Orlando with Aunt Lacey, Jay and Uncle "T"

Sometimes I think this blog is more about documenting our trips and big events than it is about capturing little bits of our life. Or maybe the little bits of our life are actually just big trips and events. I don't know. But I'm here again to tell you about our trip to Orlando. Jason had a conference to go to and Hayden and I tagged along so we could experience some warmth and sunshine. It was planned back in the fall, but given how cold and snowy this winter has been, it was an excellent idea! We were gone for quite a while, Friday thru Wed, and our trip can be broken into two parts - the Harrison visit and the rest of the trip. To try and keep my blog entries from running on forever, this one covers the Harrisons visit.

The day after we arrived, we met up with Lacey, JT and Jay who drove down from Georgia. Such fun to get the cousins together again! We had quite the breakfast at IHOP, complete with a man who made us a balloon dog. Not the best balloon dog I've ever seen but the kids (and adults) were quite taken with the process.After breakfast, we headed out to shop out the outlets (who knew Orlando was an outlet shopping mecca?!). The adults were excited about it, the kids probably not so much, but everyone survived. The kids took turn being worn on backs, or riding in the stroller. Sometimes they were carried like footballs.
Eventually we grabbed some lunch (outside!) and then did the necessary carseat manuevering to get everyone back to hotels for naptime.In the above photo, Hayden and Jay take a load off while we wait for Jason to bring the other car around. Hayden really liked lounging in the parking lot. Other people looking for a parking space did not like us lounging quite so much. :)

After naptime, we rendezvoused at our pool so the kids could swim. Hayden was a little bit hesitant (as were most of the adults) since it wasn't THAT warm, just low 70s. Jay had little hesitation and just loved the water. He showed off his new trick from swim class - swimming on his back! He loved it! Can you see the grin? Hayden had a similar smile, because it was so fun to watch Jay and Uncle JT in the water! Even after they had left, she would point to the pool and say "T!"
After a full day of pancakes, outlet shopping, naps in strange hotels and swimming, you might think dinner would be a challenge with two toddlers. Amazingly enough, we actually had a GREAT dinner at this really cool tapas restaurant (that's TAPAS, not TOPLESS - as everyone asks when we've told about our trip!). The food was great. The restaurant was baby-friendly (how can you feel bad about babies when the table is chipped) and had a great atmosphere (think funky art on the walls, loud music). There was even fabulous entertainment... We had a flamenco dancer come by our table, a belly dancer, and then Hayden and Jason performed their very own spoon tricks!



After dinner, the gentlemen headed back to put babies to bed while Lacey and I got to do some more outlet shopping without anyone in tow. It was lovely! But we were pretty tired ourselves so didn't do anything too crazy. A wasted opportunity I'm sure. :)

Next morning Jason started his conference while Hayden and I met up with Lacey and Jay to hang out while JT packed up the hotel room. We just hung out by the pool, enjoying the sunshine and warm weather. The kids were quite well occupied wandering around until suddenly they both decided that sitting on the edge of the pool, CLOSE to each other, was exactly what they wanted to do. It was the PERFECT picture opportunity! We took many, of Lacey and the kids, me and the kids, just the kids and luckily some nice woman took one of all of us. I won't post them all, but here's two cute ones.
It seemed like the posing lasted forever, but they were soon on their way, exploring and checking things out. And then asking for snacks. Jay got snacks first, and then Hayden asked Jay for some snacks. He wasn't great at sharing on his own, but he didn't mind when Lacey would take some out of his cup. Finally Hayden decided to just dig in on her own.
The final culmination of the visit with Aunt Lacey and company was lunch at a Mexican place. The food wasn't very good but we did learn that you can safely stack three high chairs to use. Why they couldn't just have had ONE table that was normal high chair height, I don't know, but we managed. The extra height just made the drop game that much more fun!
We were definitely sad to see the Harrison contingent head home. Hanging in the sunshine after lunch, Hayden made a round of goodbye hugs, hugging Aunt Lacey and Uncle JT's knees. And then she pointed out where Jay's belly button was. Very fun.

For the rest of our trip, Hayden asked about "T" and Jay a lot whenever we visited the pool. I think she really like watching them splash around. Luckily we'll get to see them again in a month! So check back in March for yet another trip blog!

