Family...

The saying goes, "You can choose your friends but not your family". It is often said because of a difference of opinion or personality causing family not to get along. The words "family reunion" often cause people to cringe with anxiety of forced social gatherings.

The Miley side of my family got together last week for the 1st time since I have been alive. It was none of the things mentioned above. What it was...laughing,playing, hugging, smiling, crying, healing, understanding,comfortable...mine. I would choose them everytime.

Estes Park Extravaganza

 

On the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, we sadly said goodbye to Poppa and headed out for Estes Park, Colorado. As Poppa headed back to the 100 degree heat of Texas, we headed for the cool dry air of the mountains. After skirting a tornado in Eastern Colorado we arrived at the YMCA of the Rockies with a little daylight to spare. The boys immediately gravitated to the huge boulder right outside our cabin and that is where they spent all of their free time during our stay. 

After some much needed rest, we decided to brave a mountain hike with both the boys. For those of you who have ever been around them both at the same time you might say "Have you lost your minds!?"  Possibly.  It could be that we were just adjusting to the altitude and the blindness that the beauty of the mountains brings to us or possibly we HAD just lost our minds but we did it anyway. It was fabulous. We all made it to the top of Bible Point in one piece and it was well worth it. At the top is a memorial to a man who spent much of his time there. Part of the memorial is a mailbox containing notebooks, pens, a Bible, and an invitation to leave a note. Quinn wrote "I love Bible Point".  What more needs to be said? 

 

The best thing about the YMCA of the Rockies is that they have a daycamp for the children.The boys spent 2 days of their vacation tooling around the Y camp with other kids their age and over enthusiastic college age camp counselors. They loved it and don't tell but WE loved having 2 days to ourselves as well. We spend one entire day on an 8 mile hike into Rocky Mountain National Park through alpine lakes, waterfalls and boulder fields.  Something we used to do almost once a week before we moved to corn country and had kids.

The last day that we were there the kids turned in their Junior Ranger booklets that they had been dutifully filling out all week to receive their official Rocky Mountain National Park Junior Ranger badges. These look especially amazing on their official Junior Ranger Vests Grammy brought them from the Grand Canyon. After that, Nolan told everyone, and I mean EVERYONE that we saw,  "Guess What?! My brother and I have became official Junior Rangers!"  Most of them were as proud of him as he was of himself.

If you ask each family member what their favorite part of our vacation was this is what you will hear:

Quinn: "Everything but especially going to Bible Point!" 

Nolan: "Getting my official Park Ranger Badge & making my rubber band gun at the craft center "

Jim: "Hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park."

Karen: "Being in the mountains, hiking, and not using a hair dryer all week."

Christmas Joy

The picture at the bottom right says it all. Christmas Joy

Happy Father's Day!

I have to split my time in this post dedicated to 2 of my favorite men. ps- this background is for you Jim.

Dad- I love you for so many reasons. I love that you lead by example, you don't talk about what's right... you just do it. I love that you try to live your life with integrity. This has been a great example for me and I often think of how glad I am that I have someone like you to follow. I love that you offer advice only when asked and it is always honest advice. I love that we like to listen to the same music. I love that you are a great Poppa and are teaching my boys to fish. I love that you think it is cool that your daughter loves football. I just love you for all that you are to me... the only dad I have. Wish I could give you a hug today.

Jim- You are the best father I know. You are always thinking of ways that you can be a better dad. You are always doing things to build a relationship with our boys which is so important now and will be even more important later. You are the laid back side of our parenting equation, and frankly, the boys need that! You are constantly accepting the boys for what they are while lovingly encouraging them to always do their best. Thank you for all that you do for our beautiful children. I am so happy that you are their dad.
Here is a Father's Day message from them to you in NY....

The Lynchs Take On the Lone Star State

I am just getting around to writing about our super trip to Texas last week to visit my family. The drive down has never been easier. It takes between 11-12 hours to get from here to there which can seem like an eternity with cranky kids and a sore tush. This time around the boys were amazing. They never asked when it would be over, never complained that it was boring, and just were generally amazing. It felt like family time instead of just passing the hours until we got there. We noted on the way down that driving south in March is like watching spring in fast-forward. With each state we passed there was a little more green grass, a few more buds on the trees, and a lot less snow. By the time we got to Texas there were even flowers growing. It was so fun to see the boys get excited about it.

