Woodland Retreat

As I mentioned in my last post, the Lag Liv family headed out for a brief vacation to my aunt and uncle's (and three cousin's) house in The Woodlands this weekend. We headed over on Friday. I basically snuck out of the office after filing my motion. I'd been up working until 2 a.m. the night (morning?) before and felt justified in my 11:30 departure. JP and I packed everything up in less than 30 minutes, picked up the kids from daycare, and headed out. As I thumb-typed furiously for the first hour of the drive, I've never been so glad for blackberries. It was an easy trip, made even easier now that a 3.75 year old Landon has finally expressed interest in the TV and was willing to watch a movie in the car. Oh wow, is that electronic babysitting thing nice.

We arrived in time for dinner on Friday. The kids were perfect, especially with a new set of five adoring fans. Claire seemed to feel pressure to entertain the crowd and showed off all her tricks. When she'd run through her current repertoire, she buried her head in my neck like, "My goodness, what more do these people want?! They just keep clapping for more!" My aunt, uncle, and cousins are very big fans of babies.

After dinner, Landon asked me to put him to bed, making my aunt's jaw drop. Apparently it's unusual for your 3-year-old to say, "Mommy, will you put me to bed please?" at 7:30. I tucked him in the trundle of my youngest cousin's room, with his new Optimus Prime figure he'd adopted from the same youngest cousin, and he went to sleep. By 7:35 Claire was tucked in her pack-and-play in the pool house where we were going to be sleeping. And at 7:36 I was back on the couch in the living room, ready to watch 3 hours of DVR'd royal wedding coverage. (I loved Kate/Catherine's dress, LOVED IT, and I hope it inspires more wedding dress designers to make dresses with sleeves. I hate the ubiquitous strapless gown.)

On Saturday morning we headed to the barn to ride their horses. Now I've lived in Texas for 20 of my 28 years and I've never sat on a horse. I know! We don't have any cacti in our yard either. Pictures from that are coming separately, but we all got to ride one, including Landon, and now JP is planning for stables in our future retirement dream house (kind of like a barbie dream house, but less pink).

After getting hot, sweaty, and dirty at the barn, we headed back to their house to spend the rest of the day in the pool. JP had a blast and did approximately 52 front flips into the water in an attempt to stick a landing on a blow-up rocking horse. He never did make it.

(I took this picture in Manual and I froze the action/water droplets! FROZE them! Just like I wanted to! It was very exciting.)

Landon made it on his first try.

Claire and I found the water a bit chilly, so we sat in the chairs with the other girls and chatted until we felt warm enough to get in the pool.

And even then, we opted for the hot tub.

I looked at my cousins- bouncing from raft to raft and splashing up a storm, and I so remember being that age (any age younger than 18) and absolutely not understanding why any grown-up wouldn't want to get in the pool and play for 5 hours on a nice afternoon. JP doesn't understand either, but he did respect my harshly whispered threats enough not to throw me in against my will. After another month of sun, I would have been all over it, I promise.

We grilled out for dinner (by "we," I mean my aunt and uncle) and played scrabble after the kids went to bed (JP beat me by 200 points; I was both proud and supremely annoyed). We drove back early this morning and have spent the day enjoying our freakishly cool 50-degree weather.

It was a very fun weekend and the kids had so much fun with this new family in "other" Houston. One problem with having nearly all your family 1-3 hours away is it's hard to take specific trips to see one without seeing more. It was really nice to spend a weekend with one branch, though my mom did stop by for an hour on Saturday, which was a bonus. Landon has asked to go back "in a couple days" and I'm sure Claire misses her very vocal, very appreciative audience.