Video Learning

So here's trying again with posting some video. I have two videos I'm going to try to post. One I learned how to shorten, maybe that will help? And the other, I think I learned how to record with less quality, which I'm hoping will mean it's easier to upload. Of course, they still aren't the best videos since Hayden continues to be distracted by the camera. As soon as she notices the camera is out, she stops what she is doing (if she hadn't already stopped when I went to GET the camera) and she runs to the camera saying, See! See! See! She hasn't quite got the idea of performing yet, but she sure does like to watch herself!



Okay, so this is the one of lesser quality. It captures some of her dancing. I love when she does fast feet. And I'm not sure where she got the snake arms, but she does it A LOT when dancing, sometimes just to request music. If you're wondering, we're listening to the Laurie Berkner Band "I'm gonna catch you". And please pardon my singing, just trying to get her more in the mood to dance. She often dances much more crazy, but of course we can't seem to capture it on camera.


This next one is the one that is better quality but I tried to cut out the part at the end where she runs towards the camera to "See! See!" It did take a while to load, so I'm not sure what the best method is. It shows how CRAZY Hayden can be with Blizzard and how Blizzard tolerates it so well. Yes, Blizzard is doing her groaning noise, and even makes a little bark, but she doesn't get up to get away. So I think Blizz secretly loves Hayden. Enjoy and let me know if you have trouble viewing these.

Superbowl Party

This past weekend we hosted our 8th annual Superbowl Party. Now I'm not exactly sure why we host a Superbowl Party every year. I definitely don't care about the game - just the commercials. And even Jason is much more into college football than pros. He roots for the Patriots, sort of, because Tom Brady went to Michigan. But yet, somehow we had a party a few years back and the concept stuck. I think we've embraced it because it allows us one day a year to really go all out with junk food. Which is tasty, unfortunately!

I started telling Hayden about the party we were going to be having a few days in advance. Every time I mentioned party, she would say Poppop? I said no, not this time. That was last weekend! She's been very fixated on Poppop and pretty much anything we talk about, she brings up Poppop. It's great! Anyway, I'm still not sure she really knew what was going to happen, but she liked when I told her people were coming over (Noah especially). We would run through the list of guests and she would repeat names I said, and then add Noah. And then Marshall. I'm not sure she knows exactly who Marshall is (sorry Marshall!) but she liked the name and said it A LOT! And then he couldn't even come because he got sick! We weren't sure exactly how she'd do at the party, but we relaxed a little bit when she took a good nap, with her good friends Lion and Rainbow Dog.I think she ended up having a great time. She was a little bit shy when Kathy, Mike and their boys, Gabe and Nat, showed up but she quickly warmed up. We had quite the spread of food - meatballs, cheese dip, guacamole, mac-n-cheese, veggies/dip, chips, salad, spanikopita plus three kinds of cookies (peanut butter cup, chocolate chip and oatmeal raspberry bars). Making you hungry yet?

Once everyone got grub, the kids quickly found good places to sit. Hayden and Noah loved sitting next to each other at the table downstairs, while Nat and Gabe took command of the upstairs table - with Blizzard waiting patiently. I was told her patience was rewarded with a wayward meatball. She stuck pretty close by to Gabe for the rest of the evening! :)
Hayden didn't end up being too into the game, she was too busy being busy - running around, screaming, trying to sneak cookies, sitting in chairs, telling other people to sit in chairs, etc. The adults weren't nearly as busy, or photogenic, but we did manage to keep entertained by Superbowl Bingo (did you spot Father-Son Giant Foam Fingers or a coach hiding his mouth from spies?) and with 3-D glasses for the special commercials.

The big hit of the night for the kids was actually the bowl of gems I pulled out for them to play with. Gabe had brought a little vial of beads with it, but I thought they might be too small to have around Hayden. So as substitute, I pulled down a bowl of gems - you know, those little glass shiny things you can find in Michael's to put in candles or fishbowls, we have them leftover from our wedding centerpieces. Much to my surprise they were the absolute hit of the party for Nat, Hayden and Noah. They spent ALL of their time scooping, dropping, stealing, picking up and transporting and just about any other verb you can think of to do with gems. I think most of them ended up in the belly of the airplane.
There wasn't much that distracted them from the gems, until we put the M&M bowl within reach. Noah found it first and managed to get a few, under the watchful eye of his parents, before the other two kids saw what a treasure he had found. Then Nat and Hayden both went for the bowl and it was immediately lifted up and out of reach, with six eyes following after it, trying to decide if they would be able to grab anymore.


