Adventure and Attitude

Day three of  Ivy's unwelcomed visit.... she's like fish - starting to stink!

Another near sleepless itchy night!  Now, his lips are swollen, but he can open his eyes!  He also feels like it has gotten into his throat!  I have no idea how!!???  His hands continue to be swollen and he is itchy, in pain, and just plain miserable all over! 

I woke up numerous times last night just to check that he was still breathing!  When he told me it felt like it was in his throat it made me a little panicky!

I can't wait for this to be over and I'm sure Ry wishes for it 100x more!!

When we went to Guatemala to meet Lola for the first time, we stayed at a hotel called La Casa Grande.  It was a stately old building with fountains, verandas, and a huge balcony.  It was also one of the primary places for adoptive parents to stay.  In fact, the hotel was filled with parents and their children.  Some were visiting, some were staying with their child until the adoption was finalized, and some were on their way home with their long awaited blessing!

It was a wonderful thing to have so many people there for the same reason.  They knew exactly what you were going through and it was fun to swap stories and play together with the children.

While we were there, we met two other families that were using our same agency and were from our area!  What are the chances!  In fact, two of our little ones came home on the exact same day and all three girls are very close in age.

That trip started what I hope is a life long friendship for us and for the girls.  We have been getting t…

Husband, Sloth, stayed home all day from work.  The meds the doctor gave him at the ER seemed to help the swelling in his face, but the rest of his body began erupting in blisters!  It is a mystery how he has poison ivy all over his body and even between his toes!  If I didn't know better, I would think he went "streaking through the quad" and took a detour through the woods!

When I went to bed at 11, I left him sitting in the dining room with my hair dryer.  We had read that by blowing hot air on the places that itch until it was too hot to stand would help with the itch and pain.  He had some temporary relief.  He has tried it all!  -baking soda, hot showers, antiperspirant, nail polish remover, vitamin C....  Nothing seems to work!

At 2am I thought I was going to have to wake up A to listen for the kids while I drove Ryan to the ER.  He needed a sedative, in my opinion!  He couldn't settle himself down and was in so much misery!
At 5am I told him he only had to m…

There just never seems to be a dull moment in this household!

This morning Ryan got up and dressed like usual, but then announced he was bringing himself to the ER!  Seriously?  He had a cold last week, but that was all gone now.  Why would he need to go to the ER?  If the lights were on in the bedroom, I would have seen exactly why he needed to go!

He wouldn't let me take a picture of his face because (sorry honey - I still love you) frankly he looks like Sloth on Goonies! (one of the all time best movies EVER!)  His eyes are almost swollen shut and his face looks a bit misshapen.







So what is the problem?  This little bugger is it!  It is in the woods behind our house:

Poison Ivy!  This stuff has got to be one of the most stubborn little things on this earth!  We can try to dig it up, spray it, and even burn it (don't burn it by the way- it will just be airborne then and you can breath it in) and it will continue to poke it's little green shoots out of the soil!  Ry was tr…

I knew having children would bring on challenges.  I just didn't know all of the different kinds of challenges they would bring.

Lately, one of my challenges is keeping my home free of creepy crawlies!  Tyce is obsessed with them!  Grasshoppers, worms, ants - they are all his beloved pets!  He carries them around, names them, and has people pet them!

The other day he walked around inside with a grasshopper perched on his arm like it was a bird.  He named it Dylan and played with it until its leg broke off.  This didn't really phase Tyce as he thinks dead things are fun pets too!




Tyce held a bearded dragon at the Pet Expo I do have to draw the line at some of the creepy crawlies however!  Snakes are the line!  Tyce adores them and would cuddle them in his bed, but Mom gets the hibi jibis!  I even go as far as checking my bed before getting into it at night after a snake has been found.  You never know if a particular pet gets smuggled through our doors!  I'm just anticipati…

Friday night high school football games have taken on an entirely new feeling of fun or maybe its horror!

