Mommys

I know this is a pretty similar statement to the one she made on her questionnaire a few days ago, but so cute and sweet that its worth repeating.  When asked today what she wants to be when she grows up, here's Abby's answer:  "I'm going to be a mommy so I can turn mommy into a grandma."  Love it :) 

Chloe's two year

After some crazy scheduling, Chloe had her two year appt.  Her original appt was with Dr. Bowman, but when I thought we'd be leaving any minute for Great-Grandma's funeral in Massachusetts, I cancelled it.  They didn't have any openings for a long time, so we left it at I'd call back to reschedule.  Of course, by the time I realized we could still make it to our original appt it had been filled already.  We ended up still going in, we just saw a nurse practioner instead of a doctor.  That's my only complaint with Roswell Pediatrics - they're so good everyone wants to go and it's hard to get an appt! 

So anyways, Chloe got a referall for a speech therapy eval.  She also failed her hearing in her left ear.  They did it four times, cleaned her ear out in between, and she was amazingly cooperative.  So I'm not really sure what's up with that.  She will be rechecked at Ryan's seven year and if she fails again, they'll refer her to an ENT. 

The nurse was super happy with her weight, hooray!!  She weighed in at 24lbs even, which is somewhere around the 15th percentile.  But she's steady on the charts and that's what they look for the most.  She actually said that most kids dip on the charts at this age, once they start eating real foods and getting picky.  Of course, we did discuss Chloe's love of whole milk.  She is drinking too much milk, which I'm sure helps her weight.  Apparently, too much milk can affect iron absoprtion.  So we'll work on less milk, more water, and 1% milk instead of whole.  She was 33.5" inches tall, roughly 45th percentile, again this has been a very steady line on the charts.  Her head was 18.5" which is fairly average I think.

Happy happy birthday Sweet Chlo- Chlo!!

Abby Caroline, age four

Ryan Hazen, age six

1st day of 1st grade

Ryan started first grade today! He's growing up way too fast in my opinion :) Whenever asked about school, he's standard response all summer has been : "a little bit excited." He will have the same teacher, Mrs. Sheffield, she looped up with his class. Almost all of his classmates elected to loop with her as well, so it really feels more like starting back after a long break than it does a new year. It's nice having the familiarity, and Ryan wasn't upset at all to leave this morning. The only thing he said he didn't like about school returning was getting up early [Mommy doesn't really care for that part either!]. Once again, he'll be a bus rider this year. We have the same awesome bus driver and the same route, but a shiny new bus! I still can't believe summer is over and he's gone, sad Mommy! 

ABBY!!!!!

Chloe has learned a new word :  "ABBY ABBY ABBY!!!!!"  She cracks herself up.  And of course this cracks Abby up too.  It's quite fun when the girls get going.  "ABBY ABBY ABBBY!!!!!"  [yes, she seems to be capable of saying Abby only at the top of her lungs.  wonder if that's any relation to the fact that Abby does everything at the top of hers....].  Occasionally, Abby still comes out BA-bby which also cracks Abby up.  These girls!    

Ahhh me, Ms. Shannon is certainly going to have her hands full with our littlest Chase!  Hopefully she can teach her to talk better than I've been able to :) 

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

on our last day of driving, we played the ABC game, except instead of being on our way to Great- Grandma's, we were headed home, and everything we named had to be something that was in the car!  silly, fun, good times  :) 

Amy, Abby, and Apples  ::  Bananas and Blueberries  ::  Coleson, Chloe, and Critter  ::  Dirty Drawers and Detergent  ::  Elbows, Ears, and Eyes  ::  Flip-Flops  ::  Gooey'ed Gummies  ::  Hairy Heads and Hearts  ::  an Iphone, an Ipad, and an Ipod  ::  Jewelry  ::  Kidneys and Keys  ::  a Lost Lego  ::  a Maid of the Mist Magnet  ::  [finger] Nails  ::  Odd Odors  ::  Pale People ::  Quarters  ::  Ryan, Rio, and a Radio  ::  Silly Soap  ::  Tasty Tacos in our Tummies  ::  Underwear  ::  Vital Vitamins  ::  Wet Water and Windows  ::  Xylophone  ::  Young Yahoos  ::  Zippers

Day nine

Home sweet home!!  We left Granddaddy's about 6:15am.  Thankfully, the girls both napped early on for about an hour.  We stopped for breakfast at McDonald's, lunch at Taco Bell [the slowest Taco Bell ever], and arrived home at 5:30ish.  The kids did really well in the car.  We played the ABC game [I'm going to Great-Grandma's house and I'm bringing...].  Throughout the week we did three different versions, they got a little silly, but what fun would they be if they didn't?! 

We came home to a HOT house, bummer.  The upstairs AC was out, but thankfully it looks like Coleson's got it fixed for us.  We were able to get quite a bit unpacked before heading to Nana and Pop-Pop's for a home cooked meal, yumm.  Thanks for the invite!!  It was great to put the kids in their own beds at a reasonable bedtime.  Should we take bets on if they'll sleep in tomorrow or not?!  I doubt it, but one can certainly hope :) 

Huge thanks go out to Nana and Pop-Pop for checking on the house a bunch and caring for Nellie and cleaning up large amounts of throw-up.  Thanks to Grandpa for mowing our yard and Grandma for cleaning out Cakey's tank.  Thanks to Aunt Betty for taking good care of us up North and to Granddaddy and Grandma Jo-Ann for taking good care of us in DC.  It was one of our best trips yet; summertime is absolutely the way to travel!!  So grateful to see Great- Grandma and to experience some new and exciting places along the way. 

