Roommate weekend: Kansas City

^^Let's call it a night...but first, let's stop and dance here on the steps instead of making it all the way down to the floor at Power and Light District^^

It has been about three years since my last roommate getaway. Too long, right? It was such a lovely weekend with shopping and sushi and fancy girl drinks and beer in 16 oz. glasses and singing loudly to 90s jams and dancing like I was at Drunk Monkey at UNI and eating a most delicious breakfast to end the whole trip on the right note. I might venture to say it was perfect.

 A love letter:

To my former roomies and always friends, so happy to have you ladies in my life. Let's do this kind of thing until we are old and gray. 

And to you, Kansas City, how fun are you? Great shopping, good food, fun nightlife. I shall return to thee. This is my solemn vow.


Travel notes:

Find delicious sushi here.

This place has a fun atmosphere and a tasty brunch.

We took a vacation/went on a trip

You know that saying that if you travel without kids, it's a vacation but if you travel with kids, it's a trip? I wasn't sure what that meant...until a few weeks ago.

We went back to Minnesota for our annual family vacay and it was a flippin' mess. We had some good times but we also had a kid with fever, a baby with fever, and a baby who wouldn't sleep. Fare thee well, my plans for a relaxing day drink. Nope, just day drinking to ease the pain. I kid...mostly. The car ride home was the cherry though. We stopped five times before even hitting the Minnesota/Iowa border! Potty breaks for Dexter, feedings for Evy, crying jags for Evy (and maybe for us too). I tell you what, I like going on this family trip a whole lot but this year really beat me up. It felt like one of those vacations that we'll someday look back on and laugh about. Someday. Not today, but someday.

But by all accounts of my facebook and instagram, it looks like we had the most awesome time ever. Had I not written all this out, you would've thought oh, man those Thiessens have it all, don't they? Bahahaha. The internet: helping craft fake realities one status update at a time.

 The big pool was a little intimidating at first but he warmed up to it eventually.

The turtle mascot bypassed us while we were waiting to register for the turtle race in Nisswa. This is the face of a kid who got snubbed.

 We hunted that turtle down and demanded a photo. We're pretty pleased here.

 Evy and Grandma waiting for the turtle race to start.

 

 Before Dexter caught the big one.

How have your summer travels been? Can you believe it's nearly August already??

P.S. Rest assured next year the Thiessens are about to kick some serious vacation ass, friends.

Back at it

I disappeared more than a few weeks ago. Just plum fell off this blog. Fell off for 87 days to be exact. For some of it I was actually out of town but for most of it I was just here not writing and you know, doing really important things like watching Real Housewives of New Jersey and So you Think you can Dance.

I have returned though! Huzzah and three cheers! And because that there little paragraph just took it right out of me I will now bestow unto you photos of our summer.

May I present the Omaha Zoo, music festivals, family vacation, fireworks, etc. and so forth.

P.S. I also got knocked up again. So there's that.

What Christmas part 2 looked like

Happy 2013! May this year bring our family and yours more tears of joy than sadness. We rang in the new year with our family in Davenport and celebrated Christmas with them. After two sessions of gift opening (I swear it's like those presents were procreating under that tree! He's a lucky duck, this kid!) Dexter left with a trunk full of new toys which was kind of perfect because he's kind of been stuck playing with some real 12 month old kid stuff this past few months and all of us were getting pretty bored (but not bored enough to buy him new toys ourselves ;)).

We also hit up the Children's Museum in Bettendorf. It had been one of those things we kept saying we should go do and we finally up and did it. It was totally worth it, especially for a kid that's been cooped up with his mom because snow and her haven't been on speaking terms since 2004. While being smaller and having less activities than Omaha's Children Museum, (which was my first tour of children's museums and therefore makes me an expert, ahem),it definitely is a perfect spot for crazy toddlers that like to run around without purpose or direction. Your kid wants to run up and down a bridge while another kid roars at him like a dinosaur every time he passes? Strange but totally acceptable, cute even. If your kid's into that kind of thing, this is the spot for you. There's a lot of ignoring social boundaries and norms around this place, you know the typical toddler/preschooler hijinx that makes everyone judge everyone else's parenting. It's good wholesome fun and oooh, look a water table!

 

     
P.S. You know what's not wholesome fun? This game which the grown-ups played three times while Dexter and Owen were all snug in their beds with visions of sugar plum fairies dancing in their little boy heads.

Omaha Vacation

If you could dream up the most family friendly vacation ever it would probably include the zoo, a kiddie pool at the hotel that at max is 3 feet deep and an interactive museum that could only be described as controlled chaos. Our mini vacation to Omaha was a great success with lots of quality time with our friends and family.

I am now going to picture blast you in the face.

We spent Friday at the zoo trying to get Dexter to look at the animals at the exact moment that they were walking by. We had varied degrees of success. Those tigers and lions were lazy, sleeping underneath a tree and trying to be generally invisible to toddlers so that was kind of a bummer. But we did see this puma who put on a pretty decent show for us.

