I’ve officially arrived in Sydney! That’s Sydney, Australia, if you were wondering – not Sydney, Indiana as one of my friends asked when I said I was going to Sydney. It’s been a loooong twenty-four hours of travel, but I’m finally here. Hooray!

“Wait,” I hear you saying. “Don’t you have a toddler at home? Why are you zipping around the planet?”

Good question. Trust me, I’ve asked myself that same thing countless times leading up to this trip. But hear me out, okay? It’s kind of a long story. Here’s how I ended up in Sydney:

Back in 2019 (told you it was a long story), I applied for a grant to go to the International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME) in Shanghai, China. It’s a conference held every four years where educators from around the world get together and discuss the state of mathematical education, best practices, etc. Rex calls it the “Nerd Convention,” and I don’t correct him.

I received the grant (yay!) and prepared to head to Shanghai in the summer of 2020.

Silly me, thinking I would leave the country in 2020. We barely left our houses. The congress obviously got cancelled, and I figured the grant was lost for good. Disappointing, to be sure, but it was just one more fact of pandemic life.

This fall, however, an verrrrry interesting e-mail popped into my inbox. The coordinators of the American ICME team asked if any of the people who didn’t get to go to Shanghai in 2020 would like to join them in 2024 in Sydney.

Why yes, yes I would.

Even this past fall, I questioned the decision. I used to travel abroad all the time, but things are different now. I hadn’t been over an ocean since the pandemic. I had a baby last year. I’m just…all around in a totally different place. But was I really going to give up a free trip to Australia?

(That’s a first-world problem if I ever heard one).

Ultimately, I decided to go. I was very nervous leading up to the trip. Not only was I nervous about leaving Ezra and Rex, but also about going through fourteen time zones by myself. Traveling alone doesn’t really throw me, but I do have some mental health concerns that can be exacerbated by significant time changes. The last time I went through a billion time zones (Japan 2015) was a complete disaster. But that was NINE YEARS AGO. Things are different now in so many ways.

Still, about a week and a half ago, I found myself on a zoom call with my friend Lauren, wondering if I was doing the right thing. This trip felt daunting to me, bordering on overwhelming. I’d dusted off my passport, booked a flight, and ordered my shiny, colorful play money (oops, I mean Australian dollars) from the bank. Everything seemed all systems go. I was still more nervous than excited, and I was contemplating cancelling the whole thing and paying the grant money back.

“Do you think you’d feel better if someone went with you?” Lauren asked.

“I mean, yeah,” I said. “But who could drop everything and jet off to…wait a minute. WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?”

Lauren spoke slowly, as if the idea was forming in her head only a millisecond faster than it was coming out of her mouth: “If you think about it, I’m a fully online student. I could do schoolwork while you’re at the conference, and we could hang out in the evenings and stuff.”

“That would be awesome!” I said. “I already have a room at a fancy hotel, you can stay with me, and you’d just have to pay for your flight and food.”

“I’ve never been to Australia…” she said. “Maybe I really should go.”

“Are you serious?” I asked, not daring to get my hopes up. “You realize I leave in ten days?”

Lauren started clicking around online, asking questions like “How much is the flight? Can I get a visa in time?” etc. This is what’s so great about Lauren – she’s up for adventure pretty much all the time. A few years ago, we planned a cross-country train trip to Glacier National Park. We went from the idea of “hey, this would be fun” to boarding the train in about four days. But even for someone as spontaneous as Lauren, a last-minute trip to Sydney is impressive.

Lauren has a wedding to attend on Saturday back in Michigan, but after that she’s flying out to join me here. I can hardly wait – it’s going to be so much fun. 😀

Even though I’m very excited that Lauren’s making the trip, I still want to make some friends from my American ICME team. Before I left, I started online stalking researching some of my teammates. I listed off their impressive credentials to Rex and even showed him a couple of pictures. “He looks kind of like a nerd,” I said about one of the team members.

“Well,” Rex responded, “You are going to a math conference.” Fair point.

I started to get some serious imposter syndrome. All of these people are so much more accomplished than me. I stopped researching my teammates and started looking more closely at the conference sessions instead. Unfortunately, that made things worse. One of the sessions I have the option to attend is called – and I kid you not – “Adventures in Hyperbolic Paraboloids.” Do YOU know what a hyperbolic paraboloid is? Because I didn’t. I do now, though. In my humble opinion, it looks like a Pringle on acid. Maybe that’s part of the adventure.

Another session is called “Neocolonial Mathematics.” Huh? What does neocolonialism have to do with math and math education? And what country’s neocolonialism are we even talking about here?

I may be in a bit of trouble next week.

The one moment that gave me the slightest bit of hope that I’m not completely in over my head is when the organizers sent out an e-mail two days before I left and asked all the attendees to bring postcards from their home cities. They want us to put them together and “build polyhedra” out of them. My first thought was, “Wow, it’s going to be tough to build a variety of polyhedra when we only have non-regular rectangles to use.” And then, quickly on the heels of that thought, was “Ah ha – that thought seemed kind of mathy! Maybe I will be okay.”

Oddly, the organizers also asked us to bring a traditional board game from our home country. I hate most board games, and also I had no space in my suitcase for a board game. I told Rex that if anyone asks why I don’t have one, I’ll just say, “We’re too busy for board games in America.” Plus, umm…are board games quicker in other countries? Because the conference is only a week long. I’m not sure I could actually finish a game of Monopoly in that time. Don’t even get me started on Risk (which would be awkward to play with people from all over the world anyway).

So yeah, no board game from this American.

I admit I was a little jumpy about flying over the Pacific (there’s no emergency landing in an ocean, you know?), but it’s not like I was asking the Wright Brothers for a lift. It’s 2024. We could send a man to the moon in 1969, so by now I should theoretically be able to trust that modern technology can get me safely to my destination.

In order to calm my nerves (or perhaps this is simply what moms do), my mom handed me a white paper lunch sack when my parents dropped me off at the airport. “I made you some zucchini bread for the plane!” she said. I didn’t have room for this lunch sack in my backpack, so I carried it across the whole country, nibbling zucchini bread every once in a while. My mom even put an encouraging note in the bag, as if I was a five year old heading off to kindergarten instead of a thirty-five year old going to Australia.

Here’s a picture of it in some fancy San Francisco fake plants before I threw away the well-traveled bag.

The flights went well. In an amazing stroke of luck, the seat next to me on my longest flight (fifteen hours) was empty. Yesssss. The extra room was great.

Now I’m in my hotel room. I took a very long, hot shower. After all, I had to get three flights of grime off of me. I’m lounging in my fluffy bathrobe and slippers that the hotel provided, and I’m looking forward to the days ahead. Hooroo for now!

(“Hooroo” is allegedly slang for “goodbye” in Australia. I will investigate the veracity of this claim on another day).

Now to beat jet lag and stay up for…

…a couple more hours…

…or perhaps just order some room service…

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

*whispers* Hooroo.

While the Webbs do love all hunting, eagle hunting is only legal with a camera (but who would want to kill an eagle, anyway? They’re so majestic. And also #murica). Bright and early this morning, Rex, Michelle, Ezra and I set off “eagle hunting.” We woke up super early to get the best light, and the sunrise over the water was beautiful. I should have taken a picture, but I was still bleary eyed and questioning the life choices that led me to be awake at sunrise.

