Make-Me-Smile Monday!

Avery's not the kid running in the sprinklers.  Avery's the kid high-crawling through the puddles like a Soldier in the trenches!

And then the enemy attacks!  Avery tells him "No No No!" and points at him, then tells him to "GO OVER THERE!"

Anniversary Weekend!

Six years of marriage sure has flown by!  It seems like just yesterday we were huddled under a bed in a trailer in Iraq during a mortar attack.  Ah, memories...

We always try to do something fun and interesting for our anniversary.  So far we've:

1st: Gone to NYC to see some shows and sightsee
2nd: We were SUPPOSED to go to a casino, but Jon was delayed coming back from Afghanistan and literally did not roll into town until around 9pm the night of our anniversary, so we just had sushi and wine in our apartment.
3rd: Headed to Providence, RI to Dave and Buster's and stumbled upon some cool fire/water festival thing.
4th: We went to New Hampshire to see the leaves change for the weekend.
5th: We stayed in this time around, but Jon ordered a beautiful dinner from a Caribbean place to remember our Caribbean elopement.

And for our 6th, we took the dog, the toddler, and the newborn and rented a farmhouse in Elkton, VA for the weekend.  So gorgeous and fun, even chasing after kids!

First, the farmhouse:

Beautiful farmhouse

Living room complete with cable and wireless, just like we like it!

Dining room - never used by use, except for one chair being the "Time Out" chair for Avery

Huge eat-in kitchen, site of our delicious anniversary dinner

One of many bedrooms (this place sleeps 12 or so!)

We may have had a family bath in this thing

Game room: Site of Jon losing yet another ping pong match to me (he's never beat me in hundreds of games)

Grown up tub :-)

Gorgeous entry way

As you can see from the photos, it was a gorgeous house.  We wanted to buy it on the spot. And then move it a mile down the road because the ONLY bad thing was that it was on the corner of two busy country roads.  But, that aside, it was an amazing place to stay!

While we were there, we got out to a BBQ restaurant (Avery discovered he loves BBQ!) where the kids behaved.  In fact, a group of old men came over and said "we were dreading you sitting next to us with kids, but they were great!"  Um...thanks?  We also made a big trip to the pumpkin patch where we walked through a corn maze, played games, and let Avery run around like a monkey.  We hit up a great cafe and store on the way out of town, but mostly we just played around in the farmhouse, game room, cooked, let Avery and Dash run around the yard, and relaxed!

I LOVE BBQ!

Working the water pump at the pumpkin patch

Dad and the kids in the corn

You guys, I'm not lost, I swear.

Fresh corn!

Rolling rolling rolling!

Imitating Dash

Somersaults!

And Piggyback rides!

And jumping!

Napping during the pumpkin patch

Dash gets in some fun

Where Avery hid when he touched something he wasn't supposed to

Fave picture: Jon makes an amazing meal.  Avery isn't interested.

We always take a picture holding our the number of years we've been married

Pulling empty wagons

Pulling full wagons

I'll take this one!

Climbing IN wagons

Don't tell Avery he's in the girl picture

Working on a number game

It's like the beach in the country!

What a great trip we had, and even with the kids, it was still romantic and fun.  It also made us want to look for telecommuting jobs so we can live in a grand place like this with lots of room.  Air Force retirement can't come soon enough!!

Hah-vahd Graduation!

I'm not a gusher, but not only is my husband smoking hot in his graduation gown, but he is ridiculously smart!!

Who's a winner?  This guy!

He graduated yesterday from Harvard with a master's in Biology, AND was named to have the best thesis in the biological sciences. 

Just predicting NF-kB Activation based on gene expression in breast cancer. No big deal.

Not only did he get his name in the program, a certificate, and a sweet giant medal from Harvard, when it was announced, he got a really great introduction from one of the professors there.  I would post the video, but my camera was being COMPLETELY STUPID and the audio phased out when I zoomed in.  So bummed about it.  Grrrrr....But, here he is getting his diploma, and Avery whining then cheering. (the clicking noise is my stupid camera - sorry AGAIN).

Avery was a champ the whole time - luckily the ceremony was in an old church that had "pens" on the side, so we got two benches, and a gated in area for him to run around/draw on things/spill water/yell "DAD?!" at the top of his lungs.  Good times.

Family picture!

Congratulations to the amazing Jon Beach!!!

Excuse my gushing

Jon and I have a relationship built on fun, sarcasm, and silliness, and we are rarely super mushy towards each other, so please pardon my mushiness as I talk about how great he was this weekend.

We headed down to NYC to do some sightseeing and see a Broadway show. Now, as you may or may not know, I suffer from chronic headaches that appear about twice a month. Sometimes I catch them early, and sometimes catching them early doesn't matter. As soon as we got off the train in NYC, I swung by RiteAid and picked up some Tylenol, because I could feel a small headache coming on. Eight hours later, before the curtain went up on Mary Poppins the Musical, I took a few more, and spent most of the show rubbing my head. Five hours later, I was in bed at the New Haven Hotel hoping that some sleep would solve it. Instead, at 4am, I woke up with the worst headache I have ever had. Now, many men would be sympathetic (as Jon always is because he's used to my headaches) and maybe offer to rub my neck or head. This was a bad one though. I kept tossing, turning, moaning, etc. Then, I heard Jon say "Hi, do you have any headache medicine? Is it open 24 hours? Ok, thanks." and realized he had called the front desk in the middle of the night to help me out. THEN, he threw on his clothes and walked a few blocks away to a 24-hour Walgreens to buy me medicine, which was very strong and very fast. This morning: no headache.

Again, it's nothing that surprises me in Jon that he would do this, but he really was a hero last night!