And there were sprinklers all around the zoo just begging to be run through since it was hot, hot, hot. We don't need no stinkin' big cats, right? Sprinklers are boss.

 So is this goat. 

And then Saturday rolled around and it was off to the Omaha Children's Museum which I totally and completely endorse. If you have a toddler, get thee to the Children's Museum stat. They are free to run around like no impulse control, crazy little people and you have the peace of mind that everything in the room is meant to be manhandled and climbed upon. You're tired of saying "no" all day long and redirecting and distracting, I get that. This is the land of yes! Yes, climb on that! Yes, pick that up! Yes, try that! The yes to no ratio in this place is in your favor, you tired parent, you.   

PICTURE BLAST!

Even when he's not eating...he's eating.

My instructions were to "hug like a Sudsy" and this is what he came up with.

 

Lettuce, really? I thought I taught you better than that.

Other travel details of note:

We had lunch at the Upstream Brewery and congratulated ourselves with a beer for being such great parents who take their kids to do fun things like the zoo and museum. I got talked out of the Peach Harvest Wheat since according to the waiter they were all "pretty disappointed by it" and talked into the I don't know Tropical Saison. Verdict: wine without being wine. Or as Josh said, "tastes kind of boozy."

We stayed at the Best Western Kelley Inn which is a little off the beaten path of the touristy Old Market area but it had a pretty perfect sized pool for little kids. All the guests we saw were families so word must be out that this is the place to be if you want other understanding hotel patrons that don't mind crying babies and those no impulse control toddlers I was telling you about earlier.

I definitely feel comfortable dubbing this vacation a success. But for future reference, I do have one question for you well traveled parents out there...what do you do when you put the kids down for bed when you're staying at a hotel? I don't think Dexter would go to sleep if we stayed in the room with him...which is why we made our own parent's lounge (and by parents lounge, I mean sitting on the floor in our PJs with a cooler and Chex Mix because not only are we awesome parents that take their kids to do fun things like the zoo and museum but we're also super classy), at the end of the hallway by the elevator. Yeah, we were those weirdos. The pool seemed a little far away from our room and I don't know if a monitor would've reached that far. Do you leave your kids?

To eat, to drink, to listen

Happy weekend! This weekend is especially special because it's Bix! Huzzah and three cheers! And now I present to you to eat, to drink, to listen-Davenport style-

To eat:
Josh is running the race which means tonight we get to feast on Grinders. The ravioli is the go to when a seven mile race is calling your name, however I do feel it's worth mentioning that if you are a simple girl looking for a no fuss sandwich then the Gondola would be an excellent choice. I had my first gondola when my sister-in-law took me there before their wedding and it was life changing. For reals. The bread's sweetness adds a little something extra.

To drink:
Have I mentioned that Davenport is a place where it seems no one is married or has kids and everyone is out until the wee hours of the morning? You could call it Neverland. The Las Vegas of Iowa, as Josh aptly named it during our last visit. So at some point during this weekend, we will likely be out with the rest of the revelers trying to prove that we are indeed one of the natives and pretending that we aren't keenly aware that there is a little boy at home that doesn't care how late we were out. And so, while doing as the Romans do, it is likely that a Nancy Reagan (Soco and lime-I think our friends named it?) will land squarely in front of one of us.

To listen:

Lest we forget the true meaning of Bix, here's this:

Summer vacation

Hello, hello! Back from our vacation in Chetek and it was just lovely. We spent our days eating, drinking, chitchatting, swimming, badmintoning, sleeping and fishing. The way vacations were meant to be spent. Vacations like this remind me of my past life as a camp counselor. Soffe shorts and sun, a day or two without a shower, hooded sweatshirts at night, mosquito bites. Ugh, mosquito bites! I hate having this sweet meat that attracts them so but it's a reminder that for one brief week I was a woman of leisure. 

We stayed at this resort.  We aren't attached to it since there were a few things that we thought were missing (i.e. a sufficient water heater-and we're quick camp showerers, I swear!-kitchen basics-like how do you have an old school egg beater but no cutting boards?, and where in the world was the fire pit?)

It did have a playground that kept the boys entertained and oh, the lake! That lake was about the coolest thing Dexter has ever laid eyes on. It was like Romeo first spotting Juliet from across the room. Each morning he looked for it hoping that it didn't disappear on him while he slept. He ran right off a big step and skinned his knee trying to get to that lake. He now says "ow-wee?"  Like me and my mosquito bites, that skinned knee is a war wound, a symbol of a vacation well spent.   

So the search for a 2013 vacation spot has commenced. Because we must do this again sometime, my dear.

