Cousin time in Florida

Ryan had some more meeting for work and this time they were in Orlando at Disney World.  Mars often picks good locations for meetings, and this time did not disappoint!  Seeing that I had a baby about 5 weeks prior, I didn't want to be left at home by myself with an almost-2-year-old and a newborn, so we decided to drive down and spend some time at Marc and Michelle's.  We got there Friday night, November 8th, and drove home on the 17th.  While Ryan went down to Orlando for his meetings for a few days, I stayed up at the Rasmussen's and then we all went down and met Ryan in Orlando for a day at Disney World.  It was a blast and I'm so glad we ended up going (I was tempted not to go since Claire's reflux was struggling and a 14 hour car ride sounded like torture, but it worked out great)!  Lucy had so much fun with her cousins and we both loved that having other people around for company and distractions.

Lucy was really upset because she wanted to be holding my hand, so Jackson volunteered since he was right next to her and she was completely satisfied again. (Nevermind the fact that we are in the car and Jackson is on the floor... we didn't go far).

 One night we watched Monster's University and the little girlies grabbed some dolls and snuggled up.  I loved it, for the short while it lasted.

The first Saturday we were there, we went up to the University of Florida's campus (Marc's school) to check out the pre-game tailgating and festivities, especially because it was their homecoming game.  Right before we were about to leave, a nice lady came up and just gave us two free tickets!  Ryan and Marc took the opportunity to go check it out, and Michelle and I headed back home with the kids.  We were glad they got to go since Marc goes to the school and hasn't been to a game yet, and Ryan loves college football.

On Veteran's Day, we went to a local park that was having a big celebration.  There were three different helicopters there, lot's of military people, skydivers with flags and colored smoke, and a presentation (that we didn't stay for because the kids wouldn't have lasted.)  It was really cool to actually have something to go celebrate the holiday.  The only downfall was that we had to park around a bunch of fire ant hills.  I looked down and my feet/flip flops were covered in fire ants! They were all Bennett's pants and all in our car. It was crazy.  But luckily I only got two bites and we were able to kill the rest that got in.

Another fun activity we did while in Florida was searching for shark teeth.  We heard that there was a stream where you could go sifting through it and find a bunch of super old shark teeth that were really tiny.  We actually did find shark teeth... and Marc even found 2 or 3 big ones too (forgot to get a pic of those).  It was a fun, different thing to do and the kids loved getting into the water.  

This is Lucy laughing, not screaming, fyi.

Claire spent the whole excursion like this.  Such a little snuggle bug.

That same day, we were outside at the Rasmussen's house and everyone was looking around for lizards.  They found one (apparently not too hard to find) and he got a nice grip on Marc's finger!  I'm not a fan of lizards in general but ever since I found a huge one on my pillow in my hotel in Africa and then wasn't able to catch/find it before going to bed, I have nightmares about them.

We also went to the mall real quick and Ryan and I just laughed the whole time at how much Lucy likes to shop.  That girl loves going through clothing stores and will literally run from rack to rack pushing the hangers aside, one by one, and picking up the things she likes and putting back the ones she doesn't.  This trip, she even took her shoes off and carried things with her back and forth through the store.  She totally ignored me and Ryan and just shopped and got really mad if we tried to help her/stop her/put her shoes back on.  It was so funny.

She shopped and then immediately dropped in the car on the way home. :)

So, as you can see, we didn't have any fun in Florida.... ;)

Claire: One Month

Today marks one month since Claire's arrival!  Ryan and I were just saying this morning that it has gone so fast, yet slow at the same time.  Even though she really is a good baby, newborns are just exhausting!  But we are loving her, and knowing how fast it goes makes the exhausting part a little easier.  Here's the one month stats:

Length: (her appointment is actually tomorrow so I will have to update these later)
Weight:
Head:

• Claire is a really good baby.  She does have pretty bad reflux and we had to start her on zantac, which isn't helping (and I knew it wouldn't), and hopefully tomorrow we can switch to the Prevacid compound that Lucy is on.  It should help.
• Thankfully her reflux has not impacted her sleep quite as much as it did for Lucy.  Claire will usually give us a 4 hour stretch followed by two 2-3 hour stretches. 
•  During the day she eats every 2 hours on the dot (hopefully that will spread out here soon!).  
• She never fit into newborn clothes or diapers and skipped straight to 0-3 month and just 3 month sized clothes and size 1 diapers.  She's definitely a bigger newborn, which I love!  Not quite as fragile. :)  Today, at one month, Claire was wearing an outfit that Lucy wore at 4 months and they fit the same.
• She has several nicknames already.  Claire Bear (the most obvious), Clairy Beary, Clairy Beary gum drop (mostly used with Lucy), and Clarington (which our brother-in-law Marc apparently calls her sometimes, which has stuck around a little bit with us since hearing it).
• Has the world's cutest cat-like rolling purr that she often does when she's waking up and stretching.  I wish I could catch it on camera, but that's likely not going to happen.

