Staunton, VA

A few weeks ago we took a little Labor Day excursion with some good friends ours, the Church's, to Staunton, Virginia. Staunton is near Shenandoah Valley. We were excited to find a place that seemed to be perfect for two families to stay-- a two bedroom suite with a combined living room. Little did we know this place was run by the Baron and Baroness Bomburst.

I'll explain. When we reserved the room we put we had four adults. I called ahead and asked if it was kid-friendly and the replied yes. So we show up have a good evening there and go down to breakfast the next morning. The kids were really good and one guest even came up and said how well behaved all the kids were. While Dane was walking Beck outside and the "Baroness" shushed little Beck! The "Baron" approached Eric as we were leaving and told him he was confused at how many people we had in our party. He said we don't normally allow kids here and you guys should be paying for the additional guests. $15/night/child. That would be an extra $120. I just couldn't imagine how my 3 month old and two year old could really use $60 worth of ammenities. So Eric said no way but offered to pay for their breakfast. They then asked us to not bring our children down the next morning. We were so bugged that we were ready to head to another hotel. Until we realized that would be a huge pain to pack it all up for one more night. Needless to say, we felt uncomfortable the rest of our stay and felt like the child-catcher was looming in the corners.

"Come here kiddie-winkies!" 

Other than our hotel, the trip was really fun. We went to a nice park that had a miniature motorized train that the kids loved, drove through Shanendoh Valley and had a picnic, strolled downtown while they had some kind of festival and went to the Luray Caves.

Everyone asked if Finn and Quinn were twins. A "no" wasn't too convincing when they have rhyming names.





I wonder if it is still Jessica's dream to have twins...



Shenandoh Valley.

 








 
Aren't these two cute? We're hoping they'll get married one day.

The Luray Caves.

 

A Day in the Life

6:30- Wake up to feed Finn.

7:00- Finn is screaming trying to poop (he's been constipated for three days).

7:01- Lily wakes up.

7:02- Lily pees the bed.

7:30- Make Lily breakfast.

7:31- Lily spills mushy Fruity Pebbles all over carpet.

8:00- Finn starts screaming, finally gets poop out.

8:15- This.









And this is all before 9 am.

Should I mention that just four hours later Lily comes down to tell me that she pooped on the carpet, but "don't worry, I threw it in the garbage"?

Adaptation

With mostly homemade items and about $75 I was able to change "Lily's Room" to "Lily and Finn's Room". Here is the room before:







and here is the after:







It's a little more crowded, but I think it works for not being too boy or too girl. I pretty much just took out everything that was pink and swapped it out for blue. I made a ton of stuff myself.

I made five pillows:



a mobile:




and just swapped some pictures:



I also swapped out the fabric in the embroidery hoops, spray painted the mirror and the lamp, and sewed new fabric in the crib skirt. I wish I could have done a lot more things, and it obviously looked better before with less stuff, but this works for now. All that's left to do is figure out when the new roommate should move in. Anyone else have kids share a room? When did you have them move in?

Painterly

As I've mentioned before, Lily loves anything artistic. She loves to draw, color, playdough, and now her newest medium-painting. I was a little nervous to buy her paints, but seeing how much she loves painting whenever she paints at the children's museum I didn't want to limit her creativity. And it kept her pretty entertained during that hurricane we had a few weeks ago.



Plus it was the only distraction that could pull her away from "her phone".



My mom must have known she'd have an artist in the family one day. She bought that painter's smock back when we lived in Japan. (I went to high school in Japan, that's how long ago that was).







Addendum:
In case you were wondering, Lily's paints are Crayola Washable Paints. They came in a 12 pack and wash out of everything really easily.

Finn Laughing

We've been telling grandparents about Finn laughing for a little while now and the other night he was having a lot of fun with Eric so we were lucky enough to finally catch some of it on tape.



He was being pretty cute this morning so as long as he wasn't sucking his fists I was able get some pretty cute pictures of him.









He's always so happy and smiley. We are so lucky to have him in our family!

The Philadelphia Story

I first noticed something was awry when Eric didn't set his alarm. Then when he said he didn't care if I packed the Frommer's Guide to Philadelphia I knew I must be living in some altered universe. If anyone knows a Stettler they would know they are die hard vacationers. Their Frommer's guides are highlighted, earmarked and their vacation bible. They get up at the crack of dawn and come home before bed. No down time. That is how Eric grew up, and that is how we've done all our vacations.

