The Carriage House Inn

First things first. We never set up that link in the previous post with all the awesome photos from our voyages between CT and North Carolina.

VIEW THEM PUPPIES HERE! (There are some AWESOME pics here)

Now we can move on. 20 days since the last post - and plenty has happened.

This post was titled "The Carriage House Inn" as, you may have noticed, we have yet to be visitor-less for more than a few day since we moved here 3 months ago. It has been a blessing and a great transition for the kids. Making the move out here is much easier when family follows you for a short stint!

ALL PHOTOS FROM THIS PAST 3 WEEKS

Holly and Kristen took Eliza and Olivia on a mommy/daughter weekend "Girl's Trip" to Boston a few weeks ago.

We had wonderful girl-time bonding! We drove up the coast stopping at Yale and then at the Capital Building in Providence, RI (a surprisingly cool place). Then we parked outside of Boston and rode the metro into town. We spent hours walking along the Freedom Trail (a literal red line that has been painted through the city, following most of the historic places in Boston). We road on "swan boats", visited the bar where "Cheers" was filmed, and saw many historic sights. At the end of the day we made it back to our hotel with enough time to squeeze in a quick swim, and a girl party, complete with jumping on the bed, decadent cupcakes and treats, and a late movie. It was fabulous! The next day we did a bit more sightseeing before making the 3.5 hour drive home. Yea for history! But mostly (according to the girls), yea for girl time, swimming, and staying up late!



Around this time, we also got the call that our 5 baby chicks had arrived. I went and picked them up from our friend's home (They bought chicks in mass ... so we took a few off their hands). They're quite adorable little things.

Last weekend I took what scrap wood we had in our garage and built them a mini-coop to house them until I could find the time to build a real one out back. It's a bit ghetto, but they don't know the difference!

Olivia is earning the karaoke machine she has been yearning for by feeding, watering and maintaining the chicks and their coop. Twice daily she restocks their food and water supply. By Halloween they should be laying eggs - then we'll turn this into a proper business where the girls will sell the eggs to friends and neighbors to earn their keep 'round here!

Last Friday Olivia's school had a 1st grade presentation to the parents out on the school grounds. It was a "Rainbow Show" where they sang as many rainbow-related songs as the world has produced and held up colored paper in a rainbow spectrum. Pretty astounding (bit-o-sarcasm here).  Cute nevertheless.

Last Saturday Marshall and I took Eliza and Olivia on a daddy/daughter date into the city to Broadway to see Mary Poppins. They had magic, high-wire stunts and lots and lots of singing ... you'd think it was a musical! Turns out, it was. The girls loved it. And Holly and Kristen came along to take the other kids to the top of the Empire State Building. Quiiiiiiite the view!

And this past weekend it was finally (and unfortunately) time for Kristen, Eliza and Peter to go back to Utah. The kids had a blast while they were together for that month-long fiesta of family, but all good things must come to an end. It was great to have them, and sad to see them go.

But to keep with tradition and recent trending in the Carriage House Inn, Holly's sister, Mandy, and her husband, Bryan, arrived with their little Sadie just in time to stay up late and chat with Kristen before she caught her early morning plane home.

Mandy, Bryan and Sadie were on their way through as they return to Ireland to continue their writing / story editoring for HBO's Game of Thrones. What superstars.

It was great to see them and spend a few days together. We relaxed here at the Carriage House most of the time, but we did manage to hit the mall and ride on the two-story carousel. It was so fun to see Sadie and get to know her. She has such a strong personality - her parents are in trouble! :) The girls truly enjoyed playing her and helping take care of her. 


And just when we thought the family visit bonanza was over, we hear that my brother's wife, Nga, is here in NYC (from Bangkok) for a conference. Once she realized how close we were, she bumped her flight a few days and come up to the Inn ... and the vacancy sign is flipped off once again as we had the awesome chance to catch up and talk about Bangkok days and Stan (my brother) and their kids Anise and Sebastian.

We did a bit of shopping, dining out at an awesome Lebanese restaurant, and then played in the yard, did a bit of yardwork (NOT something Nga is used to in Bangkok!) and then we went on a hike in the woods down the lane. And on the way back we stopped by our next door neighbors for a quick tour of their oh-so-amazing gardens of babylon! Such an amazing place -- flowers everywhere. Everything manicured to a T.

Then a request to make one of my long lost recipe's from Italy days, Olio, Aglio, Pepperoncino, created a very vivid flashback as I recalled cooking that dish in a small, hot kitchen in a dated apartment just behind the noisy train station in Arezzo -- 50 km south of Florence. What amazing things an aroma can do to the mind and soul.

The last bit of news that you're all dying to know the details on: Sonoma's potty training. Yep, it's an exciting tale of urine, poop, and puddles!