Another fall Sunday

So I thought last Sunday would be the peak of the fall colors, but it was most definitely this week!  We took the girls out on a Sunday afternoon walk through the neighborhood and took it all in.  Lucy didn't last long in the stroller and walked most of the way and loved picking up new, colorful leaves from the ground the whole time.  She had quite a little collection by the time we got home.  It was pretty cute.  It was really cold outside, but not unbearably cold, and it was so nice to get out, get some fresh air, and enjoy nature on a Sunday evening.

Wow, I look tired in all of these pictures.  Probably because I am.

 Lucky Claire gets this view quite often. ;)  Lucy sure loves giving her sister kisses!  And she is starting to adjust quite a bit more and getting better and a little more back to normal each day.  Hallelujah!

I told Lucy to "show me her teeth" to get her to smile for a picture and she gave me her "monster teeth" face, where she sticks out her bottom teeth. Perfect.  Hope she doesn't get used to doing that! ha!

Ryan's new job

On Friday Ryan was offered a promotion with Mars!  He will be the HR Manager at the Columbus site.  He has a lot of similar duties to what he has now, plus some added responsibilities, but a big difference is that his current site has about 130 associates and the new one has 500 associates.  This new job will actually take him from Washington Court House to Columbus, which means his commute will go from 45-50 minutes each way, to 10-15 (probably my favorite part!)!  Yay!  This new job is a huge step in the direction that Ryan wanted to take his career and is even more than what we were hoping for.  Additionally, this new position brings a lot of potential for some other really good positions with Mars, which he might be able to transition into in the near future.  This also means that we will most likely be in Columbus for another 3-4 years at least.  Ryan is really excited for this opportunity.  He was originally told about a year ago that he would have to have another position before moving into this one, but several things have fallen into place and he was able to go right into this one.  It's been a pretty amazing few months that have led Ryan to getting this position, including a lot of inspiration and everything falling into the right place at exactly the right time, as it should.  So, congrats Ryan and yay for staying in Columbus a few more years!

High School BFF

One of my best friends from high school, Ashley, lives in Cincinnati with her husband.  She was so nice to come up and visit for a while yesterday.  She is one of those friends where you could not see or talk to them for a long time and then when you see them it's like you never missed a beat, which is pretty much what happened until I moved back to Ohio.  I love this girl.  She is so kind to my little family and is like another aunt to Lucy and got her and Claire matching(ish) pajamas and Lucy was really excited to get a big bag of dum-dums too!  She also brought me a fun surprise of a bunch of seasonal pumpkin stuff- Pumpkin sugar cookies, bagels, english muffins, and pumpkin pie chocolate covered pretzels.  We had lunch from Panera, ate, talked, laughed, etc.  Ashely and Lucy also made some peppermint chex mix treats.  I'm so glad we live close enough to have been able to see each other every few months.  We had a great time and I can't wait to see her again!

Somehow I always forget to get a picture of us, but at least I got a picture this time (although not sure what Lucy is looking at)!  This was when Lucy and Ashley made the treats together.  Lucy loves unwrapping the peppermint kisses, stirring the melted chocolate, and shaking it all together with powdered sugar in a bag.  Perfect activity for Lucy.  Ashley also brought her own bowls and spatulas so I wouldn't have any extra dishes to wash, wish was thoughtful!

Snuggly

I couldn't resist snapping these pictures the other night.  Doesn't she just look so comfy/cozy/snuggled up?

Halloween

We have a bunch of really great neighbors, almost all of which have little kids and many are stay-at-home moms.  Almost everyday the last couple of months we have ended up outside one of our houses while the kids all ride bikes/toys and the moms chat.  It's usually in that long part of the afternoon when we are waiting for our husband's to come home from work and both adults and kids need some kind of distraction.  The kids all get along really great for the most part and have become really comfortable playing with each other.  So we decided to have a neighborhood halloween party before trick-or-treating started.  There were a lot of kids, a ton of food, and just plain fun.  The forecast was showing 100% chance of rain and damaging winds with threats of tornados during trick-or-treating, but thankfully the wind died down a bit and the rain was all we had to deal with, and even that wasn't bad enough to stop us (if it was, we might never go trick-or-treating in Ohio!).  It was such a fun night and like everyone says, holidays get one million times more fun with kids (even if they already are fun!  Which is saying a lot)!

These are a few of the neighbor kiddos that we partied with on Halloween.  This was taken at the beginning before the kids got too crazy and so several were not there yet and didn't make the group picture.  Lucy is not a fan of getting her picture taken and cried unless I sat and held her hand.

Lucy's costume was kind of a mix between a leopard and a cat, so we called it a kitty cat so she'd really know what it was.  It was also the first time I successfully got her to tell me what a kitty cat says. :) I love this picture below because it shows how excited she was to go trick-or-treating!  She remembered from our church trunk-or-treat activity the night before what exactly happens.  Free candy?  Lot's of it? Count her in!

 She actually stood back and smiled for the picture!

 The neighbor's who had the party just finished off their basement and they have a fun kids room there that has a slide that goes down into it from upstairs.  It's the type of thing you see on pintrest.  

 It's a really fast slide.  I was afraid Lucy might break a leg or something on it, but she didn't.

 Looking at the huge dogs in their cages.

 Checking out her loot after trick-or-treating!

 Caught them both with candy in their mouths.