Visit with Aunt Jesse

Aunt Jesse went back to CT on Friday. We had a great and very eventful visit with her. I already posted the part where Michael started crawling for her. Wore him out!


The weather finally warmed up while Jessica was here and we were able to take lots of hikes. While she was with my parents on Sunday, the 5 of us went out to Crowder's Mountain State Park and got to wait in the car for 30 minutes because the park was at capacity and the ranger was letting people in one at a time as others left. We waited it out. It was a nice day and worth the wait. Scott was very excited about hiking.


And tree climbing... he wanted to touch all the trail markers, once we pointed them out to him. I don't think he'll get lost in the woods. I also think he needs to find a better method for climbing trees!


We hiked the "Fern" Trail, which was about a mile and had this cute little stream where it crossed the "Lake" Trail. Scott and Blaise both did a really great job hiking on their own and didn't really want to leave... I didn't either. What a fun family day we had!

Then we took Aunt Jesse to a park I used to take Patience to back in the day. That was really nice too. A little walk around a pond, where we got to see a turtle and a lot of time on the playground... where Aunt Jesse got some great pictures of the boys that we'll be hanging on the wall. It's nice to have a budding photographer in the family :)

Another day another hike. We revisited Landsford Canal State Park with Aunt Jesse for a picnic lunch and hike along the river. The boys absolutely LOVE it there. Throwing sticks into the water is the name of the game:

We didn't actually hike very far, they were having too much fun throwing sticks into the water.

Then we went home and after naps spent the rest of the afternoon outside at home... Michael got to play in the sand for the first time. I think he enjoyed it!

He also discovered gumballs. Joy. I think they're nasty things and don't like them at all, but every time we go on the porch he crawls over and picks one up and tastes it of course. The funny part is the whole time he's doing this he has this awful look on his face. Funny dude.

That afternoon turned a bit scary. My brother Mike came over for dinner and on his way over he started feeling badly. As we were sitting out on the porch chatting and the boys were playing (I was feeding baby Michael,) Mike got sick and passed out. He's a big guy. It was scary. The paramedics came and he got to spend the night at the hospital. I'm not sure how much he wants here for the whole world to read, but it turns out it was just a bad stomach bug that triggered convulsive fainting. It scared Blaise and he had a hard time getting to sleep that night (despite it being late by the time they got to bed.) Scott on the other hand... could be a doctor someday, he's just so fascinated by all things related to medical practice. Baby Michael was a little annoyed that his dinner got interrupted. The rest of our visit with Jessica was kind of back and forth between here and the hospital... we settled a little bit back into our normal routine, since she spent a lot of time with Mike. The boys were sad when she left... they had come to believe that this was her new home. "When is Aunt Jesse coming home?" they asked. I tried to convince them that her home was far away in CT... maybe they believe it now?

Michael has made strides with his coordination crawling since last week:

It seems the greatest motivation for him is getting to me or getting to something that belongs to the big brothers. They are getting used to it already- don't like it, but are getting used to it.

I've decided to "attempt" to post here on a more weekly basis, with more pictures and videos. I'm trying to record the little things elsewhere. We'll see how that works.