Vacation Pictures, We Love Maine

The Tale of the Skunk

The boys fought constantly about Roo's Ultimate Optimus Prime toy on the car ride to Maine and the first two days we were here. Monday morning tragedy struck while they were at the beach. A skunk ran through the beach house, in one door and out the other, and took Optimus. It's a shame, it's been peaceful ever since. Maybe one day I'll have the heart to tell them what really happened. But for now, they were both satisfied with our recollection of this event and why we couldn't chase the skunk.

Having Fun Playing With The New Camera

Here are some landscape pictures from our Maine vacation. We stayed in Owls Head, Maine and stopped at Old Orchard Beach and the Portland Head Lighthouse on our way there. We took a day trip Acadia National Park again this year. We had a wonderful vacation and got to see an amazing rainbow too!

Lighthouse and a Food Truck

As I mentioned, on Saturday before we picked up Uncle Matt we visited the Portland Head Lighthouse and have delicious lobster rolls from a food truck. All in a days work in Maine!

Fly in the Future?

We have finally arrived in Maine. Traffic was heavy almost the entire way from VA. We didn't really hit any real traffic jams but we never got in a real groove either. We made it from VA to our stop in MA in 10 hours. That's not bad but it's not as good as last year either. It stormed on the way driving through Hartford and that was when the boys were on their best behavior for the ride. Thank goodness, because it was really hard to see. Later at the hotel the storm caught back up to us and we weren't able to take the boys swimming, which was a bummer. I had made food before the trip, so we were able to enjoy a nice dinner in the room that evening and avoid going out in the storm.

The next day the boys were up super early. 0445 for Bug and 0500 for Roo. After letting them play for a few minutes I decided that they weren't really allowed to be up so I put Roo back to sleep and crawled in bed and coaxed him back to sleep and we finally woke back up around 0900!!! We got dressed and re-packed the truck and enjoyed the breakfast buffet and finally hit the road again a little after 1000.

Our first stop once we got to Maine was Old Orchard Beach. The boys had fun on the playground and even more fun on the beach.  Old Orchard Beach is a lot like Ocean City, MD. We left and headed to Portland and went to the Portland Head Lighthouse. I think the best part of the lighthouse was the food truck! They had a lobster roll food truck and the lobster rolls were really good, the good bread makes such a difference!

After that, we headed over to the Jetport to pickup Uncle Matt. We figured out that it's only an hour and twenty minute flight from BWI and one less hotel stay and just such a huge time save that it may be worth flying in the future!

They had great parking where there's a little lot you can park in for free while you wait for the planes arrival as long as someone stays in the car. Bug and I went in and waited for Uncle Matt. We walked up the stairs and went down the escalator and did that over and over again!

We squeezed Uncle Matt into the truck and off we went. We stopped at Red's Eats for lobster rolls and then finally got to Owls Head at 6pm. We got everything unloaded, visited with Grammy and PopPop ate our lobster rolls, got the kids to bed and then went grocery shopping and relaxed.

The weather is calling for a lot of rain, I'm hoping doing the anti-rain dance in my head prevents a rainy vacation week!

Outdoor Fun

The kids have been having a wonderful time the last couple months playing outside and enjoying the great weather. We've had a few hot weekends but the trees provide a lot of nice shade. The boys have been enjoying playing in their baby pool on the deck and driving their vehicles around the yard. We've gone to Grandma & Grandpa's house and spent the day outside as well. Yesterday was another great day with wonderful outside play and then going to a pool party with some of Roo's classmates. This is why I would love to live in Florida so we could enjoy this warm sunshiny weather all year.

Preschool Graduation

Roo is now a preschool graduate! It was so much fun watching him have so much fun on stage with all of his friends. He had a fantastic school year and is ready for kindergarten. He has so much more confidence and is much more mature than a year ago. Daddy and I were discussing how happy we were with the preschool this year and how their focus on building strong confident kids has been so wonderful for Roo. Can't believe he'll be going to kindergarten this fall!

Shake Your Peanut!

