Good times, good friends

This past weekend ended up being a marvelous weekend spent with friends. On Saturday, the fam and I headed across the county bright and early to visit my college roommate, Maid of Honor, and one of my favorite gals in the world. Catherine just moved back to NC after leaving right after graduate school so I am thrilled to have not only have her back in NC but to have her in the same county! She has a little girl a few months younger than Avery and I hope they grow up to be special friends just like the mama's!

Two of my favorite girls!

Like Will needs a microphone

We enjoyed visiting and having a light brunch (Will just about ate them out of house and home the 2 hrs we were there). Will and Avery loved their playroom because all the toys were "new" to them. I felt terrible that we left it in such a disarray! Avery did a very good job sharing with her friend. I was impressed because she did a very bad job of sharing with her brother there and actually did her best to purposefully annoy him. For instance, laying down on top of anything he was playing with so he couldn't play with it. My, she is growing up and getting her own little personality.

Avery's favorite activity....dumping things out of containers

On our way back across town we stopped and had pizza at one of Matt and I's "old haunts" across from campus. Will and Avery were decked out in their Wolfpack attire (today the Wolfpack played (badly) against the Boo Tarheels).  They were very cute.

Early Sunday morning Catherine picked me up and we headed to Virginia to visit our friend Meredith and her family, including her new baby boy! Meredith and Catherine grew up together and I got to know Meredith through Catherine and we hit it off during all of Catherine's wedding festivities. I was very sad when she moved away from Raleigh a few years ago.

It was been years since Catherine and I had a road trip together. The last time was on the way to the beach for Meredith's bachelorette party. We had a great time visiting and it made me wish we all lived in the same neighborhood. Meredith's older son, who is almost 3, has THE BEST manners.

Me, Mere, and Catherine

We had a great tour guide for Sunday's trip: Janet, the Irish Tom-Tom GPS. She spoke with a darling accent and kept telling us to "turn on the motorway". Ha! Although Janet let us down on the way home when we hit bad traffic on the interstate. I think Janet got a little mad at us and even yelled at us with her Irish accent a few times. "Turn around right now!!!" Ha!!

On Monday I finally had the opportunity to take a long overdue trip to the coast to visit my favorite family of multiples.I have had several trips planned over the last few months but it never fails, someone in my house gets sick and I can't go. I think I was up all last night worried that someone was going to get sick!

Austin and Currin enjoying play time

I got lots of good cuddle time with my godson Currin and his handsome brothers. I also got to hang out with big sister Lilly and one of the grandma's too. Most importantly, I got to see Elizabeth and give her a hug. Liz, I miss you so much!!!!!!!!!  Unfortunately Jon was at work so I didn't get to see him on this trip.

Me and my boy, Currin

These boys are quite a miracle story (their mama too) and tears sprung in my eyes when I saw them today. I haven't seen them since their baptisms in November. If only they all just lived next door to me.  :-(

Lee showing off his skills

So my butt has been on a few "motorways" these past few days but hanging out with my girls and their little ones made it all worth it!!!!!

Game Time

For the record, it is very hard to watch a ball game at our house. Especially when the Wolfpack plays terribly. Will yells out the score after each basket. I don't need the constant reminder that yes, we are indeed losing. Badly.  And of course there is the constant chatter from Captain Questions.  "Well what if you did shoot the basketball off of a rocket ship and it went in the basket? Would the Wolfpack get the ball back?"

Or my favorite from today: "What if kicking the ball wasn't illegal? .....But what if it wasn't? ....... But what if it wasn't?

Avery constantly asks/says "Wolfpack win the game, Mommy". Poor thing. She is going to be disappointed for a while!

Speaking of disappointment, Will actually cried at the end of the game because of the loss and took his jersey off.  We had a quick lesson of "we love our team no matter if they win or lose" and he put his jersey back on.

I love my little Wolf Pups!

At "I Heart NY Pizza" on  Hillsborough St before tip-off

No Mo' Snow!!

I am about to get pounded

 In my 30+ years on this beautiful earth, I have never seen it snow as much in one winter as it has this year. If you want to get real technical about it, the first few snows we had were actually in the fall season. Whatever. I am so over it.

This time around the snow was really  unexpected....because we are at the beach! Raleigh got no snow! I had planned to go to Wilmington on Friday to visit my godson and his wonderful family, but with Avery a few days into RSV and an ear infection, and not to mention that she had been exposed to pink eye at school which coincidentally canceled my last trip to Wilmington, I decided mid-week to not go and spread our germs.  To little people, that is. So on Thursday we decided we would go to Beaufort for the weekend. I didn't check a forecast; it is the beach...it is always warm(ish).