PS, in case you were wondering, I just checked, we went 2,550 miles. 

Day eight

On the one hand, it feels like we've been on this adventure forever, and yet at the same time I can't believe we're wrapping up our road trip.  We've had a blast, it's been a great time.  Lots of fun family time and exciting new sights.  The kids are old enough that we didn't have to bring everything we own, for us we traveled fairly lightly.  It's been nice not having to worry about baby things and bottles and nursing or being pregnant.  We've been able to be a little more flexible and spontaneous which has been fun.

Today we hung out with Granddaddy and Grandma Jo-Ann at their house in Ashburn, VA.  We munched on cinnamon rolls and fruit for breakfast, and I got in a run.  Not my best run, but I've certainly enjoyed having more chances to get out.  We played here in the morning.  Ryan loves the ping-pong table downstairs, and Abby went straight for the babies.  They have some great dollhouses and baby accessories.  I think our trip has caught up with Ryan.  He became nauseous at breakfast and threw up a wee little bit.  He continued to play, but would occasionally say that his belly hurt.  I'm pretty sure it's just a combination of exhaustion and being out of routine and lots of excitement.  Hopefully it was nothing and he'll be all okay tomorrow.  We had a good lunch of sandwiches and chex mix before taking a walk.  Ryan didn't like the idea of staying behind and resting, so he got to ride in a stroller :). The kids loved playing at the neighborhood playground with Granddaddy.  He did the slides and pushed them in swings and all sorts of fun things.  Chloe finally got in a good afternoon nap, as did Mommy.  Dinner was fabulous; Jo-Ann made red beans and rice and pork and salad, complete with key lime pie for dessert.  More playing after dinner and coloring with Grandma Jo-Ann and ping-pong with Granddaddy (silly Abby and her "knife manners!") We also looked through more old pictures, although the kids had zero interest in that, oh well.

Tomorrow will be a long day of driving, so we plan to get an early start.  While its a little sad that our big vacation is coming to an end, we've got lots of great memories and I've got lots of great photos to sort through when we get home.

Day seven

Totally gonna cheat here.  For the first time, I missed my nightly blogpost update last night.  It's Saturday morning, but I'm going to change the posting date from automatic to Friday night.  Ha.

So this morning, Friday morning since its Friday night :), we woke up in Great- Grandma's apartment.  We had breakfast and loaded up the car before heading to the rehab center.  We had a nice visit, Betty joined us there too.  The plan is to have Great- Grandma back home at Loomis Village in time for her birthday, hopefully moving day will be next Friday.  The kids played with some small teddy bears that Great- Grandma had.  Abby would slide them down the hospital bed railing and, surprise surprise, Chloe had to try it too.  It was a nice time, sad to say goodbye.

We had a long drive down to Granddaddy Clay's house in Virginia.  Coleson, our awesome navigator, found us a Chick-fil-a so we could celebrate Cow Appreciation day.  This was harder task than I had realized it'd be, there are not many Chick-fil-a's up north.  We stopped for lunch in Union, NJ.  At home, in the deep south, in the heart of Chick-fil-a territory, everyone goes all out.  I rarely see anyone not fully costumed, and we are often way out-dressed.  Not so in Union, NJ.  They don't get Chick-fil-a up here.  They didn't even have a cow walking the restaurant, can you believe that?! :)  We ran into a family from Georgia, they went to Lassiter and UGA.  They said they were so excited when this Chick-fil-a opened a few months ago and they would drive out of the way to eat there.  So all that to say, we were very very overdressed!  And we didn't even do any face paint or anything.  I think Coleson was a wee bit embarrassed initially, but when the bill went from $30 to free, it was pretty awesome.  We were a sight in the crowded NJ parking lot that Chick-fi-a shared with an old gas station.  But it was fun!  I'll have to get Coleson to a cow day back home one year so he can better understand the excitement.

There's no good way to get out of New England, so as usual it wasn't one of our favorite driving days, and we hit some traffic, especially through Harrisburg, PA.  But we made it.  At one point, we were driving over a river and train tracks, and we happened to glance down, and you know who we saw?!  Thomas the Train.  How cool is that?!  Another highlight, in my opinion at least, was passing a couple of jetskis being towed.  Abby exclaimed : "there's some motorcycle boats!"  We arrived here in Ashburn about 7:30pm and had some yummy Subway subs for dinner.  The kids played for a few minutes before heading up to bed.  Unfortunately it took a long time to settle down and it was close to 10 before they were asleep, yikes!  Us adults stayed up looking through old Chase family photo albums.  It was really cool.  Most of the pictures were of Great- Grandma's side of the family, her parents, Elmer and Olive, and her sister Betty.  Sadly Betty passed away from leukemia at age 20.  I love all the history in the Chase family, so interesting, lots to ponder and think through.