Disney channel has a show called Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. In one of the shows they are trying to get an elephant out of a tree by shaking a peanut at it and doing a little dance with the peanut. I have to say the over protective side of me has always disliked it because it like several other kid shows have characters playing with peanuts and there are so many kids with peanut allergies these days that I felt it sort of irresponsible. Regardless and apologies for my preachiness on this one I couldn't think of a better title for this post but wanted to not make light of peanut allergies.

With that said, Bug is NOT allergic to peanuts!!!!

He went to Hopkins yesterday for his peanut challenge and though I kept waiting and waiting for a reaction, it never happened. He had to eat less than 2 tablespoons of peanut butter over a little over and hour. I made peanut butter icing on cupcakes for him and that's what he chose to eat (I also had cookie dough, pasta for mixing peanut powder, oreos, you get the point). His first bite was tiny, about the size of a pink finger nail. As the size increased and time passed it was harder to get him to eat, but I had been advised that this would be an excellent occasion for bribery.  Before Roo and I got to Grandma and Grandpa's on Monday, we stopped and got Bug a bunch of small gifts or as Bug called them yesterday, prizes. Roo was an awesome helper and Bug was excited about the prizes.

Hopkins is really an amazing place. From the moment you arrive until you leave, everybody is happy and helpful, even down to the cleaning staff who upon seeing a large sheet covering the floor and were concerned we were covering up vomit were sensitive to what was going on. Luckily, the sheet was on the floor for Bug to play on!  The staff was great the entire time and what an amazing moment when the nurse walked in and said, "so, he's not allergic to peanut." Amazing!

Peanut was always a tricky one for us. He never skin tested positive but at an early age (3 months) skin tested positive for a tree nut (almond). Because of the cross contamination between the various nuts we were told to avoid all tree nuts and peanuts. He did always have a positive RAST for peanut though. Luckily the number decreased that last two times he had the RAST done and Dr. Wood recommended he trial peanut.  We weren't sure what to expect since he had never actually ingested peanut and had a reaction like he's had with several of the foods he's allergic to.  It's likely he never had a peanut allergy since only 20% of children outgrow a peanut allergy, but peanut allergy is so dangerous we followed the doctors orders and strictly avoid peanuts just like we do with his other food allergies.

It's really amazing to be at the point where we've crossed a few foods off his allergy list rather than adding foods like we were three years ago.  The doctors and nurses at Hopkins are confident he'll outgrow ALL of his food allergies.  He is scheduled to trial tree nuts in July and we are supposed to start adding in baked milk again when we feel ready.  We'll wait until next January after his next RAST to find out about the remaining fruits and eggs but for now, crossing peanuts off the list is pretty amazing!

Roo Enjoys Soccer...He Loves Swimming

Roo has been having a fantastic soccer season, especially if you compare it to last fall.  The league changed the format to 3 v 3 for U6 so there is much more focus on skill development this season.  The coach is good at moving the kids from one activity to the next and they're required to keep their ball with them the entire time. The concept of "keeping your puppy on a leash" has worked really well and Roo understands that he should keep the ball closer to him when he dribbles rather than kicking it as hard as possible and sprinting after it.  They've had another coach come and help with the team once in a while, he's the travel team coach for our area, and this has given the kids on Roo's team an almost unfair advantage in the coaching arena.  I love that Roo is learning all these skills and he's even learned to turn with the ball, a pretty advanced skill, but it would be even more awesome if this coach provided a little help to all the teams to help improve the skills of all the kids.  Regardless, it is so much fun watching Roo play in games this year.  He's fast, has pretty good ball control, loves scoring goals and is suprisingly competitive and physical, plus he's really receptive to our guidance.  He's enjoying playing which is fun for us since we both played and Bug can't wait to join in the fun!

Roo's real love right now is swimming. We switched him from group lessons to private lessons and the instructor really pushes him. This has been working out great and he is turning into a really good swimmer. Whenever I take him to lessons he comments that he wants to swim every day of the week.  We've asked the instructor to get him ready for swim team.  I would be by the fall he'll be ready to join in the fun.  I'm not sure if we're ready to be at the pool every day of the week but the benefit is that we can exercise at the gym so it's good for all of us.  Now we just need to get that little Bug in the pool and swimming!