Michelle had seen a bald eagle at a park earlier in the week, so we drove there to see if we could find it. Sure enough, across from a large bridge, we saw the eagle perched in a tree. We drove all around trying to find a place to stop where we could get a good shot of the eagle. Finally, we decided to park at a nearby parking lot and walk back toward the bridge. We found a trail that went below the bridge where we could see the tree where the eagle was sitting. By the time we got to the perfect spot for viewing the eagle, it had flown away. That’s how it would work, of course.

Michelle and Rex walked around with their cameras, seeing if there was anything else fun to photograph. I was on Ezra duty. He was still in his pajamas because we woke up too early and I didn’t change his clothes. I thought, “Hmm…I shouldn’t set Ezra down. He’ll get his pajamas all sandy.” Then I thought, “Hmm…we’re not in Florida very long. And I can change his clothes later. Live it up, Baby Son!”

Here he is leaving crawl tracks in the sand as he set off to seek his fortune:

Here are Michelle and Rex comparing pictures (none of which made it onto the blog because Rex said they’re all pictures of “nothing good”).

When Michelle and Rex got bored of waiting for the absent eagle, we headed back to the beach house. After naptime and lunch, it was time to head to the beach!

Ezra discovered seashells today. He is finally (mostly) over eating sand, but shells provided a whole new challenge. I said, “No, Ezra, we don’t eat shells” about a million times. I said it all stern, too, like how you’re supposed to as a parent. But he kept eating shells! Exasperated, I eventually said, “Okay Ezra. If you eat another shell, you’re going to lose your privileges.” Because that’s what parents say, right? I’m still getting the hang of this mom thing, if you can’t tell. Unsurprisingly, he immediately ate another shell.

“Welp, now you’re losing your privileges!” Except umm…what privileges does a one year old have? And how was I supposed to take them away? And for how long? I haven’t gotten that far in the parenting book yet! I didn’t think this through, but it was too late now. So I took his shell, and I threw it over my shoulder very far away so he couldn’t get it. There. He lost his shell privileges.

He gave me a look that said, “What’d you do that for?” and then he crawled around and found another shell. Which he tried to eat. So I’m not POSITIVE we learned our lesson here.

After my shining moment of motherhood, some more family came down to the beach. Ezra liked playing with his cousin Drake, and they were both pretty excited when Grandpa brought over a fish that he caught. Oooooo, shiny!

Before we knew it, it was time to start getting ready for our family photos. That meant showers, blow dryers, makeup, the works. Steph even offered to steam my outfit with the steamer she brought, that way my clothes wouldn’t be all wrinkly. How nice!

When I was alllllmost ready, I made a really bad mistake. The details don’t matter. The point is, completely by accident, I hurt Ezra and put him in a lot of danger that could have easily landed him in the hospital. It would have been all my fault. So I was pretty shaken up, but everyone was waiting outside for pictures. I grabbed a can of puffs and headed out. “Stop crying, buddy!” I said. “Mommy is so sorry! It’s all my fault! Here, have a puff.” He stopped crying right away because he loves puffs, so I figured the situation wasn’t as dire as it could have been (Thank God. Literally. I’m thankful to God for keeping Ezra safe). Anyway, I sat on the beach and fed Ezra one puff at a time while I watched Rex take pictures of Tom and Courtney’s family. Ezra would look at me with his big eyes and tentatively reach for another puff, and I’d be all, “Yep. Unlimited puffs today. Mommy is so sorry.” Feeding him junk food out of mom guilt is, you know, fabulous parenting.

I’m really starting to see why Courtney bought me that parenting book.

Unfortunately, the sunlight was all wrong for family pictures. Rex did his best, but people couldn’t even look at the camera without doing a whole-face squint because of the sun. Therefore it was decided: we would go eat dinner and then try again. It’s not like we trusted kids to eat wearing fancy clothes, so we all had to go change.

When I was changing Ezra, Rex walked into our bedroom. Even though I was nervous, I had to tell Rex about the incident from earlier. I set Ezra on the bed while I was talking to Rex. Rex seemed alarmed at first, but then said, “Wait, so you’re telling me he’s not hurt?”

“I mean, not really. But he COULD have been VERY hurt.”

Apparently this is not of much concern, because Rex immediately went back to changing into dinner clothes. I turned back to the bed to pick up Ezra, and this is what I saw:

In the thirty seconds I was talking to Rex, Ezra had somehow gotten the top off of his can of puffs and was now shoving so many into his mouth at once that I was afraid he was going to choke.

Today was not a banner day for mothering. Seriously.

While we waited for dinner, everyone was chatting about different things. One of my sisters-in-law said to another one, “I found a new method to help very young children learn how to blow their own noses.” The other one was all, “Oh, great! How do you do that?” So they chatted about how to teach their brilliant children to be self-sufficient. Meanwhile, my kid was over in the corner eating dominos.

Dinner was delicious. It was haystacks, which is a Webb favorite. It’s basically like build-your-own nachos, but with Fritos instead of tortilla chips. Delish, but not conducive to tidy eating. I was glad I’d changed Ezra’s clothes, because he got Mexican food everywhere. He was having tons of fun.

After dinner, it was Take Two for family photos. I changed Ezra back into his photo clothes – carefully – but somehow he had a cheese smear on him before I got out the door. I discovered it was from the puff he had for “dessert.” Welp, no going back now. He was going to have his picture taken with a cheese smear.

Family photos were fun. Rex seemed pretty stressed because he hates taking photos of people. He much prefers wildlife. On the one hand, I don’t get that. You can tell people how to pose and what to do, but with an animal you basically have to make yourself invisible and hope it does what you want. On the other hand, I don’t think an animal has ever asked him to airbrush a zit. So maybe there are perks to sticking to wildlife.

We chased the light for photos until the sun went down. It was tough to get the kids to look at the camera, so when some people with a dog walked down the beach, we asked them to stand by the camera with their dog so we could say, “Look at the doggie!” The dog was wearing sunglasses, so that was pretty fun. The kids seemed to like it.

We tried to do a picture of all the grandkids with the grandparents, but that was a bit of a fail. The kids were squirming and crying and crawling away. I was proud of Ezra – he was doing great. But then when it was time to snap the photo, all of us parents started screaming, “LOOK OVER HERE!! HI BABY!! OVER HERE!!” Ezra hates loud noises, so that was too loud and he immediately started sobbing. Of course, as soon as the pictures were over, he was fine again. So now he looks like the cranky grandkid. Oh well.

After pictures, I talked Rex into an evening walk (our last one for the trip, since we’re leaving tomorrow *sob*). He seemed really down, and finally he told me why: he’s nervous that the pictures turned out terrible.

He took like, five kabillion pictures. Surely they’re not ALL terrible. I think that maybe he is being too hard on himself. He told me that people had their eyes closed in a bunch of the pictures, and he was going to have to “photoshop some googly eyes” on them. He’s going through photos right now as I type this, and he just made the comment that “way too many people in this family pick their noses.” But here’s the thing: the pictures don’t have to be perfect. Everyone has seen perfect family pictures before. Doesn’t it add a little depth and zing when Ezra is sobbing, Michael is picking his nose, and Madi is trying to run out of the frame? Now there’s a picture with pizazz! It’s more accurate to our family, anyway. He was capturing authenticity, not perfection. I, for one, am prepared to love the pictures no matter how they turn out. Because I love the people in them.

EDIT TO ADD: I still haven’t seen many of the pictures Rex took, but here are a couple. I think they’re great!

