Old Salem

I hate being a marathon blog-poster and writing a bunch of posts in one day, but you've got to take the opportunity when you have it with Dane around these days. I had the bright idea for us to go out to Old Salem in Winston-Salem on Saturday. It's an old historical town with people dressed up in period costumes with demonstrations of what life was like back two to three hundred years ago. I thought it would be a fun thing for us to do before we move away from North Carolina, and this Saturday seemed like an especially good one since I wasn't teaching. And since it's Christmastime, they had a cute little holiday-themed event with Santa Claus and a puppet show and whatnot. I thought it sounded cute! We will have fun! A fun family outing!

Turns out, no, it was kind of a bust. I mean, Old Salem was nice and all, but there were many things conspiring against us to make this day not very fun:
1. Old Salem is an hour + away
2. The sun was in Dane's eyes BOTH ways, there and back
3. We forgot to change Dane's diaper the whole time we were there, so he had a ginormous terrible diaper rash by the end
4. He wouldn't nap in the car on the way there like we hoped so he was grouchy
5. He hated Santa (although I expected that one--he hates ME if I'm trying to take him away from his daddy)
6. Buying an actual ticket cost $23 each, so we didn't actually end up going into any of the historical buildings

But basically, most of that was outweighed by the one shining positive fact:
1. We got a picture with Santa and it was free! Look at this!

(Sorry, it's a cell phone picture of a hard-copy picture, so you can't really see what it looks like--but there we go.)

Okay, and the other positive thing:
2. We got a couple of neat little Christmas ornaments and an awesome-looking old-fashioned family tree we could hang on our wall and they weren't that expensive!

Here are just a few pictures of the town and what we did there.

I mean, really, I'm glad we went. Because I'd wanted to go for a while and I would have been bummed if we'd left and I'd never seen what it was like. And I really like the family tree we found! But all in all, the day was kind of a bust and I was pretty glad to get home. I feel like most of the things I post I end with saying something like "We had such a fun time!" and it seems like everything just goes swimmingly, but MAN, doing things, ANYTHING, fun or not, with a fourteen-month-old, pretty much just stinks sometimes. We sure love you, Dane, but I don't think you're going to be invited on anyone's ideal relaxing Caribbean vacation any time soon.

dane's shenanigans

Tommy sent me this picture on my phone while I was teaching, and it was all I could do to not squeal in front of my class and show them all how CUTE my baby is.

Dane likes to just sit down and camp out in little corners of the house, especially under the table. I also like this picture because his hair makes him look like he belongs in an emo band circa 2003.

We put up our Christmas tree and Dane L-O-V-E-S it. Here he is refusing to look at the camera or the Christmas tree though.

We found these monkey slippers that I had from high school and pulled them out, and Dane absolutely loves them. If we ever put them on he follows us around making monkey noises ("ooh ooh ooh ooh!") and lays down on them and snuggles with the monkeys on your feet. 

He was being a little too quiet today while I was showering, and I looked out and saw the big pile of toilet paper on the floor. He was so happy the whole time just ripping off pieces of toilet paper and throwing it on the floor. 

He's very into reading about current events in TIME magazine.

And, for those of you not easily offended, here's Dane fighting to get into the fridge (like every time we open the fridge door) and not caring at all that he's naked:

After we shut the fridge door, we had to console him by letting him bang with his wooden spoon on our big pot and make a lot of noise. (FYI, we don't usually encourage nudity around here, but he had a bad diaper rash we were hoping to help out by letting him play without a diaper for a few minutes.) But isn't that just the cutest body you ever did see?

Thanksgiving Day and Tommy's birthday

Every six or seven years, Tommy's birthday falls on Thanksgiving--and this was the year! What a better way to celebrate your birthday than by having the best meal of the year that day? The only unfortunate thing about this set-up was that we had to MAKE the entire best meal of the year on his birthday too, so we both spent about six hours of his birthday in the kitchen cooking. But that didn't stop him from making us some delicious omelettes and hot chocolate for breakfast in the middle of our cooking fest!

