On the day that I was sick, Rose and I stayed home while everyone else bundled up and went to the park. Em took my camera along.
Grama had a cool gun that shoots little helicopter-propellers. Anything with a trigger is a guaranteed success with little boys. The bubble-blowing gun was a hit too.
Braving the big slide.
After a while, the little boys brought their runny noses, frozen fingers, and rosy red cheeks back inside, along with wafts of fresh wintry air.
My Mom has a beautiful collection of all the best kids books ever. She’ s so good at reading them. I have loved story time with my Mom my whole life. Her 3 grandsons love it too.
Mom keeps all of her favorite books up in her little alcove library-office. The 3 freshly-bathed boys gathered under the balcony one night and loudly requested STORY TIME!
Poor Dan was sick one day. Rose started it (with 2 barfs in the car on the way to visit everyone. eeek). Then Mel caught it and then Dan did. Then it was my turn. Luckily, no one else got it.
Steve’s favorite book was Toestomper and the Caterpillars. Jay’s favorite was Doodle Bites. My favorite was The Giant’s Toe.
Last week we went to this awesome indoor kids pool that my Mom discovered for us. The water was warm and shallow, and there were floaty toys everywhere. There were fountains and ramps and steps and waterfalls to play in. Even we moms had a little fun, although we felt a tad crumpled up at the end after crouching in the 2 foot water for nearly 2 hours. Mom sat on the side and took pictures of the waterworks. As usual with active kids indoors, the best pictures are kind of blurry. But you can still get the idea.
Rose is a waterbaby. I just snapped on her pink cloth diaper cover—she needs a bikini top to match! [Side note: I thought this place would be more like a splash pad than a pool, so I wore some running clothes instead of my bathing suit. Wet clothes cling and float in weird ways. Ah well].
They had this great baby floaty thing. Rose and I both loved it! In the shallower parts, she could just walk along through the water. It prevented her from doing the faceplant-water-inhale-gasp-blink-shudder-repeat thing. I kind of want one.
Four tired little swimmers (and one big one). Rose and Dan have blue lips. I’ve got to say, some (MOST) women have no…shame in a public shower. At all. We actually accidentally went into the men’s locker room first, but thankfully we left before anything too embarrassing happened. Whew!
Since it was pretty cold and wet outside during our sistertime last week, we went to the church gym twice so the cousins could run rampant for a little while. It’s amazing how much energy 3 little boys can have.
Everyone took turns on the scooters:
Jay actually never quite mastered scootering. He mostly just waddled along straddling the scooter. It was fun for him, though, so that’s good enough for me!
3 boys sharing 1 scooter required some creative refereeing.
Sometimes you just can’t referee everything.
Em gave scooter rides!
Dan hugged Rose.
The booty scooters took some getting used to.
Even Rose got a turn! We drifted around together—I held onto her and towed her around the gym a few times. Her fluffy baby hair blew in the breeze, and she loved it. I decided that I’m a lot taller now than I was in elementary school when my gym teacher let us ride booty scooters like these. It took a while to unfold my body and get the kinks out when I stood up.
We took a few blurry face photos, and Em and Mel hated all of them except one. I hope this is the one…
We Brown girls had a last minute get-together last week. When I say last minute, I mean last minute:
Em [oldest sister] and her 2 little boys (Steve and Dan) got their plane ticket from St. Louis to Seattle a mere week before we all converged on the Brown house in Bellevue.
Dani [sis-in-law] got her plane ticket even later!
Jay, Rose, and I simply had to watch the Snoqualmie Pass reports and start driving when the pass was clearest. This was more of a challenge than I would have liked. But we managed to squeak through the icy snowy slush with only minimal delays.
Since we Browns live all over the place, family time is usually planned out for months in advance. It was awesome to suddenly have a whole week with my dear sisters. We took over 100 pictures, and my kids and I just can’t face doing one long post right now, so how about 3 or 4 short ones?
[Warning: Shaina-short isn’t necessarily actually SHORT]
This was our first sistertime since Dani joined the family, so hoorah for FOUR sisters in our sister picture!
