Farm Animal Days

Every year, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at NC State University hosts an event called Farm Animal Days where the kiddies can see and touch farm animals.  We wanted to go last year but it was raining on the day we'd planned to attend, and even though the event is rain or shine I wasn't up for it with a then-one-year-old who probably could have cared less.  I have been excited all week to go today, and I'm so glad we got to go this year - it surpassed all of my expectations.  Carney and I took Kinsley, Lilly and Craft, and Prince Danny was even able to take off from work to come meet us on his lunch break.  It was crowded but not overly so, and the girls had a blast.  I am not sure what Lilly loved more - touching the animals or climbing on all of the fences.  Either way, we had so much fun and I can't wait to go back next year.  Best of all?  It's free!  Actually, I guess the real "best of all" is that there is free Howling Cow Ice Cream.  If you are local to Raleigh and have not tried this ice cream, you are insane.  Best ever, and I consider myself to be an ice cream connoisseur.  And I take back what I said about about Lilly's favorite part of the day, because it was definitely the ice cream.  

Proof for Meagan that we fit 3 car seats into my Honda!

Kins and Lills, excited to go pet the animals.

Excited that Daddy was able to meet us!

Turkeys!

Kins wasn't so sure about them...

I included this photo to showcase my daughter's choice of attire for the day.  Yes, she wore her tutu.  To a farm.  It just wasn't worth the argument.  (Eye roll).

Waiting in line to pet the bunnies!

This one was the cutest, in my opinion.

Lilly didn't mind waiting in line one bit because there were fences to climb.  And Kins is such a big girl!

Craft has decided in the past two days that he prefers to only  nap while being held, so needless to say he loved Farm Animal Days too.

Petting the bunnies.

My sorority sister (grand big, to be exact!), Kristin, and I along with our babies.

More fence climbing.  And a cow.

This was heaven for my child who is obsessed with washing her hands.  We have to be clean for ice cream!

Only the best ice cream ever.

Family photo op.  Aside from the fact that I look a hot mess and you can't see Craft because he's sleeping (except for his thunder thighs, you can see those hehehe), I love this pic.

Goats!

Big girls.

Pigs.

Check out Lills hitting on the baby goat's handler in the top left corner.

The sheep!  In the third picture, the sheepy sheep went "baaaaaaa" really loud right in Lilly's face and she jumped a mile high.  It was hilarious!

Again, she was much more interested in the fence than the horse.  But the nice police officer gave her a sticker and she liked that.

My loves.

Kins and Lills in the tractor.

Of course Baby Grace went with us and Lilly was so excited to see her when we got back to the car.

We had a great time and can't wait to go back next year. Dan made the day even greater by coming home with new bikes!  He dropped by Oak City Cycling Project and picked his up, and then when he got home we went back so that I could choose which color I wanted.  Craft went with us and was in a pretty good mood, so when we were done we walked across the street to Wine Authorities to enjoy the weather and a glass of wine.

C is sleeping, of course, because he's being held.  Oy, this kid.

Can't wait to enjoy some more beautiful weather this weekend.  Tomorrow is Friday, hooray!  We are ruining it by having a meeting with our accountant in the morning, so there may be another visit to Wine Authorities at approximately 10:30 am.  :-)

Sarah

Happy Birthday, Prince Danny!

Blog posts two days in a row, what?!  Today was a very special day, friends: my baby daddy's birthday!  

31, so old.  :-)  I had grand plans to cook him dinner and make him a birthday cake, but of course the day did not go as planned, which I've found happens more often than not with a new baby!  Dan had an early meeting this morning and was out the door before the kids and I were even out of bed.  The rest of us celebrated by taking a trip to the doctor, UGH.  Just a cold for Lilly, which is what I suspected but her cough sounds absolutely horrible and I think that she's passed this nastiness along to baby brother so I wanted to make sure it wasn't anything worse.  The doctor said he thinks we're over the worst of it and answered questions about what to do for Craft should he come down with it, too.  Poor babies.

