June in CT

After Grammy left we had a couple weeks in CT before we flew to Utah. Jackson was in a "fun in the sun" camp at his preschool three days a week for those two weeks. He had fun wearing his swimsuit to school, making crafts and playing in the sprinklers and with all their water toys.

We started to get ready for baby sister's arrival by updating the basement. Sounds weird, but we had to change things down there to get room for Abbie to take over the extra bedroom upstairs and make room for her in the nursery. The most exciting thing for the kids was having a tv in the basement now. Tyler upgraded our tv upstairs so our old (still really nice) tv was sent in the basement and we got an awesome new couch off craigslist to fill the space.

Before...

Gotta love Craigslist

 

 After

Big Girl Abbie with her new nikes and camelback!

Abbie was quite the strawberry picker!

These kids sure do love their daddy

Abbie and her buddy, Mariah

Jackson and his buddy, Levi.

Jackson loved doing swimming lessons again!

He is such a great swimmer!

Oh that face...

Silliest

These two are besties.

A chili's gift card resulted in a few dinners there this summer and the kids' new favorite restaurant

Dinosaur Museum on free admission day, glad we didn't have to pay - it was pretty lame.

Jackson got a summer buzz haircut!

Grammy comes to Connecticut

A couple weeks after Jackson finished school and after a low-key Memorial Day weekend, my mom came to spend some time with us in Connecticut. 

We didn't go anywhere too exciting but had a chill few days together. We showed her our favorite new farm, Westmoor and Abbie showed her the baby piggies that weren't so little anymore! We went to one of our favorite parks, Simsbury Rotary, and had a picnic lunch there. Saturday we had committed to help out with a service project our ward had teamed up with the city on. I guess when you are the exec. secretary and primary president of the ward - you kind of have to go to these things ;) But Grammy ended up helping with the kids and they played at a playground most of the time. We went shopping and got Abbie her new pair of Saltwater sandals for the summer and Jackson a new pair of Nikes.

On Monday we took off on an adventure and headed to Bridgeport, CT to the Beardsley Zoo. It's an hour drive down near the shore - close to NYC. The kids had a great morning checking out all the animals but probably the "highlight" or the memory that will live on the longest was when Abbie got "sprayed" by the tiger. It's not a huge zoo but they do have a few large animals - one of which is a Tiger. It happened to be one of the last animals we saw, and when we walked up to the exhibit it was pacing back and forth. Well apparently it was getting ready to mark its territory because it then started to pee and apparently tigers can pee pretty far away and it was basically like a hose of pee spraying from the cage. Most of the crowd was standing near the left side of the cage, that's where Jackson and Grammy were - but Abbie was still in the stroller so I had her more to the right side in order for her to see better. Well she saw a little too well when the tiger sprayed right at us! I immediately backed up with the stroller but not quick enough as the she got a little wet on her legs, feet and at the bottom of the stroller. It was really gross, really weird but something Abbie has not forgotten :)

trying to be the statue

picnic at the shore

Jackson's monkey friend

before the spray...

Abbie eating guacamole aka spinach/kale dip

Playing during the service project

At the farm

Counting the chickens

On Saturday we were helping out with a large service project our ward was involved in

Grammy brought pain books that Abbie had fun doing for weeks after.

Can you read me a story Grammy?

We made it to the shore (both kids wearing their new shoes)!

Jackson's Last week of Preschool

The end of May brought the end of preschool for Jackson. He had a great year with Mrs. Espinoza and his small class. His small 3s class had an end of the year celebration that he spent lots of time learning songs to perform for families. Tyler was even able to come see the performance which made Jackson extra excited :) He started the year knowing most of his letters, no numbers and could write the letter A. Now he knows 100% of his letters, learning upper and lowercase, can recognize all his numbers, count to at least 30 on his own and can write most letters without help.

His best friends were Nate, Blake, Levi and Audrey - luckily all of them but Blake will be in his class next year too. His favorite things to do at school were playing with toys and playing on the playground least favorite - the arts and crafts. But his teacher was proud of him that he always tried everything she asked him to do without complaining, he completed all his projects. He was also always a really good example about cleaning up and helping others. His teacher tried to always focus on their positive behaviors of the day and so I would never hear anything negative about Jackson throughout the year. But he did inform me he never went to the thinking chair (aka timeout chair) the whole year.

Singing his Lion and Lamb song

His assigned color - Gray, we had to make gray seem really exciting for him to be happy about it!

First day of school, last day of school - I think he grew just a bit!

Mothers' Day

I had a great mothers' day this year! It started with my kids ever so gently waking me up at the side of my bed whispering "happy mothers day." They had helped Tyler make breakfast for me and led me downstairs. Tyler didn't have to go to his early meetings so that was a present by itself :)

At church the Young Men & Youth took over the Primary & Nursery so the leaders could go to Sunday School and Relief Society for a change. It was supposed to make a stress-free mothers day but as primary president it stressed me out quite a bit haha! Well especially at first, walking in and hearing that about 5 youth were gone that were supposed to teach classes and the nursery was total chaos (including my own crying Abbie) but after the first 20 minutes or so I think we got it all put together and it was fun to go to Sunday School where Tyler just happened to be teaching that day and RS.

