A Kid-Free Afternoon

Joel's parents took the kids out for the afternoon/evening and Joel and I did some shopping followed by dinner and a movie. ((Shopping + dinner + movie) - kids = a great time!!)

First we went to Dick's Sporting Goods and got a basketball hoop for the driveway, for Ben's "big" birthday present. The rim is easily adjustible from anywhere between 7.5 and 10 feet so (along with a youth size/weight basketball we got him) he ought to be able to get some use out of it right away, and hopefully for many years. It's in a box in the garage right now and I have no idea how Joel's going to manage to assemble it or how Ben's not going to see the (very large) box before his birthday next Friday.

Next we went to Wolf Camera (by happy coincidence right across the parking lot from the sporting goods store) and I got a new camera -- a Canon PowerShot SD780 IS. (I got the black one).The battery is charging right now so I haven't gotten to play with it yet. It is amazingly small! Ben has a pool party to go to tomorrow so I'll take it for a test run then.

After we finished with the shopping we went downtown to a restaurant called Zink for dinner. (Can't find a web site link at the moment, sorry). We were going to see Star Trek at the IMax theater afterwards but after about five minutes we decided regular movies suck in IMax. (Besides which we'd both already seen it anyway). So we left the IMax theater and went to a regular movie theater and used two free movie tickets we had to see The Hangover, which we both thoroughly enjoyed.

That's about it for my Saturday. Hopefully I'll post some pics from the new camera tomorrow.

Puerto Rico Pictures

Got my Puerto Rico pictures finally. Didn't take a ton of pictures, as previously mentioned, since my camera began spazzing early on. Some of these pictures were taken with no viewfinder whatsoever, so bear that in mind when you wonder why some are slighly off-center/out of focus ;)

Mama Needs A New Camera

Due to my recent camera difficulties, I've convinced Joel to take me camera shopping this weekend. So my question to all of you is: What kind of camera do you use? What do you like/dislike about it? I am looking for a compact camera that takes great pictures FAST. I know all you Canon Digital Rebel fans out there -- my only qualm about this camera is the size...(And Joel's qualm of course will be the price). I don't like a bulky camera. I've been looking into a Canon PowerShot of some form, but there's so many to choose from... If any of you have any suggestions, please share them with me!

I'll have some Puerto Rico pictures up tomorrow at some point-- I stopped in at the camera store today and had the images from the memory card transferred to a CD. I just haven't gotten back there to pick it up yet.

Puerto Rico: Getting There

(Editor's note: this is part 1 of a 3 part series on our Puerto Rico trip, blogged thoughtfully in reverse chronological order so that you may read straight down for these three posts instead of bottom up. Or something).

We left for Puerto Rico at 7:30 last Monday morning. This was, of course, rush hour, and we were stuck in stop-and-go traffic for most of the 30-minute-turned-50-minute drive to the airport. As always when we travel with the kids, I was slightly on edge and worried about making it onto our 9:40 flight. We pulled into the long term lot, pulled into the first parking space we saw, and breathed a sigh of relief.

And then Ben threw up all over himself, his car seat, etc. Apparently the ride to the airport had not agreed with him. His vomiting went something like this: "[BARF] OOOH LOOK! An airplane! [BARF BARF]." There could be worse things, it turns out, than vomiting in the airport parking lot, because of course I had six changes of clothes for him within easy reach so we hurriedly stripped him, changed his clothes, and threw his dirty ones in the trunk of the car.

With that hurdle surpassed we pretty quickly made it to our gate in plenty of time. The flight was pretty uneventful except for one notable exception, which is that I noticed that Ben had a lot of white flecks in his hair, and this combined with the notice about a case of head lice in his classroom that came home in his backpack a week ago had me totally panicking and convinced he had lice. I couldn't carefully inspect his hair because he was in a foul mood at that time and wouldn't let me touch him, so I quietly (or not so quietly) panicked for about an hour before he allowed me to pick at his hair a bit and I realized that whatever it was it wasn't lice eggs because lice eggs won't come out, and after combing his hair a bit I was able to get all of the white stuff out. To say that I was extremely relieved would have been a gross understatement.

Rebecca, heretofore unmentioned, was very good on her first airplane ride*, probably because she was afraid. She quietly panicked in my lap at every sign that the airplane was actually moving, flattening herself against my chest and burying her head in my arm pit. During one of these sessions she fell asleep, and slept for over an hour.

After the 3 1/2 hour flight to San Juan we picked up our rental car, stopped at Crisi's mom's house to pick up the rest of our traveling companions (10 of us in all including kids) and set out for the beach house in Rincon, about two hours drive from San Juan. We stopped for an early dinner (late lunch for those of us who'd been traveling all day) and the drive was ALMOST uneventful until, about 15 minutes away from the beach house we heard a BANG! and realized that the windshield of our rental car had been hit by something falling from a tree (which we later identified as an unripe mango). The windshield of the rental car, unfortunately, was cracked quite nicely.

That about sums up the Getting There section of my three part Puerto Rico series... next up, Being There.

