A couple of random photos

These are also from my weekend in Virginia. On Sunday, the boys wore the shirts Kent and I made them for Easter. The shirts are getting to be a bit small, which is both good news and to be expected, but don't they look cute wearing their shirts?

And I love this picture. Eli is really into Legos now and spent most of his time building elaborate, always symmetrical ships and space ships and planes.

And the first morning I was there, I got this not so great selfie but I love it anyway because of Colin's expression.

It's a . . .

Boy!

I’m in Virginia this week. Ben and Jen invited us to come for her ultrasound yesterday and we wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s amazing how much detail you can see in those scans today. Ben and Jen said the images were even clearer than they were two years ago with Eliot.

Ben apparently has natural skills at reading the images; he’s known the gender of each of the three babies just by looking at the image—before the tech says anything. That’s how it was yesterday. I looked over at him and he was grinning. The tech saw it too, and asked him if he knew. He said yes, you couldn’t miss it. She laughed and agreed. So grandson number two it is!

Alison wasn’t really interested in having another brother and had told Ben that if it’s a boy, “you just keep it to yourself, Daddy.” He’d already told her he would get her an American Girl doll if she wasn’t getting the sister she wanted. So on the way home, we stopped at Target to pick up a doll. Kent had to head to the airport after that so he didn’t get to see the kids open their presents.

Eliot was far more interested in the cookies and rolling around on the tissue paper with the cat than he was in the toys.

C is for cookie!

And cat!

Two views

I took this short clip Monday morning. It's very quiet and peaceful where Ben and Jen live, and the trees are just beautiful.




And this morning, Kent got this clip for me. You'll hear street noise in this video because our temporary apartment is on a major street. We don't hear this kind of noise in our own apartment. (Edited to add that you hear all the noise because the window is open.) The view here is just amazing.

My favorite sayings from Thanksgiving

Alison's verbal skills have increased exponentially since we saw her last Easter, and even since the family reunion in July. At Easter she would say, "Up! Up!" when she wanted us to pick her up. Now she uses a complete sentence. Here are some of my favorites:

"I hold you." I think she said this because we would ask her if we could hold her.

"Cindy Lala." She's obsessed with all things princess and that's how she says Cinderella.

"Oh my goodness!" This one cracked everyone up. It's something Jen says and Alison just started mirroring it while we were there.

"Just two more seconds." She said this after her mother asked her to stop doing something so she could get ready for bed. Jen has no idea where she got this expression.

"I'm not a boring princess." She has some Gigi books, and GiGi is a princess, but as the book says, she's not a boring princess. Clearly, neither is Alison.

Ben and Jen told us yesterday that they figured yesterday would be all about Nana and Granddad withdrawals for Alison. Well, to be honest we have Alison withdrawals.

A very full day

Yesterday we toured the battleship Wisconsin (you can read about it here)—peering into the berths really emphasized how little each sailor could bring on board. I think they had minimalism down well before it became trendy.

This video shows both the view and how very windy it was. Alison didn’t seem to mind the wind at all.




Last night we put on the Christmas music and decorated the tree. After not having a Christmas tree the last two years, I was so glad to be able to participate in Ben and Jen’s decorations. Then Alison decided the box was a lot of fun. She wanted Smoochie in there with her, so I had to help him a bit.



I love this picture of Alison that I took when Jen and Kent were putting the tree together. She was determined to help, even though the branches were half her size.

Loving the visit

We got to Virginia Wednesday night and oddly enough, our worst travel delay came well after we landed. We sat for about 90 minutes on the James River bridge--no idea why, any accident had been entirely cleared by the time we moved again.

Alison loves to play dress up and princess, and she got Kent (Granddad) to play with her a long time yesterday morning. Jen snagged this picture, which shows that the sweet goofy side of Kent is sometimes just what a child needs. I should add that for some reason, Alison really didn't want to wear clothes yesterday. It was plenty warm enough to run around that way, Virginia isn't Boston after all.

Here's my favorite picture of me with Alison yesterday. She was a little uneasy when the other family arrived, which was kind of funny since she had been looking forward to playing with the other children. So she hung around the edges of the playroom while the kids played, and then we ended up getting dressed up in princess stuff. Aren't those butterfly wings she's wearing pretty cute? I would have loved to have had those when I was a little girl.

Easter fun

We are back from our trip to Smithfield, VA, home of Smithfield hams and also of Ben, Jen and Alison. We flew down Thursday morning and got back last night. We had such a great time, they are truly fun people to be with and are great hosts.

I suffered a bit of sunshine envy, though. Their apartment is not only huge and open and has two bathrooms, it’s also VERY sunny. Believe me, I soaked up all the sunshine I could get.

On the left, I’ve included a slide show of pictures from this past weekend. Some are from our trip Friday to see Jamestown. We took a ferry across the river and you’d be surprised how many cars they can pack on that ferry.

Saturday we split up a bit. Ben and Kent went to Wal-Mart, which is a semi treat for us since the nearest Wal-Mart is about an hour away from us in Boston. Jen and I headed out to get pedicures, check out a fabric store and also pick up some groceries. Well the pedicures were pretty interesting—the shop is owned by a Vietnamese woman and on the weekends her two high school aged daughters help out. The daughters actually did the pedicures and they were just enthralled with Jen. They wanted to know where she went to high school and were shocked she was not only out of high school but done with college. I think they mostly loved her blond hair and blue eyes. One of them told me she wished that any daughter she might have would also have blond hair and blue eyes. What normally takes about an hour ended up lasting about 90 minutes. I’m pretty sure they used twice the normal amount of lotion on us since my legs were quite sticky the next morning. Those two really didn't want to see Jen leave.

The fabric store we found is more accurately a quilt fabric store but had a really great selection that works for clothing, especially girl clothing. The woman who helped us said that’s because the owner has a granddaughter and wanted to have those kinds of materials for her to use in making quilts for her granddaughter. I got some more fabric to make a couple of things for Alison—another dress like the one I made her for Easter, plus a dress that has ducks as pockets and also a little bag that has slots for crayons. Jen and I saw one of the finished bags, and she commented that would be useful when they are traveling by car. Jen said Alison tends to lose her crayons so the bag will help plus I can use up extra material left over from other Alison projects.

We all checked out Saint Luke's church. From their website: It is the oldest existing church of English foundation in America and the nation's only surviving Gothic building. It was well worth seeing. I just wish it had been warmer on Saturday because the grounds were lovely and we would have all enjoyed walking around a little more.

Our trip home was sort of challenging. Even before we left for the airport, our flight was listed as nine minutes late. Actually we don’t know that it ever even went at all. Apparently Newark (where we were supposed to change planes) had dangerous wind conditions so at first it looked as though we wouldn’t get home. Then we were put on a later flight out of Newark although the ticket agent sounded dubious that we would even make the later flight. Once down at our gate, we were called up to the counter and told we were now on a US Air flight—so off we went back out through security to get to the correct concourse to catch a plane To Washington DC. We were supposed to fly from DC to Boston on a 9 PM flight but got on a much earlier flight only because it too was super late. Long story not quite so long (yes I know, too late)—we were home by 9:30. Hurrah!

Here’s a short video clip of Alison trying her very first Peep. You can see her Easter basket and she’s wearing the dress I made her, which makes me super proud that Jen liked it that much.