The detour to the doctor derailed my plans of going to the store and running a few errands (thank God I picked up a gift while I was out yesterday because I surely wouldn't have had time today), and I knew by the time I got home, fed Craft and did a few things around the house I'd have to choose whether to cook dinner or bake a cake.  In the end, I chose the cake - not just because clearly that's more important, but because I've made Dan the same cake every year for his birthday since we've been together: chocolate chip poundcake (Susie's recipe!) and I would have felt like the worst wife ever if I'd broken the streak.  As for dinner, Dan swung by and picked up pizza on his way home.  I've been feeling like a bad wife since I didn't cook for him, but he didn't seem to mind.  I redeemed myself with the cake, although apparently I did not properly grease both sides of the pan because half of it stayed in there, whoops.

Looks like @$$ but tastes delicious!!!

Carney took Lilly to the Dollar Store today to let her pick out some presents for Dan and Papa (whose birthday was yesterday - Happy belated, Papa!).  Thank God for Carney, seriously - we are so lucky.  They also picked up a birthday crown for Lilly to decorate.  She had a blast!

The birthday crown (and C with the photobomb)

I laughed out loud when they came home and I saw what Lilly had chosen for Dan.

Testing out one of Daddy's dollar store gifts

Carney said that Lilly picked out the football and the mustache straws all on her own, but she helped with the rest.  Does L know her Daddy, or what?  

We also made a special art project for Dan's office which I'm pretty proud of.  He's mentioned quite a few times that he wants a map of North Carolina to hang on his wall.  Anyone who has ever met my husband will understand why I would never in a million years pick that out for him, but I had an idea of how to incorporate it into his birthday gift.  Lilly made a painting (with our state colors, red and blue, even though she pitched a fit because she only wanted to paint with PINK...her mother's child for sure) and then I cut the shape of the state of NC out of her painting and framed it.  I love the way it turned out, and Dan said this was actually his favorite gift.

We had a pizza picnic in the living room together and really just had a wonderfully low-key evening.  I prayed that both kids would behave for the evening and by some miracle of God it happened, and I am so thankful.  

Big sister is the funniest!

I take back what I said before - the good behavior is probably actually the best gift of the day and the framed state probably comes in second.  I wonder if Dan now understands why his Dad requests well-behaved children every year for his birthday?  :-)  

All of the celebrating wore C slap out.

Dan, we are so thankful you were born!  You are the best friend, the best husband, and the best Daddy and we don't know what we'd do without you.  We hope you had a wonderful birthday, and we can't wait to celebrate many more.  

Happy birthday, we love you!

Sarah

Eaker Family Beach Vacay 2k13

I started this post over 2 hours ago.  Then I realized I couldn't narrow the photos down past 212, and it's taken me that long to upload them.  In the meantime, I've done all of our laundry and a lot of dishes and taken a short nap.  Yes, I said 212 pictures, and I didn't even consider the fact that I could do a collage until after I was already finished uploading, so I'll get started.  I apologize in advance if there are any repeats or duplicates, I am not proofreading this before I publish because it's way past my bedtime already. 

First thing's first, thanks to the Cooks for letting us stay in their phenomenal house.  There was plenty of space, not to mention everything we could have possibly needed (not just basics but I'm talking beach and pool toys, chairs, boogie boards, etc. too!).  And clearly it didn't hurt that the house is absolutely beautiful!  Here's the view we woke up to every day:

You can't see it, but there's also a pool and hot tub on the ground level, and both pools are heated!  Luckily, we had the perfect weather (especially considering it was the first week in October) and didn't need any of it.

My Mom takes an annual beach trip with her sisters and parents, so when Dan, Lilly and I arrived on Wednesday night, they had all been there for several days.  I was so glad we got to spend some time with everyone before they headed out on Thursday.  Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of that, but Aunt Jo took two good ones on Thursday morning that she sent me.

Granny and Lilly eating their breakfast!

