::mama fishes::

(I drew the heart, he drew everything else)
See why I love this boy? Aren't those the cutest fish you've ever seen?

::still dry enough::

Just a quick update on our status out here in the Ocean State today:
It's been raining a LOT and evidently there has been some river flooding--not just this week, but a week or so ago too. Lucky for us weren't not near any rivers--we're much closer to the bay than anything else where we are now. So we've just been seeing piles and piles of rain. And Sultan is going nuts stuck inside! Luckily he's good at "holding it" if you know what I mean.
And Max's school just got cancelled for today--that's the first cancellation due to rain I've ever been involved in. Crazy!

Anyway, just thought I'd let everybody know that we're dry enough. No flooding here. We are glad we're not living in our last house though--that basement would flood if you spat on it basically. So I can only imagine it's horrible right now. We don't have a basement here and so far we're all dry inside. Hopefully it stays that way. And hopefully the rain stops soon for all the poor people who are dealing with flooding!

A couple of not particularly interesting pictures, just to illustrate:

Out front with the little river running down the gutter.

The backyard is basically a swamp with pools of standing water. Luckily our soil is really sandy out here so it doesn't make for a ton of mud. Usually anyway.
You can see the grass is starting to green up in these pictures. It's about time!

::staycation activity #5--swimming and a huge shake::

On monday we drove up North of Boston so that we could go to an "indoor water park." One of those places attached to a hotel. This one had a bunch of water slides--from little kid ones to ones that were too big for Max, splash park areas, a lazy river and fountain things. Anyway, all kinds of stuff. And it was nice to be someplace warm for a while. I don't have any pictures of us playing in the water, but that's ok. Some things are better imagined anyway.
Max had a blast, and after four hours still wasn't even close to wanting to leave! He told us he wants to move to Massachusetts when he grows up, in order to be close to that place.
We told him that there are other places like that--hopefully a little closer to (our future) home.
Such a silly little boy.

Before our waterpark fun we went and had some delicious burgers. Max had the option of upgrading his drink to a shake, so since were on "vacation" we told him he could. It was HUGE and he was delighted.

Burger places are the best!

And that concludes my staycation report. Fun stuff.

::staycation activity #4--kite flying::

I don't know why it's taken me so long to post this! Maybe it's just the volume of photos, but that doesn't usually slow me down.
Anyway, here I am.
On Saturday we met some friends at a park in Newport to do some kite flying. We've been to this park a couple times before. There are always lots of kites flying and it's really fun.
It was nice nice weather that day, high 60s where we live. Unfortunately in Newport it was quite a bit cooler, but the sun was still out, so that was nice.


Lots of people had their kites high up in the air--the were eating lunch with their kites tethered to the ground next to them.
This made it a little bit embarrassing when we couldn't get ours up. We could get ours up about halfway to the others and then they would just crash. We're definitely no kite experts.



But we are experts at picnics, deserts and kids and dogs. So we were having fun anyway.


The kids chased each other around a whole bunch--Zach stood in for the little brother that Max doesn't have and tried to drive him crazy. It was very funny to watch.


There was also some lacrosse practice going on, as you can see in the background.

Then, finally when it was starting to get cold and the sun was going down, and we were in the midst of some potty emergencies, the kites finally went up. Well, ours never really did, but our friends' did, and they were awesome,


This particular kite looked like an army jet and was flown using two hands. It was super fun to fly. It felt like you were really controlling something strong up there.

Max kept wanting to fly it, but every time I gave it to him it would nosedive.

I think what happened is that finally when it was getting cold all the people cleared out and we got to use some of the "good air."
Here's our kite, finally sort of up.


Fun stuff.

It's such a pretty place. We're definitely hoping to go back again soon. Maybe it'll be warmer next time.

::megs::

We're going to take a short break from the Staycation coverage (it's over now by the way, Kris is back at work, boo hoo.) to talk about Megan for a minute.
Megan is one of my oldest and dearest friends. We grew up together. We lived down the street from each other our whole lives and really are much more like cousins than anything else. We had tons of fun together, except for any of those times that I made her cry.
Megan is hilarious and fun and crazy. And even better, today is her birthday, yay!
This is Megan back in the day. She and her brother came over to see us on Christmas day. I think this was 1988 or 1987? Not sure. Anyway, I had just gotten my very first camera, and I think this may have been my very first picture ever taken.

Awesome, right?
And here's Megan at girl's camp. She's making one of her classic photo faces.

Oh Megan, you must never stop with your faces. Never ever.

But to the point. When I was in UT I got to visit Megan. She has three adorable little kiddos. I got to hang out for a while and take some pictures.
Look at how beautiful Megan is!

And check out how cute her kids are.
Maggie:

Will: (well I'm pretty sure this is Will anyway)

Here are the boys (Will & Coleman) getting ready for lunch. Megs has developed an excellent method for this. Strip down and eat.

This is a really good idea because twin boys + pbjs = the following:


Sticky, messy, cute little twins.

Megan, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Love you tons!!

::staycation activity #3--practicing::

I love to see these two guys playing together. Even though getting Max to play what you want him to is a little like pulling teeth (well, really I should ask Kris about that, but that's what I think.)
Max is the king of procrastinators. He'd much rather play anything--anything else in the world than what you want him too.
But that's ok. When he finally plays with Kris it's really fun. He's getting better and better too.