She's doing fairly well, except for one deadly side effect -- now she cries quite a bit in her sleep, I believe due to the fact that she needs to go and can't find a toilet in her dream! We're working on that little issue, otherwise it seems to be going fairly smoothly. As smoothly as human waste management scenarios can go!

It's finally summer here and Connecticut is one amazingly beautiful place. And yes, this figurative vacancy sign is finally lit, but we love visitors, so book your tix now before it's too late! :)

Project NICO

We have a dear friend, Wendy, who has a sweet little boy, Nicolas (Nico), and this video shows a little about what their life is like right now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7IvoHLMKP4&feature=share 

Read more about it here:

http://sparrowalliance.org/nico

I love them and my heart breaks for them. I hope Project NICO is successful and that they feel our love.

Journey from CT to NC (Memorial Day Weekend!)

The Monday before Memorial Day we, along with my sister Kristen and her family, headed to NYC to begin our journey to North Carolina where we would spend the next weekend with our brother, Jackson and his wife. New York City was rainy all day while we were there. It was certainly the hardest day logistically, so we were very glad that Marshall and Adam were with us. However we parted ways with them as they headed back to work and we continued our excursion with the kids. It was a glorious trip filled with craziness, awesomeness, challenges, and meaningful memories. Check out all our photos here. But before you peruse all the pics, I thought it would be fun to list some of the crazy challenges that we faced. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Right off the bat as we stepped out of the car for the first time, we all got soaking wet in the downpour of rain in NYC. (...Aaaaand, we're off!)
2. Peter unintentionally licked a NYC trash can while trying to spit out his gum.
3. A few children fell into giant puddles - I guess it didn't matter too much as it was pouring rain at the time, but still.
4. The children inevitably found ways (mostly by tripping and falling) of touching the subway floors, ...and then their faces. They were thrilled to ride the underground train and even see a rat!
5. Peter accidentally peed on Kristen's hand.
6. We discovered poo on the wheel of our stroller at the end of the NYC day only after it got onto Peter's special blanket.
7.  We found a tick on Eliza after in the hotel room after our first day of travel. She was terrified (so were we, at the thought of having to pull it out on our own), but was very brave and later admitted that it didn't even hurt.
8. We waited in long lines. That might not sound like much, but remember that we had 5 small children. No small task!
9. There were many a poopy diaper that required changing at the most inconvenient time and places. \
10. There were temper tantrums from whiny tired kids in public places.
11. We dealt with boogers from snotty nosed children (who we love and adore, but who can be disgusting).
12. There were unexpected traffic detours resulting in wrong turns, or getting lost, and there were also traffic jams to slow us down. Again, keep in mind the 5 young and sometimes impatient children with small, unpredictable bladders in the back seats. Yikes.
13. There were security guard reprimands in museums about our children. Embarrassing.
14. In one art museum, we stepped into a small theater to watch something. I sat in the back with Sonoma. A lady in front of me turned around and rudely gestured for me to get out (because of Sonoma - who was being well-behaved, by the way).
15. There were food spills on articles of clothing that just got to stay that way for the rest of the day. Sometimes we were pretty haggard-looking.
16. We were incrediblly sleep-deprived. We finished each day late and we were exhausted, but it was all worth it.
17. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but in Washington DC (where parking is ridiculous, and everything is farther apart than I remembered) Ruby needed to pee so badly once that I had to allow her to pee in the gutter on a residential street. Sorry!

Note that all of that stuff happened before we got to North Carolina! After we got there things were mostly smooth sailing (minus the tick that I got, and the tick that Peter got... and incidentally Adam found another tick on him last night. We have lived here for less that 3 months, and in that time we have unintentionally fed and subsequently killed 5 ticks. Sheesh). One thing we learned - trying to cram NYC, Philly, and DC into 4 days with 5 kids is insanity.

After the insanity, we truly had high hopes for our Memorial Day weekend on Bald Head Island with Jackson, Celeste, Kristen, Marshall, and my cousin, Dan. All of our hopeful expectations were met. In fact, everything was better than we could have hoped for. We feel so incredibly lucky to live the life that we do. We know that we certainly don't deserve all of the fun we have and the luxuries that we get to enjoy. We try to and hope to pay it forward whenever possible.

 Day 1: NYC. All wet and ready to wait in line for the museum!

Day 2: Philly at the Liberty Bell (decidedly smaller than they expected)

Day 3: Washington DC at the National Gallery of Art (Girl with a Watering Can, a painting that my dad made us memorize when we were young. Look dad, I remembered!)

Day 4: a picnic on the White House lawn while reading Barack Obama's "Of Thee I Sing" children's book.

Ruby on the beach of Bald Head Island in North Carolina.