Bucket List 2014 revisited

Let's revisit Bucket list 2014 to see how we did on our adventures.

-Grow own food (Christy)

Our garden was a success for our first year. The girls loved to snack on strawberries and basil leaves while playing outside during the spring and early summer. I loved eating tomatoes and cucumber warm and straight off the vine! We still have brussel sprouts currently that have braved the sub zero temps. Can't wait to start another garden in a couple for months. 

-Go strawberry picking (Christy)

Well, the girls went strawberry picking all the time in our backyard, so this item merged into the latter one. 

-Go to 2nd grade (Brady)

Brady has done this in exemplary fashion! She is rock star in second grade. Homework time is now stress free and she is earning lots of high marks on her papers. 

-Go to kindergarten (Reese)

Reese has blown kindergarten out of the water! She loves school and looks forward to the specials and centers everyday. 

-Go to the Children's Museum (Brady)

-Start running (Elli)

Elli kicked hypotonia in the butt and has fully caught up developmentally to her peers!

-Go to DC (Karl)

We made a couple visits to DC last year. Once to visit the memorials and visit good friends that moved to Maryland. Then another time to see the SF Giants in the playoffs. We see lots more DC visits in the coming years once we move to Maryland ourselves. 

Going to see the Giants play was the highlight of the year for Karl. 

-Go overseas (Christy)

Karl and Christy celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary in the grandest of styles.

-Go to the Great Wolf Lodge (Brady and Reese)

This might has been the highlight of the year for the girls!

-Go see Pop Pop's fish (Reese)

Reese (and the other girls) spent their spring break with Pop Pop while her parents explored Europe. Reese had such a great time, she demanded she sleep at Pop Pop's house, while the rest of the family stayed in a very nice beach house!

-Have a Kid free weekend on our Tenth wedding anniversary (Christy)

We spent the weekend of our anniversary in the trees! This might have been my favorite highlight of the year. The team work to manage the course was rewarding and the adventure of it all was exhilarating. 

-Attend an air show (Karl)

Although, Karl looked forward to bringing all his girls to the airshow, rain and traffic caused this to be a somewhat disappointing experience. I don't think Brady was sold on the idea. 

-Bike/run/play at Mt. Trashmore (Christy)

This time around last is least! This was the only item we didn't complete. Mount Trashmore was visited, just not as an entire family and we did bike rides, just not at Mount Trashmore, so all is good in the Orthner World!

Never Say Never

75 degrees, blue skies, happy baby, happy momma, trip to the beach, happy big sisters.

The weather was prefect for our first, and most likely last, trip to the beach this year. Too cold to swim in the water, which meant I didn't have to stress about watching the bigs in the water while I made sure the lil didn't eat sand, or constantly try to wave surf with the bigs.

We had a BLAST! Reese and Elli played in the sand...

...while Brady did a little bit of everything.

A ice cream truck even stopped by, and for the second time EVER, I allowed the girls to pick something out. Not that I hate the idea of ice cream, it is the extreme price tag attached to it.

But $8.25 was worth these smiles. 

Elli had to get in on the fun too, luckily they had the semi-healthy option of a pickle!

Life was good, great really. Then I forgot to use my brain.

Yep, you know those lessons you learn as a kid. Things you know that will never happen to you because your parents made sure you understood what not to do as an adult. Yah, that happened. Yah, never say never.

The beach on base has a part of the dune cut away for the parking lot. So storms constantly wash sand all over the parking lot. You park at the edge of the sand wherever it happens to be that day. So, lets say when you want to leave, you assume that the patch of sand to your immediate left has tar right underneath it. I think you know where this is going. Yep, I, Christy Orthner, got my vehicle stuck in the sand today.

 I four wheeled in sand my whole childhood, I laughed at the stupid people that got their two wheel drive vehicles stuck in the sand my whole childhood. I got my two wheel drive vehicle stuck in the sand in my adulthood. All I could think was, I can't believe I was that stupid. Thankfully, I did know the basics, like as soon as you are stuck, stop pressing the gas, you will only get more stuck, also to let the air out of your tires to create more traction. Five VERY generous people came to my rescue, while they all pushed with all their might, I was able to reverse my way out of there. (Now while I summarized that in a brief sentence, don't think it didn't take like 10 minutes of digging and trying and digging and trying)

The skid plate did take a hit, so I drove straight to the dealership to have them pop it back in. Check out this awful bill I got for the work they had to do!

I couldn't believe my luck! It didn't cost an arm and leg to repair the car, they didn't charge a cent for labor. 

Now, if only I can repair my ego. 

Playing Hookie

So my poor Brady girl keeps spiking a fever at dinner time for the last three nights. She is fine all day (constant checking tells me so) with no symptoms and then BAM at 5:00 spikes to 102 fever. School rules (and common etiquette) state that she must be fever free for 24 hours before returning to school. So essentially during the day she feels fine but has to play hookie. So today we decided to make the most of it.

Let's start off with a lunch date (alfresco) with Daddy on base! I am quite pumped about how adorable this quick picture turned out.

So next I asked the girls if they wanted to go to the park or the beach next. Don't look at the picture below to guess their response...they wanted to go to the park. We headed over to the base park, only to be told they would get 10 minutes of play because they were about to spray the sand with chemicals to kill the grass growing. So we walked to the beach to "just play with the sand". Well, just playing with the sand led to "mommy, can we just put our feet in the water" then to "why can you get so much deeper without your pants getting wet mommy?" to my statement "well, there is no one else on this beach so lets break our modesty rules" I will say I felt rather European...or Russian (thinking back to St. Petersburg and kids of all ages stripping to play in public fountains).

They had a blast, the outside weather was 80 degrees but I am pretty sure the water was just as warm!

Elli hung out in her stroller. Her daily antibiotics make her vulnerable to the sun, so she just enjoyed the breeze. See her on the walkway?!?!?!

What a fun day of playing hookie! Why not make the most of a unpredictable fever and living in a state that has only two seasons: 11.5 months of summer and 2 weeks of winter.

Wordless Wednesday: Happy Winter from FL!

Thanks Cera for the idea...

I have a high paying job and an office with a view

Today (Monday) when I was at the beach, I again appreciated life and how lucky I am to be where I am in my life, thankful to Karl for supporting me as a stay at home mom, and thankful to my girls for being amazing.

So I don't get adult conversation during the day, but I do get this...

and no adult conversation beats this...

 Elli Dew makes an appearance too...

 The girls working on their 'project'

 I love this job!