Paradise Perfection

I can't even imagine where to begin with this post...

my view as I type in our room

All the reviews about Bluefields wax so rhapsodic that in the days before we left I was getting a little worried that I would be disappointed. We'd looked forward to the trip for so long and saved up and paid for it so carefully, it's a very different set of expectations from when you throw your kids in your car and drive off to climb on rocks somewhere near a state park cabin.

But oh my god has it been incredible. Spectacular views in every direction. Completely private. Amazing food. Absolutely nothing to do or fetch or clean or plan or research. I worry about nothing. I parent only when parenting sounds more fun than wife-ing or simply being. We wake up to the ocean and fall asleep to the ocean and in between we eat and play and rest and play some more. Our laundry is done and put away every day. Our meals are beautifully prepared, full of local ingredients and flavors with just enough familiar indulgences mixed in. The kids have two nannies we will all miss desperately when we leave. They are a seamless presence- popping in and out of the scene as needed, never feeling like an intrusion and never seeming put out.

We ebb and flow between playing in the pool with all the kids, maybe heading down to the beach to snorkel with just the big kids while Cora goes on one of her rambles with her beloved Miss Rowanna or "helps" the chef in the kitchen or is otherwise utterly spoiled by the staff, to sending the big kids back up to the pool to swim with Miss Tash while James and I spread out on some lounge chairs while Aldeen brings snacks and daquiris, and that's just before lunch.

After lunch it rains and James and I take a nap. We emerge whenever and grab some children and swim some more. At some point we'll probably get too boring for them and we'll lay in the hammock while they go play with Miss Tash again. Or James and I will swim out too far for them to snorkel and we can know that someone else is watching them from the beach. I haven't changed a diaper since Dallas. While James and I take a shower before dinner, the kids are whisked off for their own bath and reappear scrubbed and smiling so we can go eat in our tree house.

We always eat together, but if Cora gets fussy or impatient with our three courses, Miss Ro takes her on a walk. I haven't cleaned a dish or cooked a thing. There's hot black tea brewed in a carafe for me every morning. Tea! Everywhere has coffee, but no one ever brews fresh loose leaf tea. At times I think that's my most favorite thing. And then every afternoon the kids will go on a nature walk with the nannies and James and I go back to bed and I realize nope, the tea takes a distant second.

I have loved that this trip feels just as much like a fun family vacation filled with a million memories of our kids splashing and laughing and loving their first time in the ocean, while also feeling like a romantic getaway to celebrate James and my 10 years of marriage. Because that's what our 10 years have been- a million memories of our kids, with nights and dates and stolen moments that are just for us. I wouldn't want our anniversary celebrated any other way.

Travel Bug

We leave for Jamaica in 3 days. Actually 3 days from right now we'll have already been in Jamaica for 8 hours. We booked this trip 10 months ago- I have a coworker who got pregnant and has had a baby in the time between my booking and us going on this vacation. We are very excited and very much looking forward to having awesome family time together away from work and the swim school and summer camps and Cora's need to yell her love for me (yes, the last thing might come with us, but I can dream). For once I'm not menu planning and making 16 packing lists and trying to remember which spices I should bring to make which dinners so I don't have to buy new ones when I only need a teaspoon. No, as I just verified with the resort on Monday, we pretty much just have to show up with a swim suit and a change of clothes. They'll do laundry while we're there. They have snacks, they have indoor and outdoor toys, they have all the things. I'm so already zenned out about my nonexistent vacation pre-gaming that I'm not even having stress dreams about forgetting our passports.

So because I don't need to do anything for this trip besides get to the airport early and hope Cora maintains her super relaxed attitude towards travel (she's been on eight 10+ hour car rides, 4 hours in a plane can't be a problem, right? RIGHT? I'm honestly more concerned about James), I'm going google crazy researching our next year of trips.