Us girls stayed inside most of the time

It started snowing early Saturday, maybe 8-ish? It didn't stop until probably 7PM! The final tally was about 6.5 inches. Of course I didn't bring any snow appropriate clothes for the kids. Matt didn't even bring a coat for himself!!!!!! To say we were unprepared is an understatement. Will and Matt did get out and play for about 5 minutes, but tennis shoes and track pants just won't cut it! Saturday we were stir crazy and also worried about not being able to get home on Sunday.

We awoke to a beautiful, sunny day on Sunday. Who am I kidding...it was pitch black when Avery starting yelling for me at 6AM. But you know what I mean. We still needed to wait for the sunshine and warmer temps to melt some of the snow so once again, we were stuck in the house. Ironically, one of our main reasons for going to Beaufort was to get a change of scenery since we had been stuck in our house so much this very cold winter. The change of scenery ended up being just a different set of 4 walls.

Avery preferred the comfort of a roof over her head

And then around mid-morning the roar of a 4x4 truck was heard and it was our heroes of the day: Matt & Aimee. And a four wheeler! PTL, we got Will out of the house and he was able to enjoy the snow but still stay dry in his inappropriate clothing. We even took Avery for a walk down to the river. No 4 wheelin' for her....she didn't like the noise.

Can I drive Uncle Matt?

Our hero, Uncle Matt and Will

Will gets Uncle Matt right in the chest

It was so beautiful at the river

Before we left, my fun husband had to make the world's largest (ok, not really) snowman. It fell twice and this was the end result that finally stood up.

The master craftsman

Thank goodness other than pulling out of the neighborhood onto the highway, we didn't have any more problems for the rest of the trip.  I am glad to be back in cold Raleigh, which has more snow in the forecast for this week!!

Lindy says, "I don't do cold."

Oh sunny, summer days, where are you?

Morning Ritual

On a normal morning in the Modlin house, I get Avery up and after taking care of business (aka changing her diaper and finding the perfect "pink bow"), we cross the hall to Will's room to get him up. This is one of their favorite parts of the day. Will refuses to get out of bed in the morning unless Avery gets him up. 

I am so lucky and happy that Will and Avery love each other so much. They run to each other when they see one another.  They share food (most of the time). And a lot of the time, they will share their toys. Will is continuously in awe of all the things he can teach her, like different words and how to do "tricks." Avery will sometimes climb up into his lap and say, "Baba hold AB?" Their rooms at school are connected and the school had to put construction paper over the bottom half of the window of the connecting door to prevent them from standing there and staring at each other all day. Evidently Avery gets quite upset when she sees him at school but can't be with him. So while they still like sharing a bathroom and the mere presence of one another, I better write all this down to look back on one day!

Back to the original subject of the post, the mornings go something like this:

Avery crawls into Will's bed and makes her way to the head of the bed.

She pulls back all the covers and moves all the stuffed animals until she finds him.

"Morning, Baba"

"Morning, Avery"

She then pats him on the head repeatedly and then hugs and kisses him.  He snuggles up to her and then usually does something like puts her in a choke hold or knees her in the head as he is "loving" her. 

Then she starts crying. 

And then he starts crying. 

But for 30 seconds every morning, it brings tears (of joy) to my eyes.

 

So you think you can dance?

A few months ago we finished dinner early one night and somehow we had a dance party in the bonus room before bath time.  It was so much fun it has become practically a nightly occurrence. Our favorite music for this dance party is hip-hop, of course and it is so funny to hear the kids sing the songs.

I snapped a few photos during tonight's dance party. All I can say is I AM GLAD I WAS BEHIND THE CAMERA. If the pics are blurry, it is because I was laughing so hard I couldn't hold the camera still.

Dancing to Katy Perry's "Firework"

High flying Avery

Will and Matt gettin' down

Us girls think the boys are pretty funny

So glad I was the photographer!

I love the facial expressions

Grand Finale moves!

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What a week

What a week. And it is only Wednesday.

Monday was a bad day. And a good day. A big day in my career. Sort of. Let's put it this way: a day I will never forget.  Monday my employer announced they were merging with another (out of town) company. Yeah, it probably makes good business sense. From an employee sense it, well, stinks.  Since I don't want to move, chances are I won't have a job when all is said and done. So a bad day. The plus side is that deals like this take a long time in my industry so I have at least several months to come up with a plan and figure out what I want to be when I grow up. So a good day.