Dane was so interested in Tommy's hot chocolate.

So mad that Dad wouldn't share with him!

So we got back from the OBX around Dane's bedtime on Wednesday, and then spent that evening and the whole morning on Thursday COOKING! We had planned to have Thanksgiving with the Busbys, Tommy's second cousin/old roommate/good friend (I usually just end up calling Devin Tommy's cousin). We decided beforehand with Devin and Cathy that we would split the Thanksgiving meal with them, so we had a ton of food to make. Tommy and I ended up making pecan and apple pies, cranberry sauce, rolls, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, and a green salad. So we had our work cut out for us--but it was so fun to plan out and make all of those different side dishes, etc.

Devin carving his masterpiece turkey--it was definitely one of the best we've ever had!

It's hard to see, but there were dishes of food covering every spare inch of counter/stove space in the entire kitchen. We made a meal that would have fed maybe 20 people and we just had the four of us adults and four small children, haha. (It was so worth it because we ate it for the next four days for lunch and dinner though--so good!) We ate dinner and then had to relax and digest for a few hours before tackling the desserts.

Tommy enjoying his birthday/Thanksgiving dinner!

Tommy while we were singing happy birthday to him. We didn't have a birthday cake for him but we did have three pies and a pumpkin-y cake for dessert!

 These two troublemaker boys are so funny getting into mischief together.

 The whole gang ready after a SUPER filling meal and some amazing desserts! 

A side note: While I was at the grocery store the week before buying all the ingredients I would need for all of my side dishes, the lady in line behind me started telling me how excited she was that she wouldn't have to make Thanksgiving dinner that year because she told her kids she wanted them to take her out to dinner instead. I said, "Well we're really excited to make it this year because it's our first year doing it on our own!" I know it was the novelty of it all, but we really did have fun making all of the stuff and cooking together. So happy birthday to Tommy and happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

the OBX for Thanksgiving, round 3

two cutest boys in the universe!

I think we've got a pretty good tradition going now--heading to the Outer Banks for Thanksgiving every year. This is the third year in a row that we've gone out there! We've only managed it the last two years with the Sines also going and letting us crash their beach house, but it has been so much fun to hang out with them and get out of town for a few days around this time of year. This year, the weather was kind of a bummer. It was FREEZING--really, seriously freezing--and rainy a lot of the time we were there. So we really didn't spend all too much time at the beach this year. And when we DID go, Dane ran away from us and tried to throw himself into the waves, so we had to cut our trips to the beach short in between his temper tantrums about not being allowed in the ocean. (Sigh. . .) But it was still totally worth it to get to see the Sines and hang out with them.

The first morning we were there, we opened the door from our room onto the balcony and saw the most BEAUTIFUL sunrise ever. Thank you, Dane, for waking us up in time to see it!

We thought we'd go for a walk on the beach to enjoy how beautiful it was, but it was so cold Dane was screaming after about 8 minutes out there so we ran back inside to calm him down and warm him up.

Annie and Emily rented a bike for the week, and they got one with a baby seat on the back so Dane and Lucia could go on bike rides. We took Dane around the neighborhood on the bike and he really liked it--especially the pink helmet they got for Lulu to wear.

After bike riding, we let Dane explore and walk around. He was very excited to get to go wherever he wanted.

Always carrying a spoon, of course.

We spent some time in the Jacuzzi, which felt amazing in the frigid temperatures.

See how cold Dane looks! Poor baby!

And one of the days, the weather wasn't quite so bad, so we all went out to the beach for a few hours to hang out and get our beach time in.

Uncle Wes, the survivor! Dane really liked his blue helmet he wore most of the time. 

But most of the time, we sat around inside and played games and watched movies together. Dane seriously loved having these bigger kids around to entertain him and play with him. 

We got there on Sunday night and had to come back on Wednesday, because we had already made Thanksgiving day plans before we knew the Sines were coming down to the OBX. But I was really glad we got to go visit with them. Thanks for the invite, Sines! And thanks for the Christmas card picture again this year!