It all started when a friend posted a picture of Arches National Park in Utah a few months ago. Bam, that was clearly where we needed to go for Spring Break 2016. Super long drive? Inexpensive rentable condos nearby? Hours of hiking and crazy cool rock formations we can climb on/around? That's a Lag Liv family vacation right there. And then I started looking at the map and realized Canyonland was only another 30 minutes away from Arches. And then Capital Reef is only a few hours further west. Then Bryce Canyon is a few hours past that. And in between them is this amazing stretch of highway. And a state park. Next thing I knew I had a 9 day car trip with 2,000 miles and 41 hours of driving, plus lodging picked out for each stop and a list of hikes we need to take and it is going to be AMAZING. And I love how when I randomly turned to James one night last week and said "do you want to hear about Spring Break?!!" he turned away from his computer with his hours and hours of work, gave me his full attention, and said, "yep, where are we going?", and didn't once mention that we are still closer to 2015's spring break than we are to 2016.

So while we may have 7 months before we embark on this odyssey, I would love to hear from anyone who has done the Utah Mighty Five (or Four, in our case) road trip and has thoughts on how long to spend at each park. My current itinerary is below.

Day 1: Fort Worth to Denver (12 hours driving; stay with Tia)
Day 2: Denver to Moab (5.5 hours; visit Arches at sunset)
Day 3: Arches NP
Day 4: Canyonland NP
Day 5: Moab to Bryce (all day driving, with stop at Capitol Reef NP and beautiful highway look outs along the way; expecting to get to Bryce rental in time for late dinner)
Day 6: Bryce Canyon NP
Day 7: Bryce Canyon NP (planning to see nearby National Monuments, like Grand Stairway Escalante)
Day 8: Bryce to Amarillo (all day driving)
Day 9: Amarillo to Fort Worth (5.5 hrs.)

Gorgeous, right? (pic borrowed from here)

I already have a countdown.

Then, in new and very exciting travel news, my parents have offered to watch the kids for a couple of days after Christmas! Our kids, being watched by someone else who is not us, OVERNIGHT, without us. I can't even... James and my last vacation alone without children was before we ever had children. It was Spring Break 2007. I was pregnant and we went to San Francisco. That was a lifetime ago. Specifically, Landon's lifetime.

But, we've thoroughly blown this year's vacation budget on our upcoming beach trip so even with the novelty and excitement of the vacation-without-children situation, it can't be expensive because then I won't enjoy it. But I want it to be somewhere worth whatever money we do spend (i.e., driving into Houston for a night isn't going to cut it). It needs to be somewhere we aren't already planning on taking the kids or that we don't immediately wish they could do when we arrive. We really do love traveling with them- it's always way more fun than hassle and each trip always contains my brightest happiest memories of the year, so I want our December destination to be more adult-oriented. Like Napa. Except James doesn't drink wine. Or Vegas. Except that's the James-centric version of what Napa would be for me. Or Chicago or New York. Except that's really more for me again. Not that we wouldn't both end up having a great time in any of those places, but we've waited a really long time to get away together, I'd like us both to be equally captured in this destination. And flights to major cities between Christmas and New Year's are crazy expensive. And I don't want to blow too much of our 3 day getaway on travel time, particularly when the airport is already 1.5 hours from my parents lake house.

So I'm thinking of heading to New Orleans. James has never been. The last time I went I was in college and James and I were broken up and I made out with some random guy on a balcony on Bourbon and I didn't remember it until I got my disposable camera developed a few weeks later, so it would be great to make some memories I actually remember, and maybe don't take pictures of. It's less than a 5 hour drive, so we wouldn't have to fly (James is immediately on board), and while I don't mind flying, it would be great to go on a car ride where I'm not turned around backwards 65% of the time. We could stay in a fancy hotel in the Quarter, eat awesome food (we didn't eat in a single restaurant on my college trip to NOLA; priorities), drink all the drinks, sight-see and walk around during the day, and still not spend very much. I think it would be super fun.

But, before I start booking things, I would love to hear other suggestions. Destinations that are romantic, great to visit in December, not totally geared towards wine (boo), and perfect for a 2-night getaway. We like eating food and exploring, whether it's the outdoors or a city, and minimizing travel time is a plus. Or suggestions of places to eat and things to do in New Orleans, I've really never been there as an adult.