It is amazing to see how much fun can get packed into a 3 day visit. We got to see my Aunt Brenda who we have not seen in way too long. I have so many memories of her from my childhood and all are so fun. I just generally think of her as a super fun person. I love seeing the kids having pillow fights, tickling and teasing with Aunt B. It seems that they have decided she is super fun too.

After 2 days of rain and "cold" temps we were able to get out on the lake with my dad. It is the only thing the boys asked to do while we were there. Nolan kept telling me, "Tell Poppa I can go on the boat now because I am so so so big!". It was chilly and windy but there is something so special about being on the lake with my dad and the boys seem to think so too. We caught no fish but nobody cared because we all got to go fast in Poppa's boat.

To top off the whole trip we spent a morning at the Dallas Arboretum which had several playhouses designed around children's books. There was a Peter Pan; Red Fish, Blue Fish; Treasure Island; Eragon; The Bamboo Cutter's Daughter and many others. Poppa and his friend, Joyce, had the forsight to get the books to read to the kids before we went so they knew what the houses were about. It made it all so much more intersting. The kids had so much fun running from house to house, climbing, and reading the summaries and I loved being in the midst of so many beautiful flowers. Winter is long but when spring is this beautiful it is well worth the wait.

Fun in the Snow

There are not many things I like about winter in the MidWest. When the temps are below 20 and everywhere you look there is white, white and more white with snow and it makes everything you own dirty and wet it is hard to like it. There are other times though when I can see it through the eyes of my kids and see that there are things to love about a cold winter. Today was one of those days. All the stars aligned today, the temperature was close to 32 (which means I can tolerate being outside for more than 2 seconds), there was plenty of snow on the ground, and school was out! When all these things fall into place we can get on our winter gear and enjoy it so we headed to the golf course to make roller coasters out of pieces of plastic, white fluffy powder and big big hills. Every year I love the days we sled like this but I do not ever think you will truly get this native Texan to say she LIKES winter here in Iowa. As Quinn said today "I can't wait until we go sledding again!"
Enjoy the videos!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone!

I am always at a loss on how to celebrate New Years Eve with 2 little ones in the house. It seems to be such a fun, big day but all the occurences happen much much too late for our little creatures. This year I decided that we would have a family favorite meal (now named New Years Eve Nachos) and watch our family movies from 2008 and watch a slide show of our pictures from the year as well. The kids loved it and we did too. It was so fun to hear the kids' take on all the happenings in our year and crack up over what gets accidentally caught on camera. We will be doing this again next year with hopefully a little more planning and savvy but for sure, next Dec. 31st you will see the 4 Lynchs cozied up on the couch laughing at themselves once again.

Post a comment-We would love to hear how your family rings in the new year!

{Way to go Hawkeyes on the Outback bow win!}

Here we come a Caroling

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and the official start to winter. Where we live, it also happened to be VERY COLD! -4 to be exact.

Usually, on the Sunday before Christmas Jim and I pile onto the school bus at church and join with all the other Christmas revellers to carol at the homes of many homebound people in our parish. Unfortunately this year it was too cold for our trusty school bus to run and the caroling was cancelled. This was to be Quinn's 1st year to join us and he was very disappointed to find out that we couldn't go. We decided that we were pretty disappointed too! To remedy our disappointment we headed to a friend's house to sing a couple songs a go back home. We asked Quinn who he would like to carol to and he chose his friend Forrest. So off to Forrest's we went.

After singing our 3 chosen songs we told our friends how fun we thought it would be if they would come in the van and go to another friend's house with us. They quickly threw on their coats, hats, boots, mittens and anything else they could cover up with and hopped in!! What great sports you are Landis family!

We ended up caroling to several other houses as well as in the van driving around town. At each house the people were so delighted to see us and smiled the whole time we were there. Most of them even sang along. I really felt like I was passing Christmas cheer. It was the perfect way to pass the darkest, coldest night of the year. This just might be a new Lynch family tradition.

A Good Holiday Laugh.

Last year Office Max started this hysterical thing called "Elf Yourself" where you upload your photos and superimpose them onto elves, then the elves are animated and dance. Last year it was funny but this year they have added a couple of dances and it is a total riot. Enjoy a good holiday laugh at the expense of the Lynchs (and Karen's dad) today.
http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/T1FE1ggCu6lWwOMnXj7Q
If you are so inclined to make a fool of yourselves as well... here is the link.
http://www.elfyourself.com/

The Greening of the house

Today is the 1st day of Advent. The season when we prepare for the coming of the Christ child. In our house, we decorate our home with all the decorations it can hold and start our tradition of lighting our advent wreath, enjoying songs and the Christmas story each night.

