Family Vacation with Training Wheels

I'm writing this post on Sunday to be published tomorrow (Monday). We will not be home. We will be on our first family vacation as a family of four! We have done several trips to visit family, but this is our first attempt at a "vacation." We wanted to do a family vacation somewhere in Washington this summer. But all the cool places we haven't been to are a bit of a drive, and with our vacation track record it would probably just be hours of kids crying in the car, and then a full night of no sleep because Alice would have trouble sleeping in a new location, and then we'd call it quits the next morning and abandon ship and head home. So I found a little VRBO cottage on a cute lake 10 minutes from our house. We're calling it our vacation with training wheels, because if Alice won't sleep at night one of us can run home with her for the night sleep, and if we need a break from Jack during the day we can send him to school haha. And actually, we will be sending him to school! That was originally the emergency escape plan, but then Jack informed me he would be SUPER bummed to miss pizza Monday, and his teacher let me know it's end of year testing, so it's a vacation, it's a staycation, it's a couples retreat (if Alice naps while Jack's at school) . . . this could be great. The only bummer is that we were hoping to spend the two days we're there living on the private dock and kayaking around the lake, but although it was sunny all last week and will be hot and sunny again once our vacation ends, the forecast shows a constant downpour from the time we arrive to the time we leave. We're doing the only thing we can do and packing puzzles, games, sweatpants, and lots of snacks and leaning into it. It's going to be our lazy rainy sweatpantsy lake vacation. 

In other news . . . there really isn't any other news from our last week. Le sigh. I mentioned we were expecting big news this week, but it never came. I am abandoning all expectations and fully prepared for it to take several more weeks before we receive any big news. Rest assured I will let you know if and when we do! In the meantime, this is the perfect time to unplug and get away on a sweatpants vacation. Some pictures from last week:

^^I take it back--there is big news from this week: Jack learned how to ride a bike!! Jared has been offering to buy him one and teach him for months, but Jack was adamantly uninterested. A few days ago one of Jared's friends asked if we wanted a bike that their oldest boy had outgrown. He and Jack grabbed it and the stars aligned--Jack was eager to learn and he picked it up that evening. The next morning he rode his bike up and down our street all day long. He is now an avid/addicted biker. I loved seeing the proud little smile on his face as he picked up this new skill that was so fun for him. It was the same smile he had plastered to his face all through his swimming lessons last summer. My new Jack-related parenting goal is to see that excited/proud learning-something-new smile on his face as many times as possible. 

^^While Jack and Jared went to the gym on Saturday morning, I waxed aspirational and took Alice kayaking by myself. It went . . . about like you'd think kayaking with a toddler would go😂 We lasted probably 10 minutes before she started to get antsy, and then it took another 5 minutes to get back to the dock between trying to keep her on the boat, and then keep her from biting me when she started to get annoyed haha. Jack was never a biter. Alice is a little bit, but I actually don't hate it because if she ever bites me and I yelp in pain, she gets really apologetic and immediately snuggles into me for a rare cuddle that mostly only happens post-bite these days lol. Probably not the healthiest pattern, but you know, toddler stuff. I'm working with her on biting just my sleeve (or her sleeve) when she starts gnashing her teeth and I can tell the bite urge is strong. Shouldn't be funny and cute but it kind of is. Anyway, the kayaking was a good adventure. I felt like a baddie unloading my kayak from my roof by myself, lugging it to the boat ramp with a one-year-old trailing me, launching out, and then getting it back up on the boat and strapping it to the roof racks again afterward.