDE THE ARTWORK" sign on the ground in front of the turtles until after the girls got off of them - whoops.

Anyhow, so we arrived safe and sound, and were so psyched to be officially on vacation. Tomorrow, it was off to the beach...

New frontiers in cloth diapering?

As many of you may know, I have been cloth diapering since 2003, when my oldest was born. Well, seeing as I am due with baby #3 in just under 5 months, I have diapering on the brain again. I still have my diapers from back when I began motherhood six years ago, but I have since heard so much from so many of my friends about how much the cloth diaper scene has changed in the last six years. See, I have only ever used the old school Gerber prefolds, with the plastic pants and pins and all of that (I know, talk about archaic! :). Yes, they have served me well (they have lasted through two babies!), but we have never been able to use them at night, because they don't absorb enough, and the baby always wakes up soaking, wringing out wet and freezing cold. We resigned ourselves to using cloth diapers during the day and disposables at night. I hated to have to use both, but I didn't really see any alternative.
Well, I have heard so much talk about all of the new options out there for cloth-diapering moms, that I started to get curious. One of the brands that I have heard very good things about is called Gro baby . A friend of mine recently recommended these, and since then, through a bit of research, I have heard wonderful things about these diapers. I checked out the website (see hyperlink above) and they seem so cool! The covers are adjustable to any size baby (meaning you don't have to buy small, medium and large - it's one size fits all!), they use snaps instead of pins (no more stabbing myself) and come in really cute bright colors. More importantly, I have heard that they are super-absorbant, which means no more leaking at night, so I could ditch the disposables altogether! I'm thinking about trying them out this time around, at least for the nighttime use. If we really like them, I might just upgrade my whole supply!
So my question is, have any of you tried this or other new brands of cloth diapers? What have your experiences been?

One of the coolest things I have ever done!

So Sunday morning @ 7am I got a call from a friend of mine in our ward. She was about 37 1/2 weeks pregnant, her husband was out of town on a job interview (due back later that day) and...her water had just broken. I figured she was calling me so that I could watch her son while she was at the hospital. I was absolutely floored when she asked me to help her through labor and be there when the baby was born. It was one of the few moments in my life that actually qualify as "surreal". Me? Be someone's labor coach? Wow, never done that one before. Without any hesitation whatsoever, I said yes, and that I would be there as soon as I could. I then proceeded to run around my house like a chicken with it's head cut off for the next 10 minutes as the reality of what just had happened just sunk in. I was going to be someone's labor coach - one of the biggest jobs EVER, in my mind. I inhaled some breakfast, packed a backpack with some random stuff and headed off the the hospital to do something I had never done before - watch someone ELSE go through labor and delivery.

Now granted, I have, of course, done the labor thing twice myself, but let me tell you - NOT the same thing when you are watching someone else do it!! Well, the labor and delivery went great. It was a short labor (only a little over 4 hours, from start to finish), with only 15 minutes of pushing time. My friend did fantastic, and I felt absolutely in awe of the fact that I got to be the witness to something so intimate, life-altering and magical as bringing a child into the world. She gave birth to a little baby girl who reminded me so much of my own girls at birth - a head full of beautiful dark hair, and a sweet, delicate little face. She was perfect.

It's kind of funny, because just a few weeks prior to this, I had watched a couple of live birth videos online, and I distinctly remember being soooo grossed out by them. I know it's immature, but I kept thinking - "Eww, that looks really nasty - I can't believe Lou has watched me do this TWICE!" Strangely enough, I did not feel that way at all on Sunday. I was so swept up in the magic and intensity of the moment, it never occurred to me once that anything about it was "nasty". I actually teared up when they put the baby on her chest. I just felt so honored that she would trust me enough to want me there, and all I could even think of the entire time was helping her get through the whole process. It's kind of like when you're in labor youself - the whole experience is like you step outside the world, and you're in "the labor zone", where naked parts and bodily fluids aren't personal anymore - just all part of the process. :) All in all, it was an absolutely incredible experience, and being on the other end of things gave me a whole new layer of appreciation for what women go through to bring Heavenly Father's special spirits here. I got to see the birth process from a totally different perspective, and was reminded what a beautiful and miraculous thing it is.

Of course I wish that her husband could have been there (although he did get to hear the birth on the speakerphone setting on her cell phone, which is better than nothing, I suppose), but since he couldn't, I am so glad that I was able to help her and be blessed enough to witness one of the most beautiful moments in life - when one of our brothers and/or sisters comes here to join us on earth and a Mommy and her baby meet for the first time - it doesn't get much better than that, folks.

Happy Mother's Day!

I forgot to get a picture of us all looking cute in our Sunday dresses, but oh well, pajamas work well, too! To all of us mothers out there who put our bodies through hell to bring our children into this world, who have been covered in every body fluid imagineable, who kiss boo-boos, wipe snotty noses, do 1,000's of diapers, read the same story 100,000 times to a child who loves it, who lose our tempers and vow to do better the next day, who are never perfect and yet keep striving to be - to all of us - Happy Mother's Day! :)

Change comes to the Syracuse Ward

Well, we knew this day would come, and it finally did yesterday in church. My Dad, Bishop Riddel was released from his calling. It was definitely a bittersweet event - I know that a huge burden will be taken off of him, and I know that being a Bishop (especially in a ward like ours, with it's various challenges) makes a man weary in many ways. But, I know that he will be sad to leave this post behind. Most of you know how spiritually and emotionally (not to mention physically!) invested you get in your callings, and it can be very difficult to let that burden go. It kind of starts to feel like that's all you were meant to do, and it's hard to give it up to someone else when you become so attached to those you serve. It's also weird for us (his family) and for him because he has been on that stand in some form for almost 10 years (he was a Bishop for five, and served as a counselor in a couple of Bishoprics for five years before that) - it's weird to think of him sitting in the pews with us! But, I know that he will soon have a new calling that will challenge him in a different way, and that the change will be good for him.

Anyhow, for all of you ex-Syracuse ward members, here is the new Bishopric:

Bishop: James Fairbank (former first counselor to Bishop Riddel)
1st counselor: James Gage
2nd counselor: Matt Bush (former second counselor to Bishop Riddel)

I have seen Bishop Fairbank (wow, that is still weird for me to say!) change so much from the man he was when his family arrrived in Syracuse 15 years ago, and I am excited to see him grow in his new calling - I know he will be great. It was so neat to be there to see this change and to feel the spirit witness that this was right.

Anyhow, so that's the news for the Syracuse Ward, besides all the pregnant women right now! There are so many right now - it's kind of cute. So far for 2009 we have Angie T. - due in the end of June, and having a girl, Christina D. (I don't know how many of you would know her) - due in a month and having a girl, Txeli R. - due in the end of June and having a girl, Connie S. - due in September and having a boy, Kristi H. - due in Septemer (not finding out the gender), Bonnie K. and I are due in October, and Cortnie J. is due in late November (they are not finding out their gender, either). So - 8 new babies this year, the tradition of the Syracuse ward doubling as maternity ward continues!! :)