Vacation!

So we had a wonderful trip to Mississippi last week! Although...it didn't always feel that wonderful during the traveling part. Ted stayed at home (to work), so I drove down to "the cabins" (as Truman calls them) with the kids by myself for a short weekend pseudo-family reunion. The reunion part was actually for the Rose family, which is my aunt's husband's family, and the "cabins" are actually part of a very nice campground of sorts that has cabins (fully stocked with toilets, showers, and TV's). It was a loooooong trip to take on a Thursday (13ish hours) to then return on Sunday! But Truman had his little heart set on going, because we first visited the campground in the early summer of 2007 for my cousin Ben's wedding, and Truman fell in love. It was interesting, because he isn't really an outdoorsy kid in general, but there were two things that stuck with him: first, there were numbers on the cabin doors, and second, there were tons of kids available to play.

He had a blast this time, as well...he really enjoyed spending time with his Great-Aunt Linda (my mom's twin) and his cousin Kaity, who is 3. Also, there were tons of adventures with water toys and even a talent "contest" during which he performed a very nice rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." He really is a ham at heart!

Talia also had tons of fun playing with Kaity...and she managed to give herself some really good blisters by hiking all over the place in her princess shoes. We couldn't convince her to slide down the slip 'n slide, but she enjoyed running towards it and "pretending" like she was going to do it. She faked us out every time. She also wanted to take home baby Tristan, my cousin Helen's new baby who is only a few weeks old. Not surprising, as Talia LOVES babies.

The kids spent tons of time playing with play dough and just running around. It was pretty fun for all, and Aunt Linda did a great job organizing it all...I hope to do it again! It is hard to maintain family connections between the little cousins.













Talia & Kaity















Happy Truman


















Getting Uncle Bo!














Checking out flowers with Grandma

Truman is 5!

Truman had tons of fun on his birthday and got way too much stuff, as usual. We went mini-golfing as a family, which is one of his current obsessions. We had a small family party that evening, with Granny, Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Amy joining us to celebrate.

We had a Super Mario theme and I ordered a frosting sheet from Ebay, which was great. However, there was a ton of drama getting it applied to the cake (Long story, but it involved going to Sam's, having the cake associate pass out and go to the hospital in an ambulance, and then another associate refusing to put the frosting sheet on). It was such a cool cake. There was a time when I was convinced I would never buy a store-bought cake for the kids' birthdays, as I was determined to bake them from scratch. However, on Truman's first birthday that cake kind of collapsed and so I just gave up!


I created a Mario scavenger hunt for Truman to complete in order to find is "big" present, which was the Super Mario Sunshine game. He had a great time, and Daddy helped! It is hard to believe that he will be starting school in just a few weeks...