Family & PT

Grace and Kathi were in town this weekend for Kathi to run a mudder 5k in Anderson. We went to have dinner with them at Susie's and then hung out for the evening making Kathi do physical therapy on all the family members. I also tried all of Grace's moves from volleyball conditioning. I was pretty well able to keep up with her. I was pleased. ;) Kathi did some work on my knee, shin and lower back. She can come up more often. ;)

 Gracie got some time in with Kathi working on her thigh.

 Jackson got acupuncture on his thigh. He wasn't loving the needle. ;)

Grace also got her foot worked on after I did...copy cat. ;)

MacKenzie didn't know what to think of all the "therapy" going on around her!

Even Susie got in on the fun and had her foot worked on, too.

Landscape & Harvest

Friday evening we went to our rental house to update the landscaping a bit. It had finally cooled off due to the afternoon rain showers so we decided to work while it was tolerable. It will never look as good as it did when we lived there because they're renters, but it looks pretty good again now.

While there isn't much of a yard there it was enough to tucker me out! We caught up with the neighbors a bit and headed for home. It is nice to live near the house so that we can do this kind of work ourselves. 

MacKenzie and Jackson harvested some of our grape tomatoes this morning. MacKenzie enjoys eating the "harvest" before it even makes it inside. Typical. ;)

ICE CREAM!

When Jax was asked if he wanted cookies he said, "yeah." When he was asked if he wanted ice cream he said, "YEAHHHHHHHH!" It was so cute. We tried to coach him to recreate the moment. It isn't perfect, but he did quite well with the scene replay. :)

Young J&J

Last night we went for dinner at Heidi and Andrew's house. We LOVE going to see one of our favorite little families!

Baby J even seemed kind of comfortable with me holding her this time.

We had grilled pizzas that Heidi made from scratch...with TWO kids to care for...she is truly Superwoman.

Jax was hilarious about the salad. He kept eating the tomatoes and remembering he didn't like them and putting them back in the bowl. No worries, no one ate anymore salad after that. ;)

Look at that little face! Isn't he just SO cute?!

In addition to delicious pizzas, Heidi also made homemade ice cream cookie sandwiches. I told you: amazing. Jackson had 2. Yep. They're that good.

Jax really liked the ice cream and tolerated the cookie. It was so funny.

I loved how Baby J slept with her arm out on the table.

Jackson held Baby J for one minute before Jax came over and wanted to play. This flustered Jackson and he quickly returned Jocelin to her mother's arms. Heidi welcomed him to her world. I laughed. A lot.

I wanted to show how small Jocelin was by putting my hand on her little tummy. Can you believe that? She is 10 pounds now that she is 2 months old- so little!

I was obsessed with her little jeans, too! And her hairbow. Ah, she is adorable.

Gunner, the furry family member, is always happy to see us, too. We love Gunnie!

Jackson and Jax are buddies!

I cannot believe how big Jax looks in this photo! They played "golf" and played outside for quite sometime last night. I love that Jackson has such a sweet playmate. :)

Thank you, Heidi and Andrew for hosting us, feeding us, and letting us play with your children. I always sleep so soundly after an evening with the Porterfield clan. :)

Dinner?

When left alone for dinner (Jackson was golfing) I come up with creative meals like baked tortilla chips, salsa verde and an egg with cheese sandwich with a bottle of water. Gourmet, no? ;)

Sunday Funday

We slept in BIG this morning- oops! I got up for a few minutes to let MacKenzie out and then crawled back into bed and slept until 10:30! Wow. Staying out until midnight is hard on old folks, you know? ;) We got up and had whole-wheat blueberry pancakes that were delicious before heading out to the gym. I had personal training and swimming lessons. Yes, swimming lessons. I've never been able to swim the "right" way so Susie is teaching me. She's very patient and I intend to get better. Today we worked on breathing and kicking correctly. Who knew that breathing would be so hard? Goodness. I'm a perfectionist so the fact that I was not Michael Phelps today really bothered me. I'm determined to get really good in the next couple of weeks. To reward Susie for such a good swim lesson we had her over for a delicious dinner. 

Since I wasn't feeling badly enough about myself from my tough swim lesson, I decided to go the driving range with Jackson. Ugh.

 He is SO good. He can not pick up a club for YEARS and then WHAM he's great. Grumble.

I was able to hit a few good drives myself, but all in all I stink. C'est la vie.

To drown my sorrows from a day of non-perfection we headed to Yogi for frozen yogurt. Eh, I'd rather have ice cream, but that's not quite as healthy. We had a fun, busy weekend and we're so NOT excited to return to work tomorrow. It always gets in the way. ;)

Tourists in Indy

In keeping up with our mission of being tourists in our own city (something we once read about in an airline pocket magazine) we took our kayaks out to Eagle Creek Reservoir to get some rowing time. I was not as good as I had been because I did arms and rowing at the gym before we went- oops!  Jackson did a lot more rowing on his boat while I did a lot of sunbathing and thinking on mine. It was really nice and a gorgeous day.

We were really impressed with Eagle Creek Park; we'd never spent much time there. It is a huge park! We drove through and found all kinds of trails to come back and hike with MacKenzie. We already know she loves hiking so there shouldn't be any surprises like jumping off the boat- HA!

