Quick Road Trip

Henry, Bea and I decided to meet up with our friends Christi and River for a couple days out in Amish Country this weekend. Christi found the most awesome Mennonite family on couchsurfers.com who let us stay at their place for free and even fed us dinner and breakfast. We learned a ton about them and their life and surely made some lifetime friends:) They had three darling daughters who were just the age of our kids and Henry had fun reading and coloring with them. One thing they did that we wanted to adopt into our daily routine is singing songs before eating dinner. That was really fun. I totally regret, though, that we didn't get a photo with our host family! Anyway, thanks to Ernie, Elmina, Evelyn, Erica and Emily for your generosity.

To keep Henry happy on the drive out there I told him we were going to the world's largest pet store and when we got there we found a gigantic rabbit and lots of really cool reptiles. Henry loved it. While we were in the area, we basically hit all the places we could find that had anything to do with food. The Amish stores out there give out samples of everything they make so we found ourselves not even needing to buy much food because we snacked all day long. On Friday we went to Lititz, PA to tour a chocolate factory with an museum of antique chocolate making items and then got a tip about a pretzel factory just up the road, which was the first place to commercially sell pretzels in the nation and I finally found out how to make pretzels! If you want to know, you have to check out hohlfoods.blogspot.com. They let us roll out dough. showed us the antique brick ovens and then we ate samples of all their interesting flavors. My favorite was pretzels with a hint of cinnamon sugar baked right into the dough so it wasn't really desert-like, but you could still taste it. I was also inspired to make peanut butter topped pretzels covered in dark chocolate. They were really expensive so I'm just going to make them. Yum!

On Saturday we spent time in Intercourse(yes I know you're giggling)going to the touristy places, eating more samples and freezing our fingers off. Henry in particular didn't want to wear his gloves or his hat so after about an hour, he was crying from the cold. I hope he learns his lesson about bundling up! We were also noticeably younger than the average tourist, like 20 to 30 years younger, and we had a hard time moving from place to place without having to show our babies off to all the elderly folk. Henry especially loved the petting zoo where they had a llama, miniature goats, sheep, horses and chickens(not miniature, though that would be totally cute). We decided that it was too cold and so we headed up to Hershey, PA for yet another food adventure and spent our last hours there. Most of what's there at Hershey is free, but we splurged and went on the trolley tour of the town to see the Hershey's kiss street lamps and the Hershey mansion. Henry met Santa Claus and didn't freak out, which was good, and got a little ornament from him. We left in a gigantic blizzard and found our cars covered in at least two inches of snow, but it stopped as soon as we got on the road, thank heaven. Then it was a long four hour drive home in the dark. Yea for Amish Country. I love eastern PA.

Teeth Diagnosis

Before

after
Well the dentist did not have any good news for us about Henry's teeth. One of his front teeth is cracked at the root and both front teeth will most likely have bruising/discoloration. On top of that he has six cavities and that's just what he can see. Since he's so young we have to go to the hospital to have them filled and that's not covered by insurance, so we're looking at over $1,000 to have everything fixed. Merry Christmas.

Accident Prone

It's finally happened, Henry has fallen backwards in the kitchen chair and really hurt himself. Friday night was when it happened and this is definitely the worst accident to date we have had. As Henry fell back in the chair, he instinctively tried to counterbalance the falling chair which brought him to a sitting position (sparing the back of his head from hitting the ground) but as the chair hit the floor, he got a sort of forward whiplash and he completely bit through the skin half-way in between his lip and his chin. The cut was almost an inch wide and went all the way through. What was worse is that his front teeth hit his mandible so hard that his teeth are now jammed up into his gums - one more than the other - so his teeth are now half as big as before and uneven. We have plenty of dentists in our ward who told us many possible scenarios ranging from, worse case, his teeth dieing and turning black and possibly damaging his permanent teeth that are forming in his gums to, best case, his teeth naturally re-emerging after a week or two back to their original position. So far the teeth are still white but haven't moved. He has a dentist appointment tomorrow so we'll see what the x-rays tell us. After the accident, Justin used surgical glue to close the wound and we've kept it clean and closed for the past few days and it looks good. Then on Monday while playing at my sister-in-law's house, he fell down the stairs doing what looked like cartwheels all the way down. Apparently he didn't get hurt or hit his chin because he didn't cry much and stopped crying for a piece of candy - telltale of faking it. Today he fell off his kitchen stool while sitting on it and bumped his head in the cabinets and ran into a shopping cart at Costco being pushed by a woman who couldn't see him over her large load. I am so sad to realize that he inherited my genes for being accident prone. Poor Henry. I just hope Bea is more careful with her face!

Halloween Enaflent

Even though he mispronounces it every time I never correct him because it's so cute the way he says it. Most people don't understand what he's trying to say, but he'll say it correctly soon enough. Henry was the most darling elephant in town in his costume and it was nice and warm so he didn't even have to wear a coat out trick-or-treating. He made out with a ton of candy, which Justin and I are eating after he goes to bed each night, but still had a hard time with the concept that he was supposed to collect the candy first and THEN eat it later. He was pretty intent on eating the candy as soon as he got it. We went around with a huge group of kids: our in-laws, Henry's future wife, and many other friends. It was such a nice night and the kids were all pretty good. We love Halloween in our house!

Beach Bum

Ever since we got back from the beach (Lake Tahoe and Monterey Bay) Henry has been asking to go back to the beach. Nothing is more fun to him than playing in the sand and waiting for "the big boy wave" but then getting caught in the "daddy wave". In Tahoe Henry played on the beach all day long, even after the sun went down and it was under 60 degrees outside with wet clothes. His five or six year old cousin Wil was the only kid to play with, so they spent a lot of time hanging out together, although I think he got sick of Henry following him everywhere and wanting to play every second. We were hiking one day and Henry was yelling for Wil who was way ahead of us, but when we caught up with him Wil only wanted to walk with his mom and I could see Henry's confused and sad look when he got ditched. I feel so bad when he's stuck here all day long with no one to play with and now I'm so busy with Bea and THEN when we go on vacation he finally has a buddy to play with and he gets tired of him. He's not annoying or anything, but he gets really excited and talkative and maybe a little bossy. I think it's darling.
Anyway, Henry went on many hikes, climbed on rocks and caught a ton of crawdads, which are his favorite new creature. Before Justin joined us, Henry only had one pair of shoes AND socks (forgot to pack them) which he kept running into the water with and they were constantly wet. My dad even removed them before they got soaked one afternoon and he took them and threw them into the water himself and when I asked him why he did that, he had no idea. Just wanted to do it. We also took a detour to the redwood forest and Henry climbed into the center of gigantic trees. Check out the album for photos.

Henry is such a good little traveler now. He never cries in his carseat, takes naps on the run, and sleeps through the night wherever he goes. He was very good on the plane (for a two year old) and doesn't mind hour after hour in the car. He's much improved from his jealous behavior, although Bea sleeps like 18-20 hours per day, so he's now getting most of the attention anyway. He LOVES his little sister and I always find him holding her hand, trying to get close to her and giving her little kisses. He thinks it's so funny when I put her in bed with him, or let her lay on his tummy for a while. Sometimes he hugs her so tightly she cries, but I know he's just trying to get as close as he can. He really is a good brother.