All good things must come to an end, and unfortunately it’s time for this vacation to be over. I might pop in with some more pictures later (especially if I come across some funny ones), but it’s time to head home and get back to “real life.” Thanks for coming on another adventure with me. I really appreciate you taking time to read this blog.

Until next time – adios!

When I woke up yesterday, it was rainy. My first thought was, ‘Aw, man! What do you do at a beach house if it’s raining?” But the answer followed soon after the question: You go THRIFT SHOPPING, of course!

Some of the family decided to go thrift shopping, but by the time we had breakfast and changed diapers and blah blah blah, it was almost 11:00. I absolutely had to be back by 1:00, as I had an online publicity meeting for my new book. I didn’t want to hold the family back from all the deals, so I asked Rex if we could drive separately.

“Hey Rex,” I said. “Want to go thrift shopping with me?”

“Not really…”

“What are you going to do back here in the rain?”

He thought for a moment. “Anything besides thrift shopping.”

“Okay, then can I borrow your truck?”

“Why?!” (He looked more appalled here than when I asked if he wanted to go shopping).

So I explained about the publicity meeting. He (thankfully) agreed to go with me so that I could still go but also be back in time for my meeting. Phewf!

We drove through the rain to Goodwill, and whoa – it was the largest Goodwill I’ve ever seen. Here’s the view from the front door. Who knew what kind of treasures could be lurking among the junk? That’s the fun of thrift shopping – it’s like a scavenger hunt, but you don’t know what you’re looking for. You know it when you find it, though.

I found some really weird stuff at the Goodwill. For example, there were a ton of Christmas clothes. Not exactly sure why. Maybe a collector cleared out their attic or something. I also found this Florida Gators purse with a furry top.

There was also a strange display of Barbies, and I took a picture because I thought, “That’s a weird display. I’ll get a picture for the blog.”

When I got back to the beach house and reviewed the pictures, I discovered that the Barbie picture was definitely not blog-safe. I mean, sure, all the Barbies were naked, but I figured that’s because we were at Goodwill and the clothes cost extra. When I looked closer, though…many of the Barbies were in very, um, compromising positions. I wanted to march back to Goodwill and declare, “YOU HAVE DONE A VERY BAD THING WITH A CHILDREN’S TOY.” Bleh!

Let’s move on from the Barbies. Forget I mentioned them. While I was shopping, I got a text that we were under a tornado watch. Eeeep! Then, a short time later, the lights at the Goodwill flickered off because of the storm. Some people gasped and freaked out like they had never been in a dim room before, but the lights went on again quickly and order was restored.

I found quite a few things at the Goodwill to take home with me. Rex was very disappointed that my feet aren’t a size 6, because he found some women’s hunting boots that usually cost $300 (Lowas, for those of you who know these things). My feet are a size 10, so I told him that if he wanted me to cut off all my toes, the boots just might fit me. It really shows how committed I am to getting a good deal.

We got home with ten minutes to spare before my publicity meeting. I quickly exchanged my t-shirt for a simple black v-neck and took my hair out of a ponytail so I could wear it down. That was about as professional as I was going to look in ten minutes. Then I grabbed my Chromebook and hunted for a place to do a zoom meeting. Newsflash: when you’re in a house with seventeen people and seven of them are under age 4, there is no quiet place to do a zoom meeting. I ended up outside, under the deck, on some white wicker porch furniture. It worked out!

I won’t tell you all about the publicity meeting because it’s not really relevant to this vacation, but I will say that I was surprised to see five or six people on the zoom call, all with different jobs related to promoting my book. It was very cool. I wished I had packed a suit coat to look more professional or something. Then again, how professional can you REALLY look when sitting on white wicker furniture?

By the time the meeting was over, the rain cleared up and the weather was nice again. Hooray! Rex went down to the water to fish, and I worked on my blog during Ezra’s nap.

Just as I finished writing my post, Ezra woke up. Perfect timing, little buddy. I decided to take him for a walk on the beach. Let me take a moment to give a shout-out to our stroller, which is the only one here off-roady enough to work in the sand. We’ve all been taking turns with it. Finally it was my turn to use it!

Stephanie texted the family that dinner would be ready at 6, so I had a good half hour/forty-five minutes to go on a walk. I checked in with Rex at the fishing poles on my way out, and he said to stop by on the way in and we’d walk up to the house together. No problem.

I enjoyed a walk down the beach, and Ezra enjoyed it too. I stopped to get a picture of him, but my phone was out of storage. Blast! So I went through and deleted a bunch of screenshots and downloads. Unfortunately, my phone STILL didn’t have enough storage. So I stood there deleting stuff while Ezra looked up at me from the stroller as if to say, “Uhhh…why did we stop?” Finally I freed up enough space to take a picture. Then I said, “Smile for mommy!” and click click click.

In my determination to get a beach picture, I hadn’t been keeping an eye on the time. I realized I’d have to pick up the pace if I wanted to make it up for dinner on time. I pictured the whole family sitting around the table, waiting for me and impatiently saying, “Where is Christine?” (I won’t say that I knew which family members would be saying that, but I knew which family members would be saying that). So I walked a little faster.

When I got within sight of the beach house, I saw the fishermen going in. That’s when I knew I was in trouble. It’s not like they were going to go in one second before it was absolutely necessary. And Rex, who planned to walk up with me, had abandoned ship and left me behind (Pirate Code).

So I was practically running while pushing the stroller up the sandy hill that leads to our beach house, and I was trying not to breathe hard because certainly I’m not THAT out of shape, right? When I came over the crest of the hill, Rex was standing there with his camera. Oh boy. He took a few pictures as I was rushing down, then laughed and said, “I thought this would be a nice action shot, but it didn’t turn out that great.” I took a look at his screen. I looked like I was about to drop dead, and Ezra looked mad, and the whole picture was hilariously awful. I don’t really want to put it on the internet, because you never know where pictures from the internet might end up. But if you want to see the pic, I’ll send it to you so you can have a good laugh.

Anyway, I grabbed Ezra out of the stroller as quickly as possible and burst into the house. I looked at my phone, and the time was 6:00 on the dot. “I am NOT late!” I declared. “For anyone keeping track, I am on time.” Some of the family still wasn’t there yet. Maybe I didn’t have to hurry quite so much, but I think Steph appreciated my punctuality. Here’s Ezra waiting for his dinner:

Dinner was awesome: Chicken Caesar wraps, homemade bread, salad, green beans, corn casserole…lots of deliciousness. Ezra especially loved the chicken.

After dinner, everyone started the long journey toward putting kids to bed. It wasn’t quite Ezra’s bedtime yet, and Jake and Steph were busy downstairs putting their kids to bed, so Rex and I decided to take a walk on the beach. The stroller wasn’t available because Paul and Michelle had it (see? I told you it’s popular), so we put Ezra in his pajamas in case he fell asleep, grabbed the front pack, and started off.

This trip has been a lot of fun, but Rex, Ezra, and I haven’t had a ton of time with just the three of us. That is fine, as the point of the trip was family time with extended family, but it was fun to walk together and enjoy the evening. We talked about a lot of different stuff, and I assumed Ezra couldn’t understand (which he for sure didn’t). But then I said something about Ezra not crying as much as the other kids, and was that even developmentally normal? And then Ezra immediately gave me a super sad face and started crying, like, “I’M NOT NORMAL? WHY AREN’T I NORMAL? OH NO…I’M A FREAK BABY!” So I assured him that of course he’s normal, and I love him the same no matter what, and I kissed his cheeks and made him feel better. *guilty face*

I snapped this picture on the way back, and I love it. It doesn’t even need an explanation. I might blow it up to poster size and put it on my ceiling so I can stare at it at night when I’m going to bed.