  

Davenport and Dexter

This weekend I got a glimpse into what a world where I was the only one that had a toddler would look like. And it wasn't pretty. We visited Davenport for a graduation party and Josh left early for a bachelor party. At the graduation party, there were no other little kids and I spent a good amount of time following Dexter trying to guard him from the street, dog poop and dousing himself in Tiki torch oil. We left with a scraped knee and only one major meltdown under our belts. So I suppose I'll count that as a win. The sigh that I let out after I put him to bed could be heard around the world.

He is just a busy boy. A shy busy boy. I forget how bashful he is when he gets around a big group of unfamiliar people. Oh, he smiles and crinkles his little nose which makes you think that he won't mind at all if you hold him...but you're wrong. Not soon after, that bottom lip of his comes out and he can't decide whether to smile or cry. Crying usually wins out. But only for a second. Yes, he takes awhile to get his bearings in unfamiliar places. And we usually only have two days in Davenport! He was all warmed up and then off we went, back to Des Moines. I've been thinking about making one of Pinhole Press' Book of Names and Faces. After all, there's a lot of folks to remember!

The running around grandma and grandpa's and all the people and the walking a fine line between giggles and tears really wears a guy out. He took a six hour nap. You read that correctly, SIX hours! Who does that? Hour after hour passed and I was having an internal battle on whether to wake him up or not but you know what they say about sleeping babies and so I didn't. And would you believe it if I told you that he slept through the night also? I know, I'm a lucky girl. I won't make it a habit of tempting the sleep gods though. I'm no fool. It has to be a growth spurt.

And here's the picture I took of him today, one day A.D. (After Davenport) and he's still recovering.

     

Vegas aka Joshie's bday aka Jaga bomb, Jaga bomb, Jaga bomb aka girl meets moleskin

We took our first long trip away from the Dexter baby a few weekends ago to celebrate Josh and his buddy BJ turning the dirty 30. We ate (Spago, Todd English P.U.B.), we drank (and that's where the Jagerbombs come in), we gambled (Josh lurves craps, I found a seat at the roulette table), we hung out by the pool. I have no photos of these events so you'll just have to take my word for it.

I also learned a valuable lesson about pretending to be something you're not. In an effort to look the part of someone that willingly stays up after 10 p.m., I decided to wear heels the first night; a practice that is reserved for weddings, work meetings and walks that are less than .1 miles. But hey, I thought, it's Vegas and I'm on vacation and I have this fancy miniskirt and won't I look so hot in these high heels in this fancy miniskirt?! And then we walked...and we walked...and we walked. And then I thought: Lora, you eeediot (because sometimes in my head I talk like Ren from Ren & Stimpy), that fancy miniskirt would be a lot hotter if you weren't hobbling around like Quasimodo! After that catastrophic miscalculation, I landed myself in flip flops and flat sandals the rest of the weekend and also was introduced to moleskin, which for some reason sounds kind of dirty to me, but it's actually just a miracle blister reliever.      

One photo that I managed to take from Josh's birthday dinner.

Boji with baby

We survived our first family vacation (sans Sudsy-he went to summer camp)! I have to say that traveling and vacationing with a baby is a little different than when it was just the two of us. If it was the two of us, I probably could've titled this post Boji with Booze. However, there was little of that to be had this year, which I suppose is just another sign that we are indeed grown-ups now.

Packing was a mess. You would've thought that we were moving! If Sudsy wanted to go, he would have had a rough ride since he would've had to wedge himself between the pack and play and the exersaucer. If I had to do it all over again, I would have left behind the Bumbo. (I know, like that would've greatly improved the jam-packed car situation!) I think our Bumbo works okay at home but it definitely went untouched for the majority of our trip. I believe Ben used it the most as a squishy step stool.

Beach Day One went fairly well. Dexter got very adventurous and had his first dip in the lake.


After that, he proceeded to take a nice long snooze on our beach towel. I wasn't sure if I was suppose to sit with him and watch him sleep or just let him hang out by himself at the public beach and join the rest of the group in the water. This is just one of the many is this okay? moments as I've had as a new mom. Since we were one of two other groups at the beach that morning, I headed for the water, (not without a little reassurance that it indeed was okay from the other girls) and of course by the time the older kids wanted snacks and the other girls had gotten out of the lake, Dex was still sound asleep. He ended up taking a pretty long nap on Beach Day Two too so Josh and I figure all we need to do is get him a lake to get him to nap better. Haha.

Other things we did:

• Taco House for lunch
• Bought Dexter his very own personalized piggy bank. Get to saving, son!
• Watched the older boys ride a couple of rides at the little Arnold's Park amusement park
  
• Ate...a lot
  

All the kids on our last night of vacation. Those older boys are just fascinating.

Hiatus

When you're on hiatus, you get to...

celebrate your husband's 10 year high school reunion,

travel to Ohio to see old friends,

witness the joy on your dog's face when you give him a new bed for his third birthday,

and encourage stunts like this...



Apologies to all of our avid readers for my long absence! I know how you count on this blog to get you through your day ;)