I discovered this on our honeymoon on the second day we got there. We were staying at a remote all-inclusive hotel right on the beach. At breakfast he asked:

So what do you want to do today?

Go to the beach.

But we went to the beach yesterday.

Yeah. So?

That's when we ended up compromising to do a beach day one day and an excursion the next for the rest of the trip. I have to say I ended up enjoying Eric's days even more. We saw Tulum and scuba dived and rode into town in some random van with a bunch of Mexican workers commuting into town. I think we were the only people at our hotel who actually left the resort. It was a half mile walk through a jungle from the hotel to get to a road that we could hitch hike from.



So you can imagine how strange it was to me that he didn't seem to care if we even saw the Liberty Bell on this trip. He wanted to take it nice and slow for the kids and just have a good time with them before he went back to school and I was totally okay with that. It was pretty nice to be able to have some time in the morning to do my hair and wear make-up. Things I took for granted before vacationing with Eric.

Since he wasn't trying to beat the gps' estimated arrival time as he usually does on road trips, we were able to take a two hour stop at the National Zoo in DC. Lily's favorite was a toss up between running along the elephant tracks



or the baby monkey at the zoo.



Poor Finn couldn't really see much, his favorite part was just when someone would talk to him as he rode in the stroller.



Eric's favorite part was eating a philly cheesesteak. I can't tell if he is sad his sandwich is all gone or disgusted that he ate his whole sandwich and the rest of mine!


PS If you happend to go to Philly anytime soon, get your cheese steak at Cosmi's it was amazing!

My favorite part was also food oriented of course. We went to the Reading Terminal Market and ate for like two hours. It's like a food court, but way bigger and with amazing food. I mean they have maps. It's huge. Home-made pretzels from the Amish, corn pancakes with blueberry syrup from Down Home Diner, a roast pork sandwich from DiNic's, and ice cream from Bassett's. We ate ourselves sick, but loved every second.



Lily loved the Smith Memorial Mansion. It's a huge mansion built in 1899 that was dedicated to the city for kids to come and play for free. The home is full of toys and things and reserved for kids five and under. It was neat...



BUT, the outside was the biggest/coolest playground we've ever seen. The size of 6 football feilds!


(and that is only the part of the park we could see from the window.)

and this wooden slide that is original from it's 1905 beginnings.



The next day we went to Franklin Square Park. The miniature golfing didn't last as long as I thought,



but who would want to golf when there is a carousel in site?



After all that playing, Independence Hall wasn't too exciting to Lily.



I actually was kind of disappointed in the Liberty Bell. I don't know where I got it in my head but for some reason I thought it was going to be huge. I'm pretty sure our tv is bigger.



Philly must be Texas' alter ego, because everything there was smaller than expected. Check out the LOVE sculpture.


Just kidding, that's at the miniature golf course, but the real one was a lot smaller than I thought too.

On the way back we told Lily were going to stop at the temple. She claps her hands and squeals, "Yay! We're going to the temple to get married to mommy and Daddy? I'm so excited!!" (With her voice getting higher and higher as the phrase progresses) Apparently getting "married is standing in front of the temple tilting your head to one side and kissing.



Maybe she got the idea from looking at this picture in our bedroom.

Nice Crib

Eventually Lily and Finn are going to have to share a room. It is inevitable when you only have a two bedroom home. So we set up a crib in their room but we still have Finn sleeping in our room until he sleeps through the night. Sometimes I'll put Finn in his crib to take a nap. The other day Finn was taking an extra long nap and so when I went to put Lily down for a nap and he was still sleeping I just made it clear to Lily that she was not to get in his crib (it has been a great item of interest once she figured out she can climb into the crib herself). I was still a little hesitant so I stayed upstairs while they napped and kept the monitor on full blast. Five minutes later I hear Lily calling me. This is what I walked into:


I said: "Lily! Didn't I tell you not to get in Finn's crib?"

Lily: "Mom, he was crying and wanted his binky so I helped him".

Well that was pretty dang cute. So it was hard to get upset. In fact, I ran and got my camera instead. Probably not what Supernanny would suggest when you are trying to teach a child not to do something.



Lily has been on a goofy face kick lately.