I mean, not really. But if I was going to do that with a picture, this one would be in the running.

Well, gotta go. We’re doing family pictures soon with the whooooole family. Rex is taking the pics with his fancy camera. I told him I want some blooper pics for the blog, and he assures me this will not be a problem.

Talk to you later!

Rex and I made dinner for seventeen people last night, and we didn’t set off the smoke alarm once. NOT ONCE!

I’m not sure if I’m more proud or surprised. You may or may not know that during our first year of marriage, I burned dinner so badly that I not only set off the smoke alarm in our apartment, but I set off the smoke alarm in the hallway as well.

I was cooking a frozen pizza at the time.

Anyway, the giant meal comes later in this post. We’ll get there soon. First I need to go back to where I left you earlier and get you caught up.

I don’t think I told you about the book exchange we did on Monday evening, did I? *quickly checks other post* Nope! I didn’t.

Before the trip, I asked if anyone wanted to participate in a book exchange while we’re here. I mean, we’re at the beach for a week. What’s better than some surprise reading material? I think the first few people said yes because they actually wanted to participate, and by the end I think people said yes because none of them wanted to be the only one left out of the exchange. However it happened, everyone decided to participate. Yippee!

I could write this entire post about who bought which book for whom and why all of them look like fabulous reads, but I’m not going to do that for two reasons:

1. This post would be too long.
2. You don’t actually care, do you?

Here are some pictures, though. Doesn’t it look like we’re having fun? Especially the picture where Ezra is waving his book around in joy (ummm…that’s actually a total lie. He wasn’t waving it around in joy. He kept chucking it on the ground. Which didn’t seem very thankful, so I hope he didn’t offend anyone).

I read Ezra his new Peep 123 book as a bedtime story last night, and I think he was totally into it. It was a counting book. First came 1….then 2…then 3…then (PLOT TWIST!!) 4… I mean, you just never knew what to expect.

After dinner, all the moms and dads tried to wrangle our children to bed (which is quite a long process). Then Rex went night fishing, which doesn’t sound that fun to me, but he loves it. When he came back to the house (AT 2:00 AM!), he says he found me in bed, cuddling Ezra (also asleep), next to my book with the light on my phone still on as if I was trying to read with my eyes closed. Oops! He OBVIOUSLY should have taken a picture of this scene for the blog, but I guess he doesn’t think like a blogger.

The next morning, Rex and I headed to the grocery store. It was a big day for us – the day for our family to cook dinner for everyone in the house. EEEEEEEP! My plan was to do a Pasta Bar, because the lady online promised me that it would be “fun for the whole family.” We needed quite a few groceries, though. Here was the menu for our “Build your own pasta deliciousness:”

• Four types of noodles
• Three types of homemade sauces
• Two meats (meatballs and grilled chicken)
• Veggie options (broccoli, assorted peppers, and onions)
• Two types of cheese as topping
• Italian bread with garlic spread
• Salad
• Ice cream for dessert

Apparently, in order to execute that menu well, we had to buy ALL of Wal-Mart. Plus, each family is on our own for lunches/snacks, so we stocked up on stuff for that as well. When all was said and done, the final grocery bill was…

…well, a lot. I won’t tell you the exact number because apparently talking about money isn’t proper etiquette, but here’s a picture of the groceries. You can estimate for yourself.

I timed out the meal I needed to cook, and I figured I should start cooking around 4:30. That left some time in the afternoon for relaxing! The guys ran out of bait for fishing, which is an obvious bummer, but I said to Rex, “Hey, come play in the sand with Ezra and me!” He agreed. I’m going to pretend he liked it as much as fishing.

We gathered up our supplies in a beach bag and headed down to the ocean. I considered the fact that this is probably one of the most timeless family pastimes: a day out at the beach. Families throughout centuries have been enjoying seaside fun. I bet cavemen loved the beach. Who doesn’t love the beach? It’s fun to consider that we have this in common with gazillions of other people.

Here’s Ezra looking like a model with his serious face on while his parents look like goons:

While we were down at the beach, Ezra played in the sand, and I talked to Rex about the new book I got from the book exchange (Raising Amazing by Monica Swanson). “I already read the first chapter,” I said, “and I like it. It’s about being an ‘all-in’ parent and prioritizing your kids. Like, I need to get off my phone and pay more attention to Ezra, you know?”

Just then, Ezra started doing something cute. I don’t even remember what. But I immediately said, “Where is my phone? I need a picture. AHH! I NEED MY PHONE!” So clearly the book hasn’t actually taught me that much yet. Also, I don’t know if Courtney bought the book new for me, but it certainly looks new. It was in pristine condition…until Ezra took a bite of the cover. There’s nothing that says “you need this” more than a parenting book with a bite taken out of the cover.

Our idyllic time at the beach was cut short by an Ezra meltdown. We suspect maybe he got some sand in his eye, or maybe he suddenly remembered he was hungry, but it was time to head inside in a hurry. We got him some food and sat on the deck for a while to enjoy the sun. Then Rex went to go catch sand fleas to use as fishing bait.

I honestly went to Google right now and searched “picture of sand fleas” to use on this blog, but they’re all too disgusting and I don’t want to freak you out. Look it up on your own if you want. I thought “sand fleas” would look kind of like fruit flies but in the sand. OH NO. They are these large beetle-y looking things with white wiggly legs and gross heads and they’re living just under the sand. Ahhhhh! I may never dig in the sand ever again.

At 4:30, it was time to start cooking.

In the kitchen, my mother-in-law already made a crock pot full of pea soup, and my sister-in-law Stephanie already made these “energy bites” ball things that are filled with…I don’t know, health. But they taste good. I told Rex that I KNOW I’m not the best cook in the family, and I might be the worst cook in the family, but did they really have to make all this “backup plan” food? I mean, if our dinner was really a disaster, we’d just order pizzas or something. We didn’t need crock pot soup and energy bites to survive the evening!

(Disclaimer: I’m sure Steph and Pat would *claim* they weren’t making backup food. Just lunches and snacks to enjoy throughout the week. But they made them on the same day that Rex and I were supposed to make dinner. Coincidence?? You be the judge).

Rex was still catching sand fleas (*barf*), so I got my part of the meal started. Luckily, the backup food crew had moved out by this point. Ezra hung out in his activity center and helped me. Here we are getting ready to make the meal:

I always cook with music, so I turned on some T-Swift and then some Britney. I usually sing along, but Courtney was sitting on the couch in the living room. She didn’t want to hear me sing (to be fair, I didn’t ask her. But still). I lip-synched the lyrics and danced around the kitchen. I may only have one audience member, but he’s a major fan. This was his face pretty much every time I looked at him:

Here was Rex grilling downstairs:

Dinner turned out great! I mean, who knew that was going to happen?? I made the three sauces and then put them in roasting pans in the oven to keep warm, then I made the rest of the ingredients. Rex grilled the chicken. I think everything was relatively warm at the same time, and I was very impressed with myself. For the three sauces, I made a meat sauce, an Alfredo, and a Skyline chili. Since most people hadn’t had Skyline, I explained it:

“My dad grew up in Cincinnati, and this is a really common pasta sauce there. It’s kind of a cultural thing. It is traditionally served with cheddar cheese, but you can eat it however you want.”