We balanced my camera on the mantel and hoped for the best. I took our picture with the face-detect feature on my beloved camera. You push the button, and it starts taking pictures when a new face enters the scene. Well, Steve beat me to it and set off the camera here…
…and then it took a little time to get one with all of us smiling.
We messed with poses. I couldn’t quite figure out where to stand.
Mel, Shaina, Em, and Dani. I wish I had a cool short nickname like all of my sisters do. I guess I compensated by getting short hair instead. I was worried that a week with my lushiously long haired sisters would make me miss my own long lush locks, and I did reminisce a bit, but on the whole, all of their hair actually made me like my short hair more—it’s just so light and free. And not static!
We never got around to doing an “official” goofy picture, but this one counts in my book.
I love my sisters.
In order to stave off the February doldrums, we went on a family excursion to Portland this weekend. Jeff had Friday off, so we packed up and drove the 3+ hours to that fun city. We went to Ikea and Powell’s Books, two of our faves. We stayed in a hotel with an indoor pool on Friday night. We went to the Children’s Museum on Saturday morning. It was so much FUN to get away together. It was so good for Jay, Rose, and me to get out of our ickle apartmental for 30 whole hours in a row.
How ‘bout some pictures?
Patiently riding in the cramped car.
Who said you need sun to wear sunglasses? (it was raining)
We need to get Jay a rain jacket of his own. Even though this is super cute. The hem of Jeff’s jacket hovered about one centimeter above the sidewalk, and Jay looked like he was gliding along while we walked back from Powell’s Books.
At Ikea, we got a pile of plastic dishes to replace our melted, damaged ones. This stuff is actually microwave safe! I’m sort of excited about it. After browsing books and furniture a-plenty, we went swimming at our hotel. I wish I had a video of Rose the tadpole kicking her little feet. Her soft round body was so buoyant and she wore a froggy green diaper in the water and kicked her feet like a dolphin. She was in heaven. Jay got dangerously brave and kept waltzing off the edge of the pool steps into deep water. We had to be pretty vigilant with him. We were all tuckered out after that.
Rose fell asleep first.
Jay was a close second.
Jeff and I stayed up a little later to watch another episode of BBC’s Dr. Who. heh.
Jay got us up bright and early. Jeff and I took turns running while Jay and Rose drew pictures on the Kindle Fire. I had the best run—I found a park with a springy, cushy bark-covered path and huge green trees. The air was cool and damp. I drank it all in and ran FAST. Therapy.
The Portland Children’s Museum was smaller than I expected, swarming with kids, and cost a small fortune to get in. But Jay and Rose loved it. It was a great indoor place to go in the winter.
Little builder
The kid grocery store was a hit.
The bossiest kids controlled the check-out and the other kids unloaded the shelves.
The plastic fruit was heavy and textured just like real fruit, so you can imagine that there was plenty of nibbling on the sly.
Rose loved this fake plastic ice/freezer section of the play grocery store. The only thing left in it was a clam. It got stuck on her knee.
The only Rose in the garden—way prettier than any ole daisy.
Building immunities. Moan.
Water!
There was a little age 3 and under room. Rose loved the slide, but she wasn’t patient enough to go around and climb up the steps.
Jay was in motion the whole 2.5 hours we were there.
Jay loved the train room, of course.
For lunch, we went to this lovely block downtown and browsed the various food carts/trailers/stands. We chose Indian food, and then walked to a Safeway with a café in it and ate our heaven. Jay had chicken strips from Safeway, and Rose had a PBJ. But their lucky parents had curry.
My Goa Curry Chicken on basmati rice with a fresh, hot naan on the side was beyond delicious—it was celestial. It was also huge. Jeff’s lamb curry was the same hugeness. We didn’t even want dinner that night. Mmmm. mmmmm, mmmmmm, mmmmmm. It was funny to eat something that gourmet with a plastic fork while sitting in a grocery store.
Then we drove home.