In high school I remember spending a lot of time getting prettied up to spend hours in the wind and cold on the bleachers at the games.  It was the biggest social event for me at the time and I looked forward to it each week we had a home game!  For the life of me I can't remember exactly what we did at the games and why they were as fun as they were!  I do remember we watched a little bit of the action on the field, but most of our attention was geared toward the action in the stands.

Now Friday night football games are a bit different.  There is still the socializing and some watching of the game, but now I find myself doing all of this from inside the consession stand!

It was a different kind of fun.  Ry and I were in charge of coffee and suppling beverages.  I can't even count how many Mountain Dews we went through!  One young man had 7 of them!  He was living proof tha…

On our last day of our weekend adventure we stopped at Sleepy Bear Dunes.

The drive over was a nice one, passing many farms and beautiful homes.  Grand Traverse Bay was picture perfect and Glen Lake was a color blue I wasn't used to seeing reflected in Michigan lakes.


Our first stop was the Dune Climb.  The sun was bright, but not too hot that the sand would burn our toes.  The dune was big, but appeared doable as we stood at the base looking up at it.  Jackson and A took off on a run through the sand.  Lola and I went up at a slower pace, hand in hand.  Ryan sat with a sleepy Tyce at the bottom.  He didn't stay drowsy for long and was soon coaxing his father up the dune.

Once we reached the top, the view was breathtaking!  On one side we had a sparkling Glen Lake. 
We were surrounded on our other three sides by dunes!  We continued to climb dune after dune.  We hiked up, hiked down, hiked up, and hiked up again.  The kids were excited to jump off the small cliffs and roll i…

Our last stop of the day was Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City, MI.  We have been there a few times and the kids love it every single time we go!  There are locations all in many different states!
It has so many things to do inside of the Lodge that there really is no reason to ever leave!  You can go in their indoor water park, go to the spa, the arcade, play with the wands and wizards on a quest, go mini golfing, go to the kid's room where they have toys, a computer, and crafts, and they even supply different events and activities for kids to do!

The kids were itching to get in the water so we checked into our room and headed to the indoor water park and outdoor pool.  The water park is attached to the hotel which means we don't have to wear shoes or bring extra things with us and it's easy to go back to the room to get things we forgot or to take a little break.

Jackson and A ran off together to go down the slides and Ry and I stuck with the two little ones while they sp…

If you know me even a little, you know that I have a sweet tooth the size of Texas!  I love love love chocolate and in fact my mouth is watering at this moment just thinking about it!  Obviously, when someone like me sees a place with a Chocolate Tour sign, everyone has to pile out of the car and into the factory in a hurry!

Our next road trip stop was just minutes from Petoskey State Park.  The Kilwins candy factory was conveniently along my route so it was our next stop! (who knows how that happened!)



The store is filled with candy, fudge, ice cream, and chocolaty goodness!  We waited maybe five minutes to go on the tour which runs every half hour.  It was our group of six and two other poor souls that were thrown into our group by default.  We saw how they put flavors inside of chocolates, the making of fudge, and the coating of some orange slices.  The chocolate smell was so wonderful I just wanted to set up camp there!  The tour was short and sweet.  All of the children were inte…

After our "ding dong ditch" trip to Chillermania, we enjoyed a short scenic ride to Petoskey, Michigan.  We saw vineyards, fields of hops, and fields of sunflowers along the way.  Not to mention a plethora of lakes, small towns, and beautiful homes.  I would have loved to stop and taken a stroll through some of the towns and in Petoskey especially, but the natives are just not at the age to appreciate such things, so it was off to Petoskey State Park for our next stop!


Petoskey State Park, located on the north end of Little Traverse Bay, is situated on 303 scenic acres and offers a beautiful sandy beach on the bay. The park has two separate modern campgrounds. Tannery Creek offers 98 campsites, and Dunes offers 70 campsites.

We drove right in because the booths were not being maned.  I'm not sure if it is the time of year or that it wasn't a weekend, but I think you usually have to pay to get into the park.  We drove down a smooth paved road that was densely wooded on …