I inwardly rolled my eyes at myself. It’s a “culture thing” that is “traditionally” served with cheddar cheese? Like this is some exotic food from the far off land of Ohio? I mean, if the most exotic food I eat this week comes from Ohio, I’m actually okay with that. None of this sushi or haggis nonsense.

Everyone either enjoyed the meal or pretended to enjoy it. The lady online was right: fun for the whole family! I was so relieved that it went well. A pasta bar is kind of a lot of work, but the result is really enjoyable. I might do it again sometime if I have to feed a lot of people.

I’m going to wrap this post up here to give it a logical break since I caught you up to the end of last night. The next post will include today, where we’re currently under a tornado watch, and I saw inappropriate Barbies at Goodwill. You can look forward to that.

Bye for now!

The week before spring break, it is really common for teachers to ask each other what they’re doing with their week off. That means I had this conversation about a dozen times over the past week:

Person: What are you doing for spring break?

Me: I’m going to Florida…

Person: Oh! *happy face*

Me: …with all of my in-laws.

Person: OH. *concerned face*

It’s like they don’t know whether to be happy for me or say, “I’ll pray for you.”

My in-laws are actually pretty fabulous, so I think we’ll be fine. Also, there’s been a Webb Baby Boom in the past couple of years, so there are now seven grandkids under the age of four. With that much cuteness around, how can anyone be ornery? Ezra is in the middle-ish of the lineup, so he has lots of cousins his age.

I’m calling this “Post 1” instead of “Day 1” because I probably won’t be able to post every day. Something about having a one-year-old who refuses to nap on vacation is making me a little busy, you know? Plus, FAMILY TIME. Squirreling away at a picnic table below the deck doesn’t exactly scream “team player.”

Yet here I am at said picnic table, talking to you. Welcome to our vacation!

This was Ezra’s first multi-day road trip. You might say, “Wow, you road tripped with a one-year-old? How brave.” But NO – I tell you – we cannot take the credit for being “the brave ones.” That prize goes to my sister-in-law Courtney and brother-in-law Tom, who road tripped with a ONE MONTH OLD. *lots of applause*

It was a two-day trip to get to the beach house, and I won’t bore you with all the details. Here are a couple highlights, though.

Ezra is using his big boy car seat for the first time. Two of my sisters-in-law have the same car seat, and they love it. When Rex and I went to the store to get one, I was shocked at how expensive it was. “Rex,” I said. “This is like the LEXUS of car seats. Do we really need this?”

“No,” he said sarcastically. “Let’s get our baby the KIA of car seats. Let’s save money on safety.”

Oh. Right.Good point. So fancy pants car seat it is.

The car seat swivels so you can easily take the baby out of the car, then swivels back to lock the baby in. At every single stop on the road trip, Rex made beeping sounds when swiveling the car seat in and then, when it clicked, said, “Okay, Ezra. We’re ready for launch.” Ez does kind of look like an astronaut in this thing:

I asked Rex if we could listen to Dateline podcasts on the way down, but he said only after dark because then they’re “extra murderer-y.” So during the daylight hours, we listened to country music and podcasts about turkey hunting. Unsurprisingly, I read my book. Now I’m not prepared to turkey hunt. Alas.

Here are some rest stop pics of my favorite guys:

We stopped at a hotel in Hurricane, West Virginia. This was Ezra’s first hotel stay – hooray! We got in around midnight, so I don’t think he fully appreciated the experience.

He was excited about it in the morning, though, crawling around and exploring the room. Then he found himself in the mirror, and WELL. What a treat. I hope he doesn’t grow up to be a narcissist, but if he does then I’ll be able to reference this blog and say, “Ah. There were early signs.”

We finally arrived at the beach house, and we got settled in. When I say “beach house,” I don’t mean “house where you walk ten minutes and find a beach.” I mean BEACH HOUSE. Here’s the view from the deck. It’s beautiful.

All the families arrived safely by Saturday night, which means we made it in time for Easter. Yay! Jake picked a nearby church, and we all put on our Easter best and headed out on Sunday morning. It’s obviously not our normal church, so I think Ezra was a bit concerned about the theology:

The service was great, though, and then we headed back to the beach house for a giant Easter dinner. I tried to get an “Easter portrait” of Ezra, but this is the best I got.

For dinner, we had ham, potatoes, stuffing, casseroles, salads, fruit…the works. My mother-in-law took no shortcuts. Each family is responsible for making dinner one night, and this was hers. You just WAIT until the day Rex and I make dinner. There’s a chance it won’t go well because I’m not the best cook, but the worse it goes, the better the blog post. So there’s that.

After dinner was the Easter egg hunt. My mother-in-law went all out (again, no shortcuts). The eggs were color-coded by grandkid so that they could have age-appropriate snacks in them. Each cousin had to find twenty-three eggs. Ezra’s color was orange.

I wasn’t sure how this was going to go, as Ezra has never done an Easter egg hunt before. I showed him where to find the first egg. He picked it up, and I held out his bucket and said, “In.”

At home, he routinely plays a game my parents made up called “In and Out.” Here’s how it works: you hold up a box and give Ezra a toy. When you say, “in,” he’s supposed to put the toy in the box. When you say “out,” he’s supposed to take the toy out of the box. Repeat 700 times.

Anyway, all this “In and Out” totally prepared him for the Easter egg hunt. When I said “in,” he dropped the egg in the bucket. Go Ezra!

This was going pretty well. I’d point out an egg, Ezra would pick it up, then he would put it in his bucket. He was having a grand time. Then he accidentally squeezed an egg too hard, and it opened. His favorite snack (tomato puffs) was inside. He looked surprised but also thrilled, as if a thought bubble popped up over his head that said, “THESE EGGS ARE ALL FULL OF PUFFS?!? JACKPOT!!” He tried to stuff all three puffs in his mouth at once. Then it got a little more complicated to collect the eggs, because who wants to put an egg in the bucket when you could crack it open and get treasure?!

Finally, we collected all twenty-three eggs. Then the guys went fishing. Ezra and I putzed around the house for a little bit, then we went down to go see Rex. It was getting a little cold as it got darker, so Rex put Ezra in his jacket like a baby kangaroo. Ezra quite enjoyed it.

Here’s a picture of Grandpa fishing, which Ezra also enjoyed:

By the time we went to bed, I think everyone was having a pretty good time.

THEN. DISASTER.

I wasn’t even going to include this part, because who wants to hear the bad parts of vacation? But my sister-in-law Michelle said, “If you’re going to tell the story of the trip, you should tell the WHOLE story.” So here goes:

My nieces Amelia and Zoe (Michelle and Paul’s daughters) came down with the plague or leprosy or some other mysterious illness. Paul sent me these pictures so you’ll get the idea. They’re somehow still cute in spite of the faces full of scary. Their whole bodies were splotchy and red. And even though we obviously want family togetherness, I admit I was secretly thinking, “Ahhh! Ezra! Don’t play with them!”

They went to urgent care this morning. Their dad Paul (a pediatrician) wasn’t totally panicked, so I figured maybe there was some simple explanation as to why the girls’ skin decided to revolt against them.

It turns out they were having an allergic reaction to the medication they’re taking for an ear infection. So that’s good news because:

1. It’s easily fixable, and
2. It’s not contagious

Hooray! The vacation continues!