And in the meantime I will not write packing lists and plan out Spring Break 2017.

Things Mundane and Sparkly

(1) I'm organizing pictures and found this one from a few weeks ago. James lays down for a nap, is immediately covered in children. This is life with three kids.

It's awesome.

(2) Are you using Ebates? You should be. This is in no way a paid review (though that link does have a referral code in it), I just didn't discover this until a few months ago and now I've cashed multiple rebates checks and my joy at free money is nearly eclipsed by sadness at thinking of all the free money I've left behind through years and YEARS of online shopping.

I used to think they were a credit card or something I had to link to my financial information, but no, you just sign up for an account (address and email only) and then when you're shopping online, you go on their website, search for the store you're going to buy stuff from, and click the store's website within Ebates to open it up in a new browser window. Check and out and pay as normal through the store and a 1-6% rebate on your purchase will appear in your Ebates account. Every 3 month you get a check in the mail. Mine have been for $15-30 so far, in part because at least 50% of the time I forget to use the Ebates link, but I'm getting better. And even $15 is awesome for free money- it's a guilt free lunch out!

I like to have a million browser windows open and always spend a day or two fiddling with an online shopping cart before checking out, so I just do that as normal and then when I'm ready to pay, save my cart, close my window, click on Ebates, open the store up again, and check out. Two extra clicks and I got a 6% rebate on my Sephora purchase yesterday and 3% on Gymboree. I'm a fan.

(3) In support of my Ebates account and because earning money for your family is important, I let myself buy two things from the Nordstrom anniversary sale. These booties, which I adore and will look fab with skinny jeans and pretty much any color top and fill a hole in my wardrobe for grey shoes.

And this tunic-y top. Also a color I didn't previously own. Red heads can wear read, right? My coloring is kind of the opposite of the model's.

I also bought Landon a shirt with a tiger on it. Do you know how hard it is to find animal shirts for an 8-year-old boy? No cartoons, no sharks (not that he doesn't like sharks, "they're an important part of the ocean's ecosystem, mom", but that's all I can usually find), and no words. Just animals. It's like I'm on a perpetual scavenger hunt.

(4) Cora is a hoot. Also a tyrant. She spends at least 50% of her time walking around the house pointing at everyone and everything and tell us "No!". Usually with a wind-up and then a triumphant finish, like "NnnnnooooOOOOO!" Then she nods her head and double fists a grilled cheese sandwich.

She gives the best hugs and sometimes she's so sweet and still and rests her little cheek on your leg or shoulder and sighs and you want to squeeze her but you're afraid she might remember that she actually meant to be yelling at you right now. She does a lot of yelling. And crying, particularly at me, which I think is some kind of backhanded toddler compliment. She is banned from the grocery store and bathtubs. She is hilarious and chatty and loves to dance.

Her arms are always full while she walks through the house- this morning's treasures included a musical owl, two bracelets, a miniature Frozen book about Sven, and a tiny plastic phone. The necessities.

She is the most toddler-y of all our toddlers. Times 100. She is still everyone's favorite.

(5) Claire got her ears pierced yesterday. We were at the mall looking for school shoes and she asked, "mommy can I get my ears pierced now?" and though we were walking out I said "Yes, let's do it!", found a directory to verify a Claire's was in the building and headed off in pursuit. She started asking about a year ago and I'd promised her she could do it for her 5th birthday and the start of Kindergarten since that's when I had mine done. Her birthday came and went while I looked for the best place to go (I'd heard tattoo parlors were the best and most regulated, but there aren't that many in Fort Worth and none would return my calls), so finally, with summer running out and the two of us alone on a rare solo shopping trip, I decided we should go for it.

And I think the lack of anticipation and wind-up was perfect. She picked out the most expensive pair of studs, of course, but the little pink rhinestone daisies were so perfect for her, I didn't mind. She held my hand and didn't flinch or make a noise when the two employees punched the earrings through, her eyes just got big and then after a few seconds, she whispered, "are my ears sparkly now?".