I love this day. Every ornament I hang on the tree reminds me of the person who gave it to us. We have an ornament that Jim's sister Amy bought us the 1st Christmas that we were married. It has 2 little penguins with monogrammed scarfs and "The Lynchs" underneath. I also love the teeny tiny baby bottles that our nieces, Lauren and Delaney, used when they were preemie newborns, it reminds me of how precious they both are to us. Today I hung up all the ornaments my Pop got me when I was a little girl, the Mickey Mouse ones and a train carousel. He got me an ornament every year for many years and I treasure them. I love the trip down memory lane they all provide.

Today we had a special guest to help us with our decorating. Poppa was here to experience the madness and glory that goes along with decorating for Christmas. The house looks great and hopefully Poppa is no more worse for the wear after wrestling Nolan with the ornaments.

Enjoy the season!

Banana Hot Dogs

When I came downstairs this morning I was greeted by a very enthusiastic 6 year old saying "Mommy, can you please make this recipe for breakfast?!". As I inquired further I was told that the recipe consists of hot dog bun slathered with peanut butter, a banana down the middle and honey (or jelly) sprinkled on top. Voila! Banana hot dog. Enjoy your recipe of the day compliments "ze frook".

Wendy Waters to the rescue!

As a precursor to today's story you need to know the following information: At our house, everyone is a Rescue Hero and we all have Rescue Persona that we are required to take on at a minutes notice. Jim is the leader of the Rescue Heros, Warren Waters. I am Wendy Waters (his daughter) and then we have Cliff Hanger (Quinn), Billy Blazes (Nolan), and Smokey the fire dog(Nolan's webkin tiger). We are often the dutiful rescue family off to faux rescue someone or something in our hyperjet (AKA our black van).

Last night as I was getting the kids ready for bed I hear Nolan say "Oh NO! Where's Smokey the Fire Dog!?" No one had seen the beloved fire dog in at least 4 hours. After extensive serching it was determined that his precious animal friend must have been left in the van which was currently not at our house. After a few minutes of hysteria, I reassured Billy Blazes that Smokey would return to the command center as soon as he is done helping Warren with whatever rescue they are currently needed at and climb right into bed with him. All was well.

When Jim returned home Smokey was in fact NOT in the van. Now I was starting to panic. How could we loose Smokey? I now remember telling Nolan to put Smokey on the step and that was the last we saw of him.

This morning when we asked Nolan about it he said "I put Smokey in that LEGO box on the step and now I can't find the box!". "I know, the box is in the garbage Nolan!", I respond. This leads to many tears from Nolan and a Rescue Hero call to action from Quinn (AKA Cliff Hanger).

Cliff decided that we would have to get the Swiffer and take off the sweeping end, replacing it with a long string of tape which we would then lower in to the huge garbage bin. Smokey would stick to the tape and we would pull him to safety.

Billy decided that we should stick the vaccuum tube in there and Smokey would stick to it when we turned on the vaccuum and then we could pull him out.

In the end, Wendy hoisted Billy over the top of the can and he pulled the box out that Smokey had spent a long, cold, lonely night in. We quickly pulled Smokey to safety, wrapped him in a hug and warned him never to go in a box again.

I am sure you will all sleep better knowing that Smokey is safe and sound and that the Rescue Heros are on the job.

Happy Birthday Month to Quinn!

Ok- I am going to steal an idea from my super talented cousin about how to make people feel special. On their birthdays she posts 10 reasons why they are special and I love it- so Marisa, I am stealing your lovely idea and making it my own.

To Quinn Riley- Here are 10 reasons we celebrate you.1. You are too smart for your own good- and you know it.2. you have the most adorable devilish eyes.3. You love to learn all the new things life has to offer- good and bad.4. Your heart is so sweet and loving, even though you try and hide that.5. When you do something, you do it 100% and give it your all.6. You think your mom is the best cook on the planet.7. You can build the most amazing LEGO creations I have ever seen.8. You are yourself always and do not let others change you but instead influence others.9. You are creative and are never afraid to try and make your creations come to life.10. You are our first child, you are the one who made me a mom.I love you my 6 year old!