The weather has been beautiful ever since we got here, so we spent some time in the sand today. Ezra got some practice sharing his sand toys with his cousin Madi. Madi was better at sharing than Ezra was, but she has a brother and also she’s two and a half. So she’s had more experience with the idea of sharing, and I’m trying to give Ezra a break because this is new to him. At least he didn’t hit her or push her or anything. He would just look at me and start crying, as if to say, “But I want the red castle and she has the red castle and life is COMPLETELY UNFAIR!!!” Then, because I’ve seen good moms do this sometimes, I said, “Okay. We’re going to let Madi play with it for two minutes, and then you can play with it for two minutes. Got it?” He didn’t get it. So we’ve got some work to do, but luckily we’ve got all week to work on it. Or maybe I’ll make this easier and throw away the red castle so no one gets it.

Kidding (mostly).

Here’s a picture of him taking the red castle and Madi looking at me like, “HELLO? AREN’T YOU GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?!”

The guys, meanwhile, have been fishing all day. Rex is on his second run to the bait shop as I type this. Rex even used sunscreen today, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen him do that. But if it’s the price to pay to stay outside and fish, game on.

Rex’s dad caught a hammerhead shark, which was pretty cool. I’ve never touched one before today, but now I have! And now Ezra has too, though I don’t think he fully appreciated the experience.

When we played in the sand without Madi, Ezra had full reign of the sand toys. Unfortunately, he decided that eating the sand would be more fun. He would bring a handful to his mouth, then before he could eat it I’d take the sand out and say, “No! We don’t eat sand.” We did this about twenty times. Then he finally gave up, turned away from me, and reached for a sand toy. I was happy he was finally following directions.

Um. When he was turned away from me, he reached for the sand toy with one hand, then surreptitiously took a huge handful of sand with the other and stuck it in his mouth. Because he knew I couldn’t see him. What a SNEAK!

Why does he even want to eat sand? That cannot taste good. I’m dreading his next poopy diaper. Maybe I’ll post a picture of it (kidding for real this time. No one wants to see that. Including me. Maybe I’ll change it with my eyes closed).

Rex is almost back from the bait shop, so I need to finish this post up. It’s almost my turn for Ezra duty again.

When I told one of my friends about this trip, she said, “The Webbs are a special clan.” That’s true in so many ways. Stay tuned for more adventures!

When Lauren walked into the room this morning, Rex and I were on the floor with Ezra, entertaining him during tummy time so he’d be encouraged to keep his head up. Rex’s phone played music, and he and I made small stuffed animals dance to the songs. When looking at it from Lauren’s perspective, it was probably a little weird: grown adults making a stuffed pug and a baby Sasquatch dance to cowboy tunes. But hey, parents gotta do what parents gotta do.

We didn’t waste time this morning – it was a beautiful day, and we wanted to get on the trails!

Our first hike was to Rock House. It was allegedly a cool rock formation. I’m not exactly sure what I was picturing, but what it was turned out to be WAY cooler than my expectations.

There were carvings in the rocks dating all the way back to the 1800’s. Did Gordon + Wilma really stay together 4ever? We may never know.

Next we went to Ash Cave, which was also awesome.There was a skinny waterfall that fell over the top of it, and we hiked right behind it. So fun! On our way out of Ash Cave, there was a sign pointing to another trail that said, “Cedar Falls — 2 miles.” I turned to Rex and Lauren and said, “Do you have a couple more miles left in you?” After all, waterfalls are fun. We decided to go for it!

Well, it was kind of a hilly two miles, which was a little difficult when carrying Ezra. At one point I said, “Whose great idea was it (*breathe*) to make the person in the worst shape (*breathe*) carry the baby? (*breathe*)” Lauren responded with, “You ran a 5k! You can do this!” and then I felt a burst of energy because she’s right. I am mama — hear me roar!

Along the hike, Lauren tried inspiring us to pick up trash. “I have three points,” she said as she picked up her third piece of trash. “You guys have zero.” Rex and I looked at each other and shrugged. Looks like Lauren will win the “picking up trash” game.

When we finally came around the last corner before the waterfall, you’re not going to believe what we saw. No, not a cool animal. No, not a beautiful stream. We saw…

A PARKING LOT.

We hiked two miles one way to get to these falls, and it turns out we could have just driven right up to them! *facepalm* Oh well. The hike through the woods was really pretty, and there weren’t too many people at the falls.

We took a break at the falls to feed Ezra and enjoy the beauty. He was having a grand old time. He seemed to like looking at the waterfall, and he definitely enjoyed his bottle. He’s the cutest hiking buddy ever. I especially appreciated him not puking on me in the hiking pack since I forgot to bring a burp cloth. #mommyfail

After a break at Cedar Falls, we hiked the two miles back to our truck. Then we stopped at Grandma Faye’s again for more ice cream. Fudge raspberry in a waffle cone for only $3.50 – you can’t beat it! After a long day of hiking, it tasted especially delicious.

Once we got home, it was time for dinner. Dinner was homemade personal pizzas. Yummy! We’ve had some great food on this trip. Tonight did not disappoint.

After dinner was over, we went outside for another fire. We finally busted out the s’more supplies, which is good because it’s our last night here. I’m not ready for vacation to be over, but vacations always seem to end eventually.

Thanks for coming on this adventure with us. Let’s hope Ezra does okay in the car tomorrow! We’ll see you next time. 🙂

Today was supposed to be stormy all day, so we made plans to go into town and avoid getting caught outside miles from shelter in a thunderstorm with a baby. Of course that would have made a good blog post, but the amount of stupid stuff I’m willing to do “for the blog” does have its limits.

This morning, though, the weather was great! It was hard to believe that a storm was on the way, but the tornado watch alert on my phone made me wary of hiking too far. We decided to stick to the trails close to our cabin. Our AirBnB is on thirty-eight acres, and there are trails cut all through it. With no other people to run into, that meant it was a great time to bring the dogs. Elvis is almost totally deaf, and he gets really nervous around dogs who aren’t in our family. We don’t usually take him places where he’ll run into other dogs, but today was his day! He LOVED hiking on the trails and sniffing around everywhere and peeing on things (so the entirety of this thirty-eight acres now belongs to Elvis).

We tried to bring Penny too, but that was a little trickier. You see, last week she got injured AT THE VET’S OFFICE (that’s a long story), and she’s on strict crate rest for two weeks. It’s been so sad to bring her on vacation and leave her in the crate so much. She looks really pathetic when she’s in her crate – just look at this picture. Wouldn’t you want to take her out too?

Anyway, we do have a doggy stroller (thank you, garage sale). We brought it so we could push Penny around without having her walk and re-injure herself. We tried pushing it around on the trails, but the terrain was so uneven that it was hard to push the stroller, and all the jostling around couldn’t have been good for her hurt hip and back. So her walk ended up being pretty short, but at least she got some fresh air and got to see the world!

Ruby didn’t get to go into the woods with us because Rex said she’d think she was hunting and would be bananas on a leash. For her outside time, she sat in the lawn and tried to avoid Boomer’s advances. Boomer is Lauren’s foster pug who hasn’t been neutered, and he’s in LOVE with Ruby. He goes completely nuts around her. He was on the balcony gazing down at her lovingly when we wouldn’t let him be around her. But I mean, who can blame him? She’s a pretty dog.

As we were hiking back to the cabin from our trail hike, we heard thunder roll. The storm was heading our way after all.