All in all it was a pretty fun evening. The kids had a great time and yet still went to bed easily, and at a fairly decent hour. (well at least Hayden did, I don't know about the boys!) Hayden didn't eat too much junk food, she might have mainly had tortilla chips with a little bit of bean dip for dinner, but that was after a big snack of hummus. And I think she only managed to woo her dad to give her one cookie. I know I didn't fall for her charms; I was too busy eating them myself!
The group was a little bit disappointed because we were rooting for the Cardinals in support of Brittany (who's from Arizona) but I don't think anyone felt too badly. It was just fun to have an exciting ending! Another successful Superbowl Party under our belt. If you're in our area next year, come on over, I'm sure we'll be hosting again!

Happy Poppop

We recently returned from a wonderful trip to North Carolina. The main purpose of our trip was to help my dad celebrate his 60th birthday. The best part of it was that he had no idea the entire family would be arriving in Durham to celebrate - we called it Operation Birthday, complete with five phases. :)

Phase 1: The Pennsylvania contingent arrives late Thursday night. We left around 4:30 in the afternoon and with a very smooth drive, stopping only twice since Hayden did a great job sleeping in the car after dinner, we arrived around 12:30 am. A quick phone call to mom when we were minutes away alerted her to our arrival and she promptly woke up Dad and said - your birthday present is arriving, get dressed! Thus moments later we greeted a sleepy, and very surprised, Poppop. Phase 1 was complete.

Phase 2: Friday began nice and quiet. Mom had jury duty (great civic timing, but she did get off). We made plans to go see my grandmother in Cary and to pick up the 2nd surprise. That meant brushing dad off on his request to come with us, but we made plans to go to lunch. We had a nice visit with Grandma and got the very snazzy cake (phase 2!) from the bakery - the same place we got our wedding cake from. The thing was HUGE and only sat in the bottom of a box, so we weren't sure how to "hide" it when we went to lunch. We just parked far away and made sure dad came nowhere near. Once back at the house, we were able to secret it downstairs to wait for it's special debut. We couldn't WAIT to eat it.

After a yummy Mexican lunch, we had plans for Hayden to nap and then to head to the mall to meet up with a friend and her daughter. Of course that meant Hayden had no interest in going to sleep. She played, screeched, cried a bit and joyfully greeted Jason when he went in to check on her after an hour. Dad volunteered to take her for a walk and after about half the block she could no longer resist the lure of sleep.
I ended up getting dropped off at the mall by mom (so middle school!) and Jason and Hayden came later. The play place was great and we had a good time. It was next to impossible to get pictures of Hayden and Allie together - until the end when they both liked getting up in Jason's arms!

Phase 3: Sometime in the evening, Mom got a mysterious phone call from our neighborhood family friend that she was stuck in the mall and needed Mom to get her. Mom headed out and we did the nighttime routine with Hayden - dinner, bath, etc. Just as dad was telling us that we didn't need to wait up for Mom to say goodnight to Hayden, "cuz who knows how long she'll be...", then we hear the car in the driveway and in bounds Aunt Katie. Dad gets a huge hug and has that surprised look on his face again. We all smile and laugh and get ready for dinner. Two sisters home, one more to go.

Phase 4: We have a lovely dinner with Katie, Mom and Dad - pasta with red sauce that Mom "lightens" up with cream. May not be good for you but it tastes YUMMY! Katie, who has a reputation in the family for being out late with friends, makes plans to head out to visit people. After all, she lives on the West Coast now so she doesn't see her NC people all that often. I loan her our car and off she goes. A little while later, we're all headed to bed, but the car comes back to the house. Dad takes the dogs out to see what Katie is up to and low and behold, it's Aunt Lacey, Uncle JT and cousin Jay!! Yay the family reunion is complete!

Saturday morning dawns and we need to share Phase 5 - which is a surprise open house birthday party on Sunday. Mom very un-subtly tells dad to check his email where he finds the evite we sent to him earlier. Now he knows about all the surprises (except the cake) and he just can't quite believe anything we tell him now. Luckily, we're all focused on getting out of the door and on the road down to Southern Pines to visit his parents, Great Granma Jane and Great Granpa Rut. We have a smooth trip down and the babies have a fun time showing off for a full audience of 9 adults. Every thing goes well till it's time to head over to the dining hall for lunch and Hayden decides to have her worst tantrum ever. Literally 20 minutes of non-stop, inconsolable fussing. Everyone heads over without us and we finally try taking her for a walk to get her to calm down. It works and she rallies quite well for lunch - eating almost an entire 1/4 lb beef hotdog and as many blueberries as we can secure from the waitstaff. Everyone is entertained and all stay happy. Here's Hayden and Jay playing BEFORE the meltdown.

