Friday, June 26, 2009

Home sweet Home...



... but home for less than a week!

It’s nice to be back home, but we’re heading out of town again – today. We’re going to the mountains with some friends. (They have a house available to them for free this weekend… and we can suck it up for one more weekend away from home in order to HELP them use the house!)

We got to see a lot of family this past week. Todd’s parents, brother, sister, and a bunch of nieces & nephews. (Mercer did really well with Todd’s parents while we were in the city. They said he never cried… but we know better! : - ) He was happy to see us when we got there, but he didn’t make a big deal about it We think that it was harder on us that we were separated from Mercer than it was on him. There were a few times on our end where we’d see a kid and say “oh… Mercer… blah blah blah…” It was nice having some adult time too, however, as we got to go out & cram a lot more site-seeing in than normal. New York is such a busy place – of course. Don’t know if we could live there & keep up that pace, but we’re glad we visited. Also, one thing that was interesting / a good take-away… how confident people are there. Many styles. Many doing their own thing. It’s all good / unique / different – which makes it very interesting.

Rose Marie’s friend, Lois, has some grand children who Mercer got to play with several times. He got a chance to hang with some other kids and play with some toys while there, thankfully. We also got to go visit a friend who I used to work with in Atlanta, Kim. She and her 3 kids and hubby live only about ½ an hour away from Todd’s parent’s house. As soon as we walked in the door, he caught a glimpse of the play room and ran right for it. Funny how kids don’t care where they are – they see toys and they just play. Unfortunately, Mercer hit the little 2 year old boy b/c he had one of his toys… ugh… I hated that. (We’re blaming it on Lois’ grand-daughter as a bad influence… but seriously… we’re starting to have to discipline him a little bit. Todd’s been reading a book called the Happiest Toddler on the block… and there’s a section in there about discipline.) oy.

Now to go back to that setup… when we got home Mercer was SO excited to see the cat! He squealed and squealed and squealed… he grabbed his tail and chased him around… he yelled dit-dee dit-dee. That WAS a big deal – apparently a bigger deal than seeing Todd and myself for the first time in 4 days! (btw... these are some pics of Todd & Mercer at the elementary school playground which is just down the street from Todd's parents. He really really wants to do what the bigger kids do!)

Oh well.

Sunday was father’s day. After a big pancake breakfast – Todd, Mercer, some neighbors, and I headed to a nature preserve. It was the grand opening weekend of their new building (it will be a LEED building, as it turns out). They have an interactive kid’s area there that focuses on water. Fish. Turtles. Lessons about water pollution. Lessons about water conservation. And in one room – they have a nature exchange program and library which is really cool. You bring in something that you found in nature and they award that item points. (A pine cone is 10 points, a conch shell is 150 points, etc) You can collect points and then take something back with you worth that amount of collective point value.

Tuesday, my cousin Alyssa (my dad’s brother’s daughter) and her boyfriend came to stay with us for a few days. They’re both looking at graduate school at Georgia Tech and met with professors and other students to get a feel for things. They even watched Mercer for us one night so we could go run errands / prepare for our trip to the mountains. They left this morning, and were both very impressed with the school. Maybe they both end up back in Atlanta next year? We’ll see!

Well, I should run, but wanted to get a post up before we go. Have a great weekend. Candice

1 comment:

Alyssa said...

I'm so glad JP and I got to spend some time with all of you guys in Marietta and that we got to see GA Tech. Who knows, we may be back later this year to visit again. Thanks so much for opening up your house to us and have a great time on your camping trip!