We went into town and had a delicious lunch at the Olde Dutch House. It reminded me very much of Essenhaus in Shipshewana. It was a buffet full of amazing food. I feel bad for Ezra that he can only have milk, because he missed out on some good eats today.

While at lunch, I got a text from our AirBnB host that the power was out at our cabin due to the storm. Oh no! We decided to stay in town for a while rather than head back right away to a cabin with no power. Plus, the Olde Dutch House was right next to an antique mall. Who doesn’t love an antique mall?

We walked around the antique mall, and Rex pulled me aside and said, “This is the largest collection of junk I have ever seen in my life.” There were over 100 vendors! And sure, some stuff was junk, but isn’t that kind of in the eye of the beholder? There were super cool things and super weird things too. Here – I got you this for Christmas:

He he just kidding. I did buy a couple things, though. I’m very excited about the fifty-cent postcards, and I bought a bunch of those. I’m going through a “sending out postcards” phase, where I find postcards at my house that I bought during various trips and send them to people. I usually say something like, “I’m not really in the Bahamas, but this card was cool…” Who doesn’t love getting a postcard? And the person doesn’t care that I wasn’t really in the Bahamas. It’s mail that’s not a bill – that’s fun! I found the weirdest postcards I could. For example, here’s a postcard of a well in West Virginia.

Here’s one of this weird ancient family.

Who wouldn’t want to get one of those postcards in the mail?? And it’s not like there’s some expiration date that won’t let me send old postcards. A postcard is a postcard is a postcard. Slap a stamp on it, and POOF! It will go to the right house. So fun.

We also found a baby doll that was almost the same size as Ezra. Lauren and Rex matched.

It was unsettling how many of these “antiques” were things from my childhood. I’m not THAT old, am I?? But there were lots of beanie babies, Furbies (oh my word remember FURBIES?!), and other nineties toys that I probably have lurking in a box somewhere.

We were supposed to have homemade pizzas for dinner, but because we didn’t know how long we’d be without power, we bought Subway instead. It poured rain all the way home — the kind of rain where it’s so loud pounding the windshield that you can barely hear each other talk. The windshield wipers were working up a sweat, and Rex could still barely see the road.

When we got back to the cabin, the power had been restored! Yay! The clocks were blinking, which confirmed the power was off at one point, but happily we were all set for the evening. After Ezra went to bed, we went in the hot tub again.

Once we were wrinkled prunes, we came back inside. Lauren went to bed a couple minutes ago, I’m writing to you, and Rex is watching more MMA (Lineker vs. Kim, if you must know).

Tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful, so we’ll probably head back to the trails, but our inside day turned out to be tons of fun.

The plan was to go hiking today. We got up in the morning and gave the littles their breakfast (with French toast casserole for us – YUMMY).

After that, I can’t even really explain what happened. We meant to get hiking…but somehow we didn’t get to the trail until 2:03. Micah would need something, then Ezra would need something, then it started raining, then Ezra needed to eat again, then he needed a nap, then Lynn and Larson had to pack up (they had to leave today because of their work schedule). Then Micah needed a snack, then Ezra needed another diaper change and — would you look at that? — he peed through his diaper and needed a clothes change too. Again. Then the dogs needed to go out again. Lauren was very patient while our babies and dogs took up all this time. Good thing she had schoolwork to do. Here she is getting study tips from her foster pug, Boomer.

We also had fun chatting while taking care of the littles. It definitely wasn’t a waste of a morning. And after yesterday was so busy, it was nice to have a bit of a slower pace around the cabin today.

We did, however, finally get to hiking. We went to a place called “Lower Falls,” and Rex set up his camera to get a picture. Then two girls decided they wanted to go swimming at the falls, even though it was against the rules. So Rex and I sat there and waited for a clear shot while Lauren went and snapped this picture of them swimming right in front of the “no swimming” sign:

Rex did finally get his picture, though!

Lauren picked up a stray Coke bottle out of the water because how could people just LITTER, you know?? How environmentally unfriendly. We hiked it all the way back to the Visitor Center. #onlyLauren

Once back at the Visitor Center, we decided to go on another hike out to a lake. It was a longer hike, but much less populated. We had this really great idea that we would get out to the lake and feed Ezra while overlooking the natural beauty…but Ezra imploded with about a half mile to go. Blast! Luckily we came across a bench, and Rex fed him. We weren’t sure if he was hot, so we took off his outfit just in case (Ezra’s outfit, that is. Not Rex’s). Ezra seemed very happy as he was being burped. With a full tummy and a clean bottom, the break was over. Back on the trail!

As we were hiking on the trail, we came upon this buck. It was walking near the trail, and we followed it for a while. Rex kept trying to snap pictures, but he didn’t have his long lens with him. Bummer. So he said all the pictures he got were junk, but I disagree. For example, look at this one. Junk? I think NOT!

We did finally make it out to the lake. Unlike the lower falls, which had a lot of tourists, there were only two other people out at the lake, and they were far away and didn’t even talk to us. It was almost like we had the place to ourselves! It was beautiful. Ezra, unfortunately, fell asleep before we got there, so he didn’t really appreciate the beauty.

We stopped at Grandma Faye’s restaurant and grocery store for ice cream on our way back to the cabin. After all that hiking, we sure were tired. We decided to watch some TV.

Well, that’s not STRICTLY true. We didn’t just “watch TV.” We watched MMA fighting. And by “watched” I mean I wrote in my blog and Rex watched the fighting. He was very excited about the fight because of his jiu jitsu training. It was Muscemechi vs Brooks? Or something? Look, you don’t really care who was fighting. I can tell. I’m going to move on.

After the fight, Rex made a campfire down at the fire pit. We sat out there chatting until our eyes became droopy and we were all practically falling asleep in our chairs. Then it was time to turn in for the night.

Tomorrow is supposed to have storms, so we might have to get creative on what we’re going to do. No matter what it is, I bet it will be fun!

Today was the day of the Bigfoot Festival. It started bright and early with the Bigfoot 5k for Lauren and me (we couldn’t convince the others that paying money to go exercise on vacation sounded really fun. Weird). To get to the course on time and get our registration stuff, we had to leave the cabin by 7:00. The sunrise was beautiful over the Appalachian Foothills, and the winding drive went by quickly. I had a bit of pre-race jitters. Four months ago, I was in rough shape. I wrecked my back during labor with Ezra, and it was hard to even walk. Now I was going to try to run a 5k? Could I really do it? Or would my postpartum body poop out on me and leave me walking?

I love running, and pre-pregnancy me loved 5ks. I’m very slow at running, but I still love it. On our way to the race, I said, “I really hope I beat at least one person,” and Lauren said, “Well then hopefully there are some walkers.” Oh boy. I mean, I’m slow, but I’m hopefully faster than the WALKERS.

Lauren and I were a little disappointed that no one at the race was dressed up like Bigfoot. They all looked like relatively normal runner people. The race was a beautiful course through the woods and by a river, and I totally think the race organizers should have put someone in a gorilla costume in the woods to run around and scare people. Oh well. Maybe next year.

I’m very proud to say that I RAN the entire race, and I got a time that made me feel proud. I’m not going to post it here because you’ll probably scoff at me and call me a slowpoke, but did YOU push a baby out of your body just a few months ago?? No? Then have a seat. The point is that I ran the race, okay? 3.1 miles without walking one step. And I also beat many people (not just the walkers, LAUREN!), so ha. I got 44th place out of 106 people. Not bad! I felt very strong and proud of myself for this accomplishment.