Now I know in the big scheme of things this isn't monumental. I know that I am still lucky to be sitting pretty in a high rise office building, collecting a paycheck every 2 weeks. That is truly a luxury not everyone can say they have experienced in the last few years. I have my family and my health. I have a roof over my head at night and food on my table every day. Matt and I can financially handle a sticky situation like this for a short time period. But it is still sad and scary to all of a sudden not know what the future holds. To brush the dust off of suits tucked back in the closet (and pray they still fit!) and try to sell myself to a stranger sitting across a conference room table.

Internet rumors actually broke a few days before so I had myself a good pity party over the weekend. For the most part I snapped myself out of it by Monday morning. God doesn't give you more than you can handle. Just looking around the room, I can see I have so much to be thankful for. And if I ever forget that, I have this fortune cookie fortune sitting at my desk to remind me of that very thing.

Who knows, this may end up being the best day of my life. The day where I was allowed to make a change, with no strings attached, and maybe find complete career bliss. Or career-less bliss. Who knows. In my relatively short, 9-ish years in the workforce, I have a seen a lot. Just a couple of weeks before I officially started my career, the 9/11 tragedy happened, which had a profound impact on the business world. A few short months later, the first of many financial catastrophes (Enron) occurred, which had a profound impact on my profession as well as my industry. But Monday was the first event that had a profound impact on Me. Myself. And I.


Plus, I had to change like 2 passwords and that was a pain to deal with all day long!!! Since then we've also been dealt a hand of winter weather and I've had a stomach bug. Did I mention it is only Wednesday??

"My Daddy"

This is one of those "I want to remember something about the children" posts. The subject for today: Avery.  Avery is not the easiest baby/toddler. She is not as laid-back as Will was at this age and is already showing us how strong-willed she is. But she can melt a heart in a flash....which is probably not helping the matter of Avery always getting what Avery wants.  One of my favorite things Avery does is call Matt "my daddy". Not all the time, but a lot of the time, especially if she really wants his attention.  Often times in the morning I might be upstairs getting ready and I hear a lot of this:

"I neeeee help, my daddy"

"I do it, my daddy"

"Open, my daddy"

"Dwink pweese, my daddy"

"Fix it, my daddy"

And of course several "No, my daddy" a day!

I could go on and on. I usually get her up in the mornings and most of the time the first thing she says is "Go get my daddy???"  I think this is really because she knows he is downstairs eating and she wants to go partake of his breakfast too!! Avery usually eats 3 breakfasts a day, which is quite funny!

But don't let all this Daddy's girl talk fool you. All of you who know Avery know her ABSOLUTE favorite place to be is on my left hip. If I try to hold her sort of to the front or heaven forbid on my right hip, she uses those little arms and hands to forcefully turn her body across mine to get on my left hip. Oh, I also MUST be standing up while holding her. If not, she screams "up, up" all while basically pulling my shirt over my head until I stand up.

For the record, we are currently taking contributions to her (diva) wedding fund.

Sick Day

Overnight Master Will had a tummy bug....yuck!

Modlin Mayhem at the Museum

Monday was so much fun and such a great day! Matt and I both had the day off for the New Year holiday so we sent the kids to school and off we both went to tackle our “to do” lists.  We both finished up a good portion of our respective lists by lunch and then we actually took a run together! I joked that we could have been so jr high-ish and shared the earbuds of my new mp3 player as we ran! Ha!! Being that Matt is a foot taller than me, the mental image of that cracks me up.

After our lunch date, we picked up the kids and headed downtown to the NC Museum of Natural Science. We have been there once before with the kids (fall of ’09) for BugFest.  Surprisingly, or maybe not if you know Will, he remembered just about everything there. Nevertheless, the kids had a really good time, especially after we unstrapped Avery from the stroller! Poor thing couldn’t see anything while sitting in the stroller. “ Here Avery, how does this wall look to you?”

 

Thankfully the museum wasn’t crowded, but there was this one young couple that we kept running into. Or maybe I should say more specifically Will kept literally running into them. Ha! I felt bad for them!   Will could barely contain himself and never once used his “walking feet.”  Avery loved looking at the fish and turtles, although she was scared of everything at first. Once she figured out everything was safely behind glass, she was much happier! Will and Avery were really cute in the gems and rocks area. They think anything sparkly are diamonds (Will already knows that diamonds are a girl’s best friend) so they were going crazy, pointing out all the “diamonds” in the display cases. 

His face cracks me up!

She wouldn't let the boys out of the dino room.

There was a smell.....it wasn't her! This will probably show up at her wedding one day!

To sum it all up, I think the kids had fun, but their favorite things were riding up and down the escalators (Will), pushing the elevator buttons (Avery), and stomping on the hollow-sounding floor in the dinosaur room (both).  Kids!!