Yes they are! I think they look adorable and she is VERY proud, both of her sparkles and the fact that she was "SO BRAVE." After her haircut today she is now 110% ready for Kindergarten to start in 2 weeks.

(6) As I am woefully wont to do, I decided we should clean and organize everything in our house at 4 p.m. on an otherwise lovely Sunday afternoon. James had just returned from his workout and managing his outdoor pool in 106 degree weather. The kids were being pleasant and quiet and entertaining themselves without any parental involvement, so I thought, what could be better than dumping out every toy we own into the middle of the play room and forcing everyone to clean with me? NOTHING, NOTHING IS MORE FUN.

And as is woefully wont to happen, at about 6 p.m. I realized this was a catastrophically bad idea, no one wanted to hang out with me, and the finish line was hours away and there was no going back.

Then I made things worse and decided the kids' room was too integrated into the contents of the play room to avoid, so immediately following dinner (a dinner James made thank God; I had reached a point where I decided that starving everyone was obviously the best way to motivate them. Yelling was going to come next. I am so thankful he loves me through my need to reorganize.) I crawled under each kids' bed, pulled out everything, and threw that stuff in the piles.

But then, at 9 p.m. -- boom. You can't really even appreciate it without knowing how bad it was before and how much stuff was rescued from other (wrong!) rooms and bins and put back where it belongs. I have two big bags of trash and four big bags of stuff to give away and I feel like I can breathe again. And I got the play kitchen out of my living room and have some furniture to sell.

And to think James thought it would be fun to go get ice cream after dinner for our family bonding event of the day. This is so much better.

GoT: Summer is Here

I've become a bad blogger. As I've mentioned before, summer is rough for us. James is so busy- he's the manager of the pool he uses in the summer, so he has 3 jobs instead of his usual 2, and the 3rd involves a lot of headaches like lifeguard staffing and member complaints that suck a lot of time with little personal payoff, plus the kids are in various camps around the city while Cora is still at her usual daycare in the other direction, and it's so freaking hot, and we have swim team, which we all love but which adds another layer of logistics and time commitment, and I still have a full-time job and a need to workout that has become its own part-time job... and it's just rough.

Super fun with the backyard pool and the swim meets and the kids camp adventures, but also exhausting with James working 18 hour days, most of them in the sun, rendering him genuinely unable to be the partner he usually is to me... and so nighttime becomes a time when I'm either working, helping him, or just decompressing on the couch with my laptop in another room. And though I need to step away, I feel bad that the funny stories and fun excursions and the truly predominantly awesome stuff in summer gets buried in the silence of nighttime when all the movement of the day, which felt fine all day, suddenly feels like too much and I yell things at James like "why does your dream job turn my dream job into the thing that lets me do everything else to make your dream job possible?!" But then he listens to my words and apologizes for letting his job take over and makes suggestions of how he can make things better and then he actually does them and things are better and I come back to earth and remember that we actually did still have tons of time together and I was never really doing everything and our weekends are still almost always genuinely awesome and full of family time and maybe my brain overheated while stuffing a protesting Cora back into her car seat after picking the big kids up from camp? Let's hang out on the couch and cuddle. And so another night goes by without a blog post or any progress on our DVR log.

Oh summer, I love and hate you.

But this is why I seem to keep popping in after the weekend to recount our activities and then disappearing for 7 days, which I'm totally about to do again, though hopefully not with the disappearing act afterward. We have things to discuss! I'm leaving the country soon and I haven't found a single cute beach dress to wear in Jamaica. Claire is starting Kindergarten and according to all the emails I've received today, I'm now on the Board of our PTA. I have no memory of volunteering for this, but guilt for the fact that I should probably have volunteered is going to keep me from asking any questions about it. Career opportunities abound but I will likely remain precisely where I am. Cora is a crazy person- fast, funny, temperamental, tyrannical, and tremendously busy. And yet she somehow remains incredibly mellow and up for being dragged along on all our adventures. Like this past weekend's trip to College Station for the state swim meet and on to Livingston for 22 hours at my parents' lake house.

