Happy Birthday Nathan!
Last week, the day Grandma and Grandpa arrived in fact, Nathan celebrated his fifth birthday! To say he was excited would be quite the understatement. He is, after all, five. The day was a pretty quiet one, starting off with cinnamon rolls with dad for breakfast and playing with Emily and Joshua most of the morning. We had Chick-fil-A for lunch (his request), followed by naptime, then off to meet Grandma and Grandpa. Their favorite restaurant is Mike’s Farm out past the airport, so we had dinner there. Then, it was home for cupcakes and presents. He got some fun presents including more Trio blocks, a few super heroes, and a Playmobil dragon and knight. His big present was a bit of an almost mean trick. He had asked for a bike, and we wanted to be able to go pick it out the day after his birthday. So in
Day Trippin’ To New Bern
With Chad’s parents visiting last week, we decided to do a bit of exploring. We’ve been to Wilmington on previous visits (the children’s museum there is awesome!), so this time we headed to New Bern. Our first stop was the New Bern Firemen’s Museum. Nathan has always loved fire trucks, and he was really excited to see the trucks that they had. They had several of the first fire trucks used in New Bern, some of which dated back to the 1870s. It was impressive to see the old equipment that these firefighters worked with and the curators at the museum were also friendly and helpful. We even got a little goodie bag of stickers and rulers. It’s a small museum, but if you have a fire truck aficionado in your family, it’s worth a stop. Our next destination was Snap Dragon, our favorite toy store in the area. My
A Visit With Grandma and Grandpa!
Last week, we had some fabulous visitors – Grandma and Grandpa! Chad’s parents flew out for a long weekend to visit us, celebrate some birthdays, and see our new home. The kids love to see their grandparents, but with my parents living in South America and Chad’s parents living in Utah, that just doesn’t happen as often as we’d all like. Thankfully, through the wonders of Skype and FaceTime, we do get to “see” them all fairly regularly. It’s not quite the same, though. Chad also grew up in a very closely-knit family. Both sides of grandparents live five minutes apart from each other. The entire rest of the Reese family, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and even cousins, all live within thirty minutes of each other. All of them, except Chad and one of his brothers. Living this far away from family is hard on Chad and hard on his
Nathan and Emily, Online Shoppers
For Christmas, Santa completely surprised me with a Kindle Fire, Amazon’s new e-reader. It’s awesome. I’m already reading my fifth book since I got it just a few weeks ago. I love it. One of my favorite features is the large touchscreen. It makes a great mini-tablet for playing on the web. My kids also enjoy playing with it. Needless to say, I try to keep it put up and away from busy little fingers as much as possible. One recent Sunday, I was taking a nap. It was a great nap, and I was sound asleep. Nathan and Emily tried to wake me up to do something, but their efforts were in vain. Bored, they found my Kindle that I had mistakenly left out and started playing. A few days later, I opened an older email account that I don’t check all that often. I use it mainly for
Two Kids, A Small Town and Nothing To Do
It is often very frustrating living in a small town like this one. There is nothing to do around here. It’s the perfect little community if you are looking to retire in a quiet area. Because that’s exactly what it is…. quiet. Our biggest event comes around once a year and that’s the Seafood Festival. There are a couple little museums, if you can even call it that. We’ve been there endless times and have memorized every inch of them. The History Place, as charming as it is, takes about 10 minutes to walk through. The Maritime Museum takes us about 15 minutes, 20 if we really milk it. The aquarium rocks but our membership has ended and we will not renew it since we’re moving in the summer. So, that’s 3 reliable places that I’ve been able to take my kids in the past 4 years that we’ve lived
I Have An Underweight Baby?
At Ben’s last doctor’s appointment, when he was around six months old, he weighed roughly sixteen pounds. As usual, his height and weight was small for his age, but that’s just part of the deal when you’re cursed with two short parents. Last week, we went in for his nine month checkup. They weighed him and measured him, and he had gained… nothing. He was still sixteen pounds, maybe a few ounces heavier, but that was it. I was definitely surprised — he feels heavier to me! The doctor, after seeing the results and examining Ben, was confused. After all, Ben doesn’t look skinny or underweight. He asked how much he eats (A LOT), and was still puzzled. He eats plenty, he looks healthy, but for whatever reason, he’s just didn’t gain any weight between appointments. To be safe, he made an appointment for us to come back in a