After the 5k, we went back to the cabin for a great breakfast with the rest of our friends. Then it was time to put on our matching Bigfoot Shirts and head to the festival!

The festival was a lot of fun. The streets were closed to traffic to make space for all the Bigfoot vendors. I bought an overpriced baby Sasquatch toy, but it was totally worth it because when I shook it in front of Ezra’s face and said, “BABY SQUATCH!!!” he thought it was really funny. And I’d spend a lot of money to hear my sweet baby laugh. So now I keep shaking the toy and saying, “BABY SQUATCH!!!” to make him laugh again, and my friends are probably getting really sick of it.

What I’ll probably remember the most from the festival was how chaotic it was to try to take care of two littles while also attending a festival. I sat on a random sidewalk to feed Ezra and accidentally sat in spilled formula, getting my black shorts all white.

Rex ducked into some alleyway to change Ezra’s diaper (because even a four month old needs privacy? I guess?), and Ezra had a massive blowout that got his onesie and his jeans covered in poop. Gross!

Lynn and Larson power walked the stroller to try to get Micah to go to sleep, and when he wouldn’t they said they had to leave the festival to take him home for a nap. Then, as they walked back to their car, guess what? He fell asleep in the stroller. So they came back to the festival to meet up with us, but then he woke up again. Argh! It was a little chaotic. But we enjoyed the live music and shopping, and there was lots of weird Bigfoot stuff. Also, the people watching was prime. There were some really weird weirdos, but there are probably other people saying the same about us: “There was this group of people in MATCHING BIGFOOT SHIRTS. EVEN THEIR BABY HAD ONE.”

Luckily, we got some good pictures before Micah had to go nap and Ezra pooped everywhere. Please note that we also have matching strollers, which we didn’t know until we got to the festival.

On the way home, Ezra fell asleep snuggling Baby Squatch. It was pretty cute.

When we got back, we regrouped and headed out to go hiking! We did the Old Man’s Cave hike today – it was beeeeaaautiful. There were storybook bridges, caves, and waterfalls. I could go on and on, but how about I skip ahead to the pictures so you can see for yourself?

Dinner was tacos (yummy!), and then we hung out in the cabin’s hot tub and had great conversation until late into the night. We certainly packed a lot into the day, and I’m excited to see what we do tomorrow!

Summer is my favorite season of the year. If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that I usually have epic adventures brewing in the summertime. This summer, my epic adventure has been raising an infant. It’s been a totally different genre of adventure, but I love it. I didn’t plan any travel for this summer because I didn’t know how Rex, Ezra, and I would be adjusting to life as a family of three. Turns out the adjustment has been going a lot better than I expected. We joke that Ezra is a “magical baby” because he sleeps through the night and is generally a happy camper. Therefore, since we had things somewhat under control on the parenting front, I started getting that travel itch again.

I go back to school a week from Monday, so this is the last week of summer vacation/maternity leave. It’s my last chance to get out of town before I’m back to work, so it’s the perfect time for a vacation getaway. Therefore, literally as I type this, our little family of three is on our way to the fabulous, exotic land of…

OHIO!

Okay, maybe it’s not that exotic. We didn’t want to go to anywhere TOO far away with the little guy. Plus, we keep hearing about how Hocking Hills in Ohio is so beautiful and a “must see,” but we’ve never made our way down there because, well, it’s just Ohio. How exciting can it be?

So far, we’re not off to the BEST start. We’re leaving three hours later than we planned. Packing for a baby and three dogs is no joke. We have our entire truck full of stuff, and I had to leave some items behind. But like, what if Ezra feels like swinging?? We didn’t bring his swing OR his rocker, so he’s just gonna be out of luck. What if he wants to take a dip in a lake? No giant duck pool floatie. We can’t bring all his stuff, I guess, but I certainly tried.

So we’re on our way to Ohio with a truck about as full as it can be, two dogs kennels and a car seat in the back, and somewhat frazzled parents up front. When we pulled out of the driveway Ezra was, as Rex says, “screaming his bloody head off,” so I was nervous that this would be a VERY long trip. But he’s sleeping now, so keep your fingers crossed that he stays asleep for a while. We’re meeting up with our friends Lynn, Larson, their son Micah, and Lauren when we get there, so there’s your cast of characters for this vacation’s blog.

As I did my research for this trip, I came upon a very interesting fun fact: the Bigfoot Festival is in town this weekend! I texted my friends and told them the happy news, hoping that they would want to go. If I can’t sniff out a good blog post at a BIGFOOT FESTIVAL, then I’m no sort of writer at all. Luckily, my friends quickly agreed to go. Then Lauren took it to the next level and suggested that we all get Bigfoot shirts to wear to the festival. That way we’ll look like real enthusiasts. I’ve never felt the need to portray myself as a “Bigfoot enthusiast,” but now I suddenly do. This week we all ordered matching Bigfoot shirts, and I even got a Bigfoot onesie for Ezra. We’re the real deal. So ready to celebrate Bigfoot.

I wonder what Ezra is going to think of his first family vacation? I hope he comes back and reads this someday when he’s grown up. He’ll be some travel influencer who goes all over the world, and he’ll say, “I’ve always felt drawn to Ohio… something about it feels happy and safe to me.” And then he can read this blog and know it was his very first trip of hopefully many.

We’re looking forward to five days of fun, hiking, dogs, and BIGFOOT. I hope you’ll come along with us and follow this blog. I can’t wait to see what exciting things I get to write about! But even if you hate my writing (which, then, why are you here?), there will be pictures of Ezra, and that’s enough reason to come back to this blog and check things out. Here he is in the sunglasses I bought him for this trip:

As I said, he’s a pretty happy little dude (when he’s not screaming his bloody head off). I’m so excited for some quality family time with each other and with our friends. And who knows? Maybe Ohio is going to be exciting after all.

EDIT: Okay, it’s now 8:52 PM. We are in Ohio and settled into our cabin. I regret to inform you that Ezra does NOT like road trips. He was okay for an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and then he decided it was time to be out of the car seat. He wouldn’t stop crying, so we stopped to watch some trucks at a rest stop.

He was happy to watch trucks, so we probably should have just stayed there and camped for the week at the rest stop. We eventually had to put him back in the car seat, and he didn’t like that. Sorry buddy!! I wish we could have explained how road trips work: you’re uncomfortable for a little while, but then you’re somewhere NEW and EXCITING! He wasn’t really getting it. He was mostly upset. Poor Ezra! We tried to make plenty of stops, but I don’t think we did enough for Ezra.

Sure enough, as soon as we got to the cabin, we took him out of the car. His little tearful face got a glimmer of hope in it, like maybe he wasn’t doomed to be in the car seat forever. I sort of felt like a terrible mom. If only Ezra had a blog, his would go something like this:

WE SPENT THE WHOLE DAY IN THE CAR I THOUGHT I WOULD NEVER ESCAPE. THE SUN CAME IN THE WINDOW AND HIT ME RIGHT SMACK DAB IN THE FACE. And then there were some trucks. I liked the trucks. AND THEN I WAS BACK IN THE CAR AND IT WAS TERRIBLE. THIS WAS PROBABLY THE WORST DAY OF MY WHOLE LIFE.

Now we’re finally hanging out as adults, two baby monitors watching the littles go to sleep. I’d better sign off and actually enjoy the day! Adios!