*She made up for it in spades on the ride home.

Puerto Rico: Being There

The beach house we stayed at was very big, and very nice. Even though there were 10 of us staying there (three couples and four kids of which Ben was the oldest), we were not cramped. The bedrooms were large, and there was a lot of living space to spread out in, and a very big kitchen (Oh I miss that kitchen...) My favorite part of the house was the verandah off the kitchen/living area.

Ben's favorite part was the bidet in our bathroom. About five minutes after we arrived at the house, he walked into the bathroom, walked up to the bidet, leaned over it, asked "What's this?" and pulled the handle. He was squirted fully in the face by not a small amount of water. From this moment on, Ben was enthralled... he spent quite a lot of time during the week forcing himself to go "number two" even though he didn't really have to, so he could use the bidet. Incidentally, Joel's favorite part of the house was also the bidet.

The beach was a short walk away, and we confirmed what we learned in Ocean Isle: Rebecca hates the beach. After the first trip to the beach, I had to leave her at the house with Joel and take Ben to the beach by himself. The house had a pool though, which both kids enjoyed.

We spent the first couple of days relaxing at the beach and the pool, and then took a couple of trips to the zoo, and to a lighthouse, and sampled some of the local cuisine. By now you're probably wondering, where are the pictures?? Since of course, a picture paints a thousand words. But alas, my camera seems to have broken. It was totally on the fritz during our trip and sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. Today when I tried to download the pictures to my computer, I got "communication error." So, there might be a new camera in my future... but sadly for the moment, I have no Puerto Rico pictures!! You'll have to imagine the pictures I took of the beach, pool, fat iguanas wondering around, the lighthouse, Rebecca covered in ice cream being chased by a peacock at the zoo... *sigh*...

I learned a few things about Puerto Rico on our trip:

1. it is very hot;
2. it is very humid;
3. there is a torrential downpour every afternoon at precisely 1pm;
4. it has a lot of bugs;
5. it has adorable lizards, and the most awesomest frogs that make the most awesomest noise at night;
6. it has a lot of delicious food, like mofongo (mashed plantains) and all sorts of other things most of which is fried (fried = delicious);
7. the sun rises early, which is a problem when none of the windows have curtains (read: Ben appearing in your room fully dressed down to his sneakers at 6:04 a.m).
8. It is very humid... oh did I say that already?

Read on for the final installment of my three part series on Puerto Rico...

Puerto Rico: Leaving There

We left the beach house at 9 a.m. yesterday morning and headed back to San Juan via Crisi's mom's house where we stopped for lunch and a much needed travel break. The day went extremely smoothly -- I mean eerily extremely smoothly -- until we got on the plane. The kids were perfectly well behaved on the 2 hour drive to San Juan, the airport was not at all crowded, etc.

Our flight home was scheduled for 4:40 pm, which I have sinced learned is a horrible, horrible time to fly with a 20 month old. Rebecca missed her nap and started acting up pretty much as soon as we sat down. Being total idiots and cheap, we did not buy her a seat since she was still young enough to fly free as a lap child. Additionally we did not have with us either of the two most essential things for any flight with a toddler: Benadryl and a DVD player. Either one might have saved us, but alas we had neither. Anyway, she did not sleep like she had on the flight down -- apparently after her first plane ride she wasn't scared of flying anymore so felt no need to snuggle into my armpit like she had before. Instead she spent pretty much the whole time hitting, scratching, and pinching me. And screaming - let's not forget the screaming.

At one point, about two hours into the flight, she hit me hard across the face and I COULDN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE! I Burst into tears, and handed Rebecca to Joel. Ben took one look at me and burst into tears. Rebecca, having been relegated to Joel's arms, burst into screaming, bawling, probably-heard-throughout-the-whole-plane tears. Joel I am sure was wishing for the plane to go down in the ocean at that point -- any possible escape!

After that, we managed to pull ourselves together. Rebecca calmed down a bit as long as The Itsy Bitsy Spider was sung repeatedly to her, and her hand motions, though preferable to hitting and pinching, were dangerous because at "down came the rain and washed the spider out" she would fling her arms wide violently.

Ben, sensing the very tense mood and totally freaked out at the sight of his mother crying (poor Ben) spent two hours reading the Sky Mall catalog and the third quietly washing the window with his cup of Sprite.

Once we got off the plane, everything improved. The kids and I collected our baggage while Joel went and got the car, which got us out of the airport much quicker than we would have otherwise. Rebecca fell asleep as soon as her head touched her car seat, and barely woke up when I changed her into her pajamas at home.

After a rough flight and a long day yesterday, the kids and I slept until 8 this morning. We are all now much recovered, and glad to be home!

We Now Return to our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Ben and Becca have been vacationing in Puerto Rico (without internet access) for the past week. Details of their fun but tiring trip will be forthcoming in the next day or so. But right now, after a twelve hour odyssey back to Charlotte, I am just about as pooped as they are (they both pretty much fell asleep while I was changing them into their pajamas).