So the TAAF Summer Games of Texas (aka "GoT," but not Game of Thrones as I kept saying in my head every time I saw it) is a big deal. We had no idea. Tons of sports, tons of athletes of all ages, tons of signs and workers and advertisements. There was even an opening ceremonies! Not that we would have gone, but it helps explain why all the hotel rooms were sold out when I called.

We drove to College Station with the kids on Friday night, stopping in Waco for dinner, and arriving at our hotel around 9. We naively thought the kids would be tired, but the novelty of staying in our standard room at the Courtyard Marriott was too much for them to handle and L&C giggled to themselves in their queen bed till 10 and then Cora popped up in her pack 'n play and SANG to us until 11. Happy singing, but singing nonetheless.

dinner roll as big as her head; thank you yelp

We packed up and got to the pool by 8, pleased to find parking available and our favorite competition pool unchanged. The A&M campus may be consistently ugly (sorry Aggies, I know you love it and it's a great school, but to the uninitiated, it's a lot of squat square brown prison-like buildings and very few trees), but the pool is fantastic. The first time I ever finaled in a national meet was there and James had several best times in those lanes. I think we were both surprised by how nostalgic it felt to walk up to it again. Swim memories aren't usually very strong for me anymore, but they smacked me in the face in the rec center lobby on Saturday.

I hadn't been at a serious meet in so long I forgot that the swimmers and spectators are totally separate until the end, so James and Landon had to go in a different entrance and I found myself standing in the lobby, shaking off nostalgia and schlepping Claire, Cora, and all our accessories AND my Starbucks up three levels into the stands. On the upside, this meant I had all the food. On the downside, the knowledge that Landon was probably hungry haunted me until James climbed up to the railing and I was able to pass food over the edge.

My parents arrived, with additional snacks, and I was very grateful for their company and help in the stands, particularly since James and I were so separated and we didn't know a single other person at the meet. It would have been a long 5 hours for me, probably without bathroom breaks because Cora likes to lay down face first on the ground anytime I set her down in a public place. And while I credit her time spend on bathrooms, grocery stores, and Target floors for her bulletproof immune system, I prefer not to push it.

spectating is a serious business

Plus, Papa and Gigi love a good swim meet and the kids were thrilled to have them there.

James won all three of his events and set three new state records for his age group. He gave Claire one of his gold medals and she wore it proudly the whole drive back to the lake. No force on earth will convince her she didn't win it herself.

Landon did great too, dropping a second in his 50 fly and getting 6th overall. He added some time in his free and got 12th, but overall we were just so proud of him to be at the meet that big, in a pool that big, and not be intimidated and just enjoy himself. He waved to us on the block for both his events and I was grinning from ear to ear. I waved to my parents before every finals I ever swam in my whole career and I loved being on the receiving end.

The meet ended at noon, so we took some pictures and then yelped our way to a fab little nearby brew pub (Blackwater Draw Brewing Company, highly recommend, especially if you're like me and hate fried chicken, which is a selling point of many other College Station restaurants) and then drove off to Livingston for the usual lake house shenanigans.

Beach time.

(Should we be concerned that Cora refused to touch the sand?)

Rope swinging.

Landon has added new tricks and Claire has gotten so strong she could hold on to the rope for ever!

Jet skiing.

(Cora's facial expression never changed.)

Tubing

Knee boarding.

That was new, and Cora did not trust it.

And very fast boating.

Plus lots of swimming, popsicle eating, and lots and LOTS of jumping. And life guarding. Unlike in our pool, Cora did not feel duty bound to jump into the lake at every opportunity, and seemed to enjoy just watching her big sibs do crazy things off the dock while she held on to her thermos for 3 hours without ever taking a sip of water.

A highlight of Saturday evening, when they should have been exhausted beyond all reason, was staying up a little later to read in their special nook with their bean bag chairs and camping light.

Papa and Gigi's is the best.

And now I finished this a little after midnight last night, decided I couldn't publish it without reading it first, and went to bed. Bringing the whole post full circle to why summer is super fun while also slowly killing us. We'll be in Jamaica in two weeks with James's phone off and out of office message up. Then school will start. And then we'll all miss summer.