Summer Vacation!

July 28-August 2nd

We took our first official summer vacation this year! Where, you ask? To see the family, of course! We're not doing any cool adventurous things until Seth's either old enough to appreciate it or old enough to pawn off on a Grandma.

Because our either (or both) of our cars could die at any given moment, we decided to be merciful to them and drive a rental car instead.

Oh, how I miss the days when Seth would just fall asleep whenever we put him in the carseat. Those days are past. He was decent, but not great. There was definitely some screaming and not nearly as much sleeping as we hoped for. We're praying that by Christmas he'll be more interested in watching things on his portable DVD player. Right now he just wants to push the buttons and throw it on the floor...

We had a great time visiting the Bloods. We kicked poor Joanna out of her room, and Seth kicked Timmy out of his (we all sleep much better if we sleep in different rooms). Seth had all the entertainment a kid could ever hope for and a fabulous set of stairs to practice crawling up and down. And I had all the tomatoes I could eat. So, so good.

Generally we just relaxed at home (where Joanna repeatedly trashed me at various Wii sports), but we did manage to make it to the wave pool the day before we left.We weren't sure how Seth would like it--the waves at the beach were a little much for him. He loved the water...until the waves started. Then he clung to Jon with his sharp little claws. Luckily we soon realized that as long as he was on the inner tube when the waves hit, he was happy. We all took turns alternating floating with Seth and going down the slides. So much fun!
I would just like to say that Timmy is a big wuss who won't dive into the deep end. And he definitely did not fool me into jumping into the water with a phony "let's see who can jump the farthest" contest.

Friday morning we loaded poor Seth back into his carseat and headed to Charlotte to see the Bears (Jon's sister Mary, plus Scott, and Rebekah, who we hadn't met yet). Seth still wasn't a great traveler, but the trip was only 4 hours this time.Rebekah is not only adorable, but possibly the quietest, happiest baby I've ever met. So, of course, Seth had to try to convince Scott and Mary that he was the world's most terrible baby. He had slept like a dream at the Bloods--he was a NIGHTMARE at the Bears. He screamed EVERY TIME we put him down: naps, bedtime, whatever. It didn't matter how tired he was, he would scream until he fell asleep and then wake up screaming. And just to top it off, he would usually degenate into screams when he got tired. Plus he knocked his teeth on their stairs and split his lip open. I spent the whole weekend saying "I swear he's usually a really good baby!" No way they actually believed me.We had a lot of fun with Scott and Mary. We spent the evenings playing games and talking, and we got to eat amazing food every day (Scott, you're my hero). On Saturday Mary took us on a tour of downtown Charlotte so we could see where she works. I have never seen a cleaner, nicer looking city. It was kind of surreal--like they'd cleaned it up for a movie set or something. I would definitely not mind living there.

Monday we took a short, one-hour flight back to Baltimore where Marah (who had been home all alone while we were gone) picked us up. And Seth has been an angel ever since we got home. I'm totally not making that up, Scott & Mary.

Thanks so much Bloods and Bears! We'll definitely be making this trip again sometime.