On the way home (we took the long way to the park and home to 1. avoid the interstates and 2. to see things I hadn't seen before- keeping with the tourist theme) we stopped at the Flowing Well Park in Carmel. I had heard that the water was amazing there. As you can some man agreed and was filling up a lot of jugs of the water to take home. You can also kind of see a little kid behind Jackson helping himself to a drink. Jackson didn't love the water and, after smelling it, I opted not to drink it. It smelled like the water in Upland; no thank you! It was fun to see the park anyway.

We came home to play with MacKenzie (she only had 3 balls ready for us) and do some cleaning before heading back out to continue our fun day. We went up to Jason's Deli for dinner. It was delicious. (We'd been there a few times in Denver, but not to the new one in Indy. Note: You get free ice cream with every meal- Jackson was in love.) From there we headed over to the Fashion Mall to go to the Keystone Art Cinema and saw "Seeking a friend for the End of the World." The movie was a snooze (in my opinion- Jackson liked it), but the theatre was really nice. It had a coffee bar- with the best hot chocolate ever- and a very adult clientele. We loved that no teenagers were causing issues (yes, I know that loving a place without teens makes me old. Whatever.). We really enjoyed the place and will go again.

We had a really fun day being tourists in our hometown. I encourage you all to try it. We spent less than $50 and had a lot of new, fun experiences.

"Kayaking"

I rented kayaks from school today (we have a program at Ball State encouraging outdoor activities and they rent high quality outdoor equipment for great rates), had them roped to the top of Jackson's Jeep and headed for Fishers. I must note that I was a nervous wreck with these boats on top of the car and drove around 55 MPH on the interstate for the first time ever. I was getting passed and I didn't even care. Note: if someone has boats on top of their car and they're going slow, sympathize. Don't tailgate. I was freaking out that a boat would fly off and cause an accident. After a loooooong drive I finally made it home.

We packed up MacKenzie and headed down the road to Geist Park to drop in the kayaks. We wanted to test them out tonight with MacKenzie to see if she'd like boating or not before we took her out for a real trip.

As you can see, everything appears to be going well in this photo. What you do not see (because I had to quickly put my iPhone back into my lifejacket before I dropped it) is MacKenzie JUMPING off Jackson's kayak and swimming her little heart out right by my boat and back to shore. It was hilariously scary; she never ceases to amaze me. We convinced her to come back out with Jackson for about two minutes before she went swimming again. This time she came right to my boat and wanted to join me. I pulled her up and told Jackson our experiment with MacKenzie's kayaking ability was complete; she'd failed to enjoy it. We both headed towards the shore when Jackson hit a big rock and couldn't move anymore. He assumed he was in shallow water so he stepped out of his boat only to completely fall into deeper water than he expected. I was laughing so hard at this point that MacKenzie was too confused to jump from my boat. HAAAAAAAAAA! Jackson was SOAKED!

MacKenzie looks so angry in this photo while Jackson is able to laugh at himself already. He's pretty good about that; I'm not always so good when things happen to me. To him? Sure, I laugh. :) We decided to call it a night and felt sure that we'd learned our lesson about taking MacKenzie out on the water. We're kind of bummed that she wasn't a better passenger, but so be it. It was a hilarious evening all the same.

So cute!

Do we not have the cutest puppy in the world?! In the photo on the left she is "helping" me put away laundry. In the photo on the right she is riding in the convertible on her way to my Dad's house to stay for the week while we were on vacation. Thanks again to my Dad and Diana for keeping MacKenzie for us; she had a great time!

Hilton Head, SC

One of Susie's golfing buddies has a timeshare in Hilton Head that she was not using this year so she rented it to Susie and we got an invitation to join her for a couple of days. We headed out Tuesday afternoon and had another remarkably easy couple of flights to Savannah, Georgia (only an hour's drive from Hilton Head). 

We spent the next couple of days just relaxing by the pool, going for long, brisk walks, dining on seafood and just enjoying vacation. We drove home (loooooong drive) with Susie and her friend on Saturday after a nice getaway. I've included far too many photos below- I love Instagram- so enjoy! :)

As you can see, Jackson was relieved to be in the Savannah airport. HA! :)

Jackson posing outside a restaurant...I love stupid signs like these. :)

My birthday cupcake! I reached the old age of 28 (gasp) on vacation

A trio of photos from dinner one night; the sunset was gorgeous!

The beach had a lot of sticks on it from a storm. We thought it gave it a lot of character.

Sunset on the marsh

Jackson LOVES raw oysters (insert disgusted face now).

I took this photo near where we dined one night; gorgeous.

A very nautical photo

Simply beautiful.

We loved this sunset.

Some fisherman passing us by...

The pier

Susie smiling at dinner after I snaked a table from two old guys who "wanted company." HA! :)

A RARE photo of the blogging couple.

The pool has a basketball hoop in it...a lot of children's hopes of playing with it were dashed by my big kid stealing the ball. Hmm.

He shoots, he misses! ;)

Happy feet!

Dinner at Frankie Bones for my birthday!

Susie's friend who joined us on vacation listened to a discman. Yep. They seemingly still exist. We were shocked, too.

Susie was cold and her jacket was packed so she wore a towel as a shawl on the way home. She's so classy. ;)

One of my birthday gifts. Mary Petefish (Jackson's grandma) would disagree with this saying "Giftcard, it's always the right size." because she always gave cash saying, "It's always the right color just not always the right size." Get it? I loved Mary!