As I mentioned above, we couldn't have asked for better weather...it was honestly perfect.  So we spent a LOT of time on the beach, which was fine by everyone, especially Lilly.

I know it's hard to see because it's a long way in the distance, but she was going after a bird in this one.  She was obsessed with them, and in this photo she was chasing the bird with her little hands out saying, "Hold you, baby bird!  Hold you!"  Unfortunately for my sweet girl, "baby bird" didn't want to be held.

It's hard to believe that L used to hate the sand.  By the end of our stay, she had to be hosed down thoroughly (in addition to a naked swim in the pool) before going inside because she was always covered in it!  She dug lots of holes and looked for sand crabs with Daddy.

Day 1 was not one of L's best days, she was a tad cranky and out of sorts (luckily that mood only lasted a day!).  She refused to put on a bathing suit after nap but still wanted to go to the beach, so we left her in her PJ's.  She didn't mind one bit!

It was cousin Mason's first beach trip!  He had a blast as well, as evidenced by some later photos.  :-)

Another obsession of L's were seashells.  I swear the first day we were on the beach she spent the whole day collecting them and putting them in various containers (and don't even TRY to pour any of them out, trust me).  At one point I think she spent at least an hour and a half trying to see how many shells she could stuff into a water bottle.  She could not be bothered to do anything else, it was hilarious!

Mason is clearly intrigued by the beach!  But he had a neat little beach bungalow set up.

I mentioned above that L loved the sand, but the hilarious part about that is she would play in it for a few minutes and then immediately want to wash her hands (she is her mother's child for sure!).  At any given moment there were approximately 5 buckets full of water and she would just go down the line and rinse her hands off in each one.  Hilarious, I tell you!

There were a lot of picnic lunches and snacks on the beach.  No one complained.  

Baby Boy made an appearance as well.  I got brave and decided to rock a two piece for the first time in (literally) years, hence the whiteness of the whale belly (seriously I have not worn a bikini since way before I was even pregnant with L).  I surely will not post a full-body photo and I almost didn't post this one either, but I figured he deserved some acknowledgement!

There was a lot of snuggle time in the mornings while we were waiting on PawPaw to fix us breakfast!  

I don't remember at what point we had this genius idea, but we filled the toy bin with water and Lilly had a BLAST.  It was like her own personal swimming pool.  More pics of this below somewhere.

Not sure why my Dad is carrying him like this, maybe he has a poop?  Anyway, PawPaw and Mase match!

Lilly decided at some point that yoga on the beach is the best.

Hilarious, yes?

PawPaw builds the best sand castles!

One of the boys (PawPaw I think?) bought a kite thinking it would be fun for Lilly, but unfortunately we couldn't get her to sit still long enough to realize that the kite was connected to the string, so she lost interest pretty quickly.  Everyone else had fun with it, though.

Lilly did, however, develop a new-found passion for bocce.

More bird chasing...

...and seashells.

There was a fish that was on one of the kitchen tables as decoration, and Lilly thought he was hilarious.  She wanted to share all of her meals with him.  I actually didn't mind, because a few times this was the only way I could coerce her into sitting still long enough to eat!  "Fishy is hungry, Lilly.  Will you feed him?"

Thankfully, the weather held out until our last day in Ocean Isle (it was gross most of the day, although we did get to go out for about an hour for one last beach hour).  It was pretty yucky for most of the morning, so we took our time getting breakfast ready and also took the opportunity for lots of snuggling and a cousin photo shoot in matching (monogrammed, of course) outfits that I bought them before Mason was born.

Dan had fun with playdoh, too!

I was also secretly a little thankful for one crappy weather day because it gave us an excuse to go to the outlets.  Lilly of course scored pretty big, and loved riding around in the shopping car.

We haven't gotten to go on a family vacation in a few years, and I am so thankful we had this time together.  We had an absolute blast, and I can't wait to (hopefully) do it again next year!  

This preggo is too tired to think, but hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!  We surely did, so be on the lookout for tomorrow's weekend recap.

Sarah