And here's the Sanford family clan all together.


Hayden had more issues with not-sleeping on the car ride home but she managed. Back home it was family party night. Happy hour was enjoyed, a turkey was fried and the cake made its debut. Crowns were tried on, baby dolls were put to bed in boxes and milk cups were traded back and forth.
Here's dad getting his first view of the cake - that's pretty much what he looked like most of the weekend - happy, surprised and a little overwhelmed. Hopefully that was a good feeling on the inside.
We finally got to try the cake on Saturday night and boy was it delicious. Yum! We all went to bed with full tummies, ready for a big party day on Sunday.

So Sunday we had a great lunch out at another Mexican place where Dad was surprised at the end of the meal with a giant sombrero and happy birthday from the staff (not in Spanish that I recall). I wish I had a picture but I'd forgotten my camera. I think all of us were surprised by the singing but it was fun. Plus the kids even ate stuff. Jay loved the rice and Hayden thought the refried beans were delicious. Naptime finally went well and once everyone was up and about, it was party time! We got to see "aunt" Lori and her new boyfriend Wes, and lots of other family friends.

Mini-cupcakes were had by all, even Hayden.
I think the best part of the day was after the party when the kids just went crazy having fun. Check out this video as an example... (I had a longer, more fun one, but it took forever to upload, so this one will have to do. I'm still learning the video



All in all it was a GREAT weekend. The kids are getting to be SO much fun. They played the piano, helped wash cars, harassed the dogs and just generally enjoyed life.


Hayden said Happy Poppop (her version of happy birthday poppop) many, many times. I'm not sure she's going to understand that sometimes we say Happy Birthday to people besides Poppop. And everyone even made it home safely with no delays. I'll leave you with one final family picture...
Happy Birthday Poppop! Hope you had a great one! Operation Birthday Complete. Over and out.

Portland Christmas Part 2

As promised, here are a few more photos and stories from our trip out to Portland for Christmas. After the main event of Christmas day, we eventually went back to Grammy and Granddad's condo which is just a few minutes from Jen and Aaron's house. That way, all 10 people were no longer trapped together in one house, without the excitement of upcoming Christmas as a buffer. :) The weather/road conditions were still in play as a rental car was secured and plans were made for Aunt Katie to come up for Eugene to visit. Eventually it all worked out. Aunt Katie got to visit and the DeRousie contigent reconvened for 2 dinners at the condo and the snow eventually melted (at least most of it) by the time we left. We even found a play area in the Philadelphia airport. It was a long way to travel but we had a lot of fun - it was a great trip!

Aunt Katie

We had a great time having Aunt Katie visit. We went to lunch at the Blue Sage cafe (for the second day in a row) - Hayden got her own meal of mac-n-cheese with a huge cup of milk. She didn't like riding on the mechanical horse, but she was willing to pose for a picture on the saddle bar stools.

Back at the condo, after naptime, there was some playing and some picture taking. Hayden learned about marble magic (watching her try to get the marble as it rolled along its course was funny EVERY time).






More DeRousie Family Fun

Even though we'd spent a lot of time together over Christmas, it was still nice to all get back together for dinner a couple times at the condo before we left. The kids had fun playing together (with Uncle Jason too) and we all enjoyed good company and good food. Lucy and Hayden liked helping Grammy out in the kitchen. Hayden even learned to make salad, but she's still not all that willing to eat it.


Making dinner can make you hungry - so all the kids got a little snack to help tide them over till we sat down to eat. One of the best parts of the trip was that Hayden learned a new trick! With all the "formal" dinners, there was some toasting and Hayden learned how to toast. She likes to say "Cheers!" and then tap everyone's glass. In the picture, it's hard to tell but she's even toasting with BOTH of her cups!

The kids really did have fun playing together. And by kids I mean, Lucy, Will, Hayden and Jason. :) I'm not sure who enjoyed the magnetic toys the most! Towards the end of our last evening together, Hayden got on a hug kick and kept hugging Lucy and Will. Of course she stopped when I pulled out the camera, but I did manage to get this funny one of her giving Lucy one last big hug! Hard to believe Hayden might some day be as tall as Lucy!