Mostly Wordless Wednesday

Noel's Dad powered sports coupe....

This photo is not meant to endorse texting while driving in any way shape or form.

Noel parks his new car for the evening.

Call me Dramatic

So, Chase has been at my mom's house since Sunday. Every night we call and check in on him, tell him we love him that sort of thing. I mean he is only 7 and I did give birth to him. So last night, my mom had left her phone at her house when they went out to dinner. She mentioned to Chase that she bet I had tried to call (which I had). His response was " I don't know why my mom has to call every night. I mean that is a little dramatic."
I cannot tell a lie. My feelings were hurt. He did talk to me when she called back, but only to say this; "I just want to say I love you, but it is a little dramatic." I reacted somewhat childishly and said "Fine, here is your Daddy" and gave the phone to Chris.
Is this the first step in that long march to the tween then teen years? Is this the same little boy, who once, when I was nursing him through a nasty virus, looked up at me and said, "Thank you for keeping such good care of me, Mommy."? Am I over-reacting and being a little dramatic? In my heart of hearts, I know the answer is yes to all of the above.

Wordless Wednesday

Rub-a-dub-dub. Two boys in the tub. (Doesn't happen often because Noelly likes to pee in the tub and ,well ,you can imagine Chase's reaction.)

Reunited and it feels so Good.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Chris come from a very large family, and on Saturday, July 4th, we drove straight in from vacation to join the family reunion in full swing.

Chris' and Noel's combined expressions really display what I was thinking when we arrived better than I can covey in words on the blog.
Here we are for the big family photo. Keep in mind this is just the matriarch, Grandma Ruth, and her kids, grand kids, and great grand kids plus applicable spouses. You should see this event when the extended family is involved. Amazingly, all fourteen kids were here this year and most of the grandchildren. You can find Chase front row center fighting with his cousin Warren whom he has spent the week with and they had mutually had enough of each other.

Here we are assembling for the annual photo. This year I would estimate it only took 20 minutes from beginning to end. Believe me, that is record time for this crew.

Here is our tired, little, festive family. I thought it would be so cool to have our festive 4th of July shirts, but this is the only time all of us were together from the time we arrived until we left that evening.

Each of the original 14 were required to learn to play a musical instrument. That musical interest has trickled down to future generations including my son, who asks at least once a week for a drum set. One of the cousin's band put on a concert for our dinnertime entertainment and once they were finished Chase got to check out the drums first hand.

All in all, it was a loud assortment of children, grown-ups, and dogs with tons of food, water balloons and fireworks. I have to admit, though I find it hard to get geared up for this event every year, that I can't think of a better way to celebrate Independence Day. I feel like our country's four fathers might look down on our motley crew smiling and say, "Yeah, that's what we were talking about right there." We are blessed by the courage they had so long ago and our brave Service men and women still have today.

Vacation Re-Cap

The jury is still out on whether or not a trip with 12 kids and six adults can be called a vacation. Considering we have been home since Saturday and I still feel exhausted, I am definitely not sure which way to vote. In case I have failed to mention it before, my husband hails from a large, Catholic family. So the other four adults in the equation were the youngest aunt and uncle of his 13 aunts and uncles. The additional ten children are their 2 boys and 2 girls and 6 girls, respectively. I will wait while you pull out your calculator.

Our adventure was set to begin early Saturday morning when we planned to leave early and meander our way to Hilton Head Island, SC. The true adventure began on Friday night, however, when Chase began screaming and crying because his ears hurt so badly. I called the Pediatrician first thing, but we could not get an appt. until 10:15. Once we were finally seen the doctor diagnosed swimmer's ear and recommended Chase stay out of the water for 4-5 days in addition to antibiotic ear drops. You should have seen the look on that doctor's face when I said, "You have got to be kidding me." I went on to explain how my husband and other son were waiting in our fully loaded van to head to the beach. The sweet doctor gave me a "just in case" oral antibiotic prescription and permission to carry on using wax ear plugs.

We arrived at our amazing rental home well after dark but since it had a pool the kiddos were easily amused. Bright and early the next morning we checked out the canal behind the house and then hit the beach.

Also on this monumentous first day we rented bikes for the entire crew. I think riding the bike behind his dad was Noel's favorite part. The little seat had a set of handle bars and he held on like he was on the real thing. Here he is trying on his helmet.


Actually as I view this photo I realize I lied about his favorite part. It was climbing up and down those stairs you see him sitting on.

You are probably wondering why there are no action shots of Noelly on the bike. Well, you see, long about day 3 of vacation our camera was lost. It was found again on the very last night as we were driving to dinner and so I snapped these.





The morning of July 4th found us headed back home to join that large, Catholic family's reunion already in progress. And that, is a post unto itself.