Tyler made my favorite Greek food for dinner and the kids and he made milkshakes for dessert! Jackson had made me some presents at preschool that he was excited to give to me and my present from Tyler was a new Petunia Pickle-bottom Diaper Bag. I had hinted a bit since my old one's zipper was broken and just getting a little grimy after 4 plus years!

My milkshake makers!

 The main event I guess you could say was the following weekend when I went on a girls trip to NYC - or as my kids liked to call it, "A Mama's Trip." I went with Alarie, Emily and Jeanette and it was a mothers' day present for us all. Tyler actually organized it and we were able to use a free night hotel he had earned from work traveling :) We drove down Friday afternoon and stayed at the Marriott Marquis Hotel right in Times Square Friday night. It was a trip all about food and relaxing :) We had dinner at a Bobby Flay place Friday night then went to Matilda on Broadway that night!

The view from our room

Fancy Fried Chicken :)

The girls at the play

 The next morning we ate at Norma's Cafe and spent probably 30 minutes trying to figure out what we wanted to order, it all looked so good. We were trying to figure out what to share and kept going back and forth and ended up getting things we wanted. Probably the best thing was Emily's fruity french toast but I was pretty fond of my savory choice too :)

Heuvos Rancheros

While it had been raining all of Friday, we had woken up to beautiful weather on Saturday so straight from breakfast we walked through Central Park and made our way to the Met.

My tiny friends and my huge tummy at the Met

Afternoon in Central park

We had a picnic in the park for a late lunch and then headed over to my favorite cookie place at Levain Bakery. Tyler's only request for the trip was that I brought him home a chocolate cookie from here, so he was anxious to see the picture I sent him.

We ended the day doing a little shopping and trying BabyCakes Bakery and then got stuck in really bad traffic trying to leave the city. As soon as we got on the freeway we were fine, but as the navigator for the whole weekend, I felt bad for being slightly responsible. 

All in all it was a quick but great weekend, Tyler and the kids had fun at home hanging out with the other motherless families :) I think it also gave him a new appreciation of what I do each day :)

Home again

After an amazing cruise, our time away came to an end when we got to Puerto Rico. Our flight didn't actually leave until the late afternoon so we had all day to hang out. We chilled on the boat for a few hours and then stored our luggage at a hotel and wandered around Old San Juan for a bit. We had been to Puerto Rico together back in November, 2010 when we went with 8 month old Jackson. We finally did a little shopping and got presents for the kids, the highlight being a cute dress for Abbie. We attempted to eat at our favorite sandwich place, St. Germain - but sadly they were only serving a Sunday Brunch so we decided not to go. We ended up at another favorite of Tyler's that he tried on a work trip - the Parrot Club. The Plantain Nachos were amazing, originally recommended by Jamie & Nick.

Windy afternoon at El Morro

Then we got to the airport and at that point was super anxious to just get home and see my babies. But they really had so much fun with Grandma and Grandpa. It was great to see pictures throughout the week of our kids having so much fun with Grandma! And Grandpa got to Connecticut on Friday which just doubled the fun for them over the weekend.

Showing off his new Superman Shirt!

Abbie flirting with Grandpa before Stake Conference

This boy is obsessed with his Grandpa

These two love each other

Three Generations of Jennings men :)

While it was overwhelming to think about leaving my kids for a week, it all ended up being such a great experience. Tyler and I had such a great week and I know the kids had so much fun bonding with their grandparents. Thanks so much to Vicki and Terry for coming out and making it all possible :)

Cruise Day 7 - St. Maarten

The last day was a stop in St. Maarten - this was another stop we had visited on our honeymoon cruise and we had fond memories of visiting Orient Beach that trip. We considered a few different options for this day but never really went through with anything. Since it had been a busy week with island after island (rough life i know) we went for a very relaxing day this time. We just asked around and heard that Little Bay was a nice beach only about 10 minutes from the cruise terminal. So we took a taxi there and got dropped off at a resort that didn't even charge us anything to have access to their facilities. We had looked into others with a $50 resort fee so finding this was awesome. It wasn't a huge fancy resort but still very nice and we had a great day.

This was actually the one day that we had non-perfect weather. When we got off the boat it was very overcast and it had been raining overnight. It actually rained on us for about 20 minutes at the resort, but we stayed on the patio at that time. Then it cleared and was perfect for the rest of the day!

The resort had a couple pools we were able to hang out at in the morning. The place was pretty empty honestly so it was really nice. It was a Saturday, so I think a lot of people were checking out or in that day. We spent some time trying to get a good picture of this parrot to show our kids, then all of a sudden it walked over to the pool to get a drink. Or maybe it just wanted to have a chat with Tyler?

Tyler chatting with his new friend

Not too bad of a view from the pool!

After taking this pic, I hopped in the hammock too :)

The water temperature was totally perfect and I probably spent more time in the ocean here than any other island. We then were able to go snorkeling here too, once again - glad we brought our snorkel gear :)

About to  head out to snorkel

View of the resort from our snorkeling spot

 

We didn't get as many snorkeling pictures here but there were some really colorful fish here too.

About to leave our last island.

Panoramic View of Little Bay

All the islands were so great, this was probably the most relaxing - a perfect end to our week!