::staycation activity #2--sultan on the tramp::

Whenever Max is out playing in the backyard and gets up on the trampoline, Sultan always looks at him with this kind of sad and wistful glance. I always think he's wishing he could be up there bouncing around.
But does he really?
On Saturday we thought we'd test it out. See if he really liked the tramp or not. When Kris was growing up his dog would hop on tramp whenever anybody got on it and bounce around driving everybody crazy.

So Kris grabbed that lovely section of fencing that's just been sitting around making our yard look so nice, and made a little ramp. Sultan didn't think the ramp looked like much fun, but he went up it anyway after a little encouragement.
He walked around a bit and then jumped off.
Then we asked him to do it again, and he did.
He was rewarded by some pats, and he liked that.
Then he jumped off--not via the ramp, but just from the bouncy part of the trampoline to the ground.
THEN we asked him to get up again. And he completely bypassed the ramp. He really didn't like that ramp. He just jumped straight up from the ground to the tramp! It was quite impressive.
And then he spent some time reveling in the love and attention he got for being such an amazing stunt dog.




Then, after he rolled around and got the trampoline all hairy he lept off. Probably never to get up again. He's a bit of a pleaser. If everybody's cheering him on he'll do something he would never otherwise do.
But we don't care. He was awesome with his leaping. Way to go Sultan!

::staycation activity #1--waterfire::

Kris has monday and tuesday of this coming week off. We were dying to go someplace exciting and do something fun, but sometimes that kind of stuff just doesn't fit into the budget. No matter how hard you try to squish and squeeze and stretch things.
So we decided on a "staycation." We decided we'd commit to doing a bunch of fun things and not let anything talk us out of it.
So, to kick off our long staycation weekend we went to Waterfire.
You might be wondering what the heck "Waterfire" is. Well, I'm going to tell you.
It's this weird thing they do in downtown Providence. It's like a publicity/entertaining the public kind of thing. And when we first moved it it was all anybody could talk to us about. Everyone we met, when they heard we'd just moved to Providence, would say, "Oh, have you seen that watahfayah yet? Oh man, you gotta go and see that watahfayah."
We didn't ever do it last year. It just looked like such a pain to park and it was always past Max's bedtime. And if you think I'm wasting a babysitter on watahfayah you are sadly mistaken.

On friday night they were having a special NCAA tourney edition Waterfire. It's because some of the games have been played in the Dunkin' Doughnuts Center downtown, so I guess there are probably some extra tourists. Anyway, in fitting with our Staycation attitude, we thought we'd go down there and check it out. That way we could say we'd been before we moved. Since, evidently, it's so darn important.

So what happens is, you join a bunch of other people. Tons of people. Down by the river somewhere. There's new agey kind of music playing over a bunch of big speakers someplace. And there are some pyre looking things in the river with piles of wood on top. Then some people come down the river in a boat and light the wood piles.


Max thought it was interesting.


So interesting in fact that I kept a tight hold on his hood most of the time we were down there.

We walked over towards another part of the river where there was a big circle of fires already lit. It was pretty cool looking, but the wind kept blowing the smoke around. It was kind of like the campfire smoke problem, but on a much larger scale.

Anyway, there was a weird guy there, shirtless and bald except for a long ponytail. He was swinging fire around at the end of chains. He was pretty much the most exciting thing about the whole night. They put him on one of the boats and he went around the circle, swinging his fire as he went.


We watched him go around the circle and then Max had to go to the bathroom. And I was glad, because really there was nothing else to see! Somehow though, the Waterfire was still going to go on for about 3 more hours.
It's a strange event. Very odd.
But of course, it's great we went. And the weather was so nice. And the city was pretty in the dark.

(the moon over the big mall)

So there you go. That's Waterfire. Done and done.

::simple pleasures::

It's nice that 99 cents worth of pinwheel and a (slightly freezerburned) creamsicle can make a little boy happy on a sunny afternoon.
I don't think I've ever bought him a pinwheel before--I don't know how that's possible but I think it's true.

(doesn't our yard look so trashy? the dead grass--it'll come alive soon I hope, the kid/dog toys scattered everywhere, the section of fence leaning up against the fence. Oh well, we're renters. It's what we're supposed to do, right?)

::happy st paddy's::

Happy St. Patrick's day to everybody. St. Paddy's day was always fun at my house growing up. My mom's dad's side of the family is Irish, so we had a little something to celebrate. So we always wore lots of green, pinched people and ate some sort of green treat. Or at least I remember eating green treats from time to time.

So here at our house now, we wear green. Max, in fact wore two green shirts, green socks and green underwear. It's always good to be thorough, right?
Nobody in our family got pinched today. We were all nice and green.

Evidently they did a little St. Patrick's style stuff at Max's school too.


It's true. So true. (And so adorable.) If he had a pot of gold he would definitely use it to buy toys with. No question.

As far as treats go, last year I made cupcakes. They were delicious chocolate cupcakes with green frosting and we loved them. But we're trying to eat healthy right now. Nothing ruins eating healthy faster or more effectively than a big batch of delicious chocolate cupcakes.

So no cupcakes. Plus I wasn't into cooking all afternoon since the sun was out. So instead I spent the afternoon out on the deck watching Max play and being sucked into his strange and crazy pretend games. Then after dinner I threw some ice cream, milk and a few peppermint patties into the blender and we had ourselves some mint shakes. Slightly green and totally yummy.

That was our day. We were happy to see the sun and to be wearing green. And happy to be Irish, however low the percentage is in the mix.

In conclusion, here's the 1st attempt to take the photo at the top of the post. I count it as a fail since I had to get the creamsicle out of my hair afterwards. But it's funny.