The Doggies of NY

One of the things that excited Grant (and Husband) about our summer vacation was the promise of doggie play time. Since our doggie, Brodie, passed away last year there has been a serious lack of doggie loving for those two and some serious Doggie Fever going on. My sister and her boyfriend have two dogs - why do you ask? - Lennon (a black lab who's mom, I think, had an affair with a horse and never told anyone) and Kiya (a boxer). Lennon we know and gets along famously with Grant. Kiya...well, we'd met briefly. 

Grant, I think, adjusted quickly to living with two dogs for a week. It helped that neither of them is the type of dog that will swipe and eat his toys. And Husband spent as much time as he could laying on the floor cuddling with Lennon.

Lennon is a very handsome guy and Grant adores him (I believe the feeling is mutual - you can read about their doggie BFF relationship HERE). He's a good boy unless there is good around...for instance: if there is a little boy not much taller than Lennon who is about to take a bite of a piece of cold pizza but Lennon wants it - so he takes it. And let me tell ya, the "drop it" command doesn't work then. It happened so fast that Grant just stood there stunned. And even after that, I can't tell you how many times I tried to keep Lennon from eating something when Grant would defend him with "He's a hungry boy, Mama!"

Taken shortly after the pizza theft.

He's a rather photogenic guy, don't you think?

"Oh hey. I'm just sitting here being huge."

"I have pretty eyes too. Want to give me pizza?"

So, I'm not gonna lie. When I met Kiya briefly last year my reaction was "Oh my". She's got some wonky eyes that are a little off-putting at first. But she grew on me quickly and I found out she's a very sweet girl. And much more polite about food! Grant loved her too and she put up with a lot from him (I'm pretty sure she was shot with a Nerf gun at least once) so she's OK in my book :)

She's pretty mellow too (unless you just got there).

"Quit talking about the treat and just give to me already!"

When she gets tired, her tongue sticks out :)

I think these two are probably still recuperating from our stay. We - especially Grant - wore them out.

Always had to say goodnight to Lennon.

"I love you Lennon"

 All week, if you were trying to find Lennon...you pretty just had to find Grant:

"Hey! Why are you upside down?!"

High Five for Friday

Today I'm linking up with Lauren and Jennie to share some of my favorite stuff from the past two weeks. I skipped last week because of vacation so I'm combining them!

1) On Saturday, July 26, we left for a vacation in upstate NY to visit my family. We make this trip once a year and look forward to our summer vacation! Grant loved it because we stayed in a hotel on the way up and the way back AND he got to play with doggies all week at my sister's house!

He's allowed to jump on hotel beds (when Husband isn't looking).

Grant loves Lennon! (And Lennon loves Grant)

2) We did a TON of good eating on vacation (and by "good eating" I mean not the least bit healthy). My sister and I were desperately craving some exercise - never thought I'd say that - and got to go on a hike one evening just the two of us. It was a great trail with some awesome views!

Me & Sis

Seriously gorgeous, right??

3) It was pretty chilly for summer while we were there but on our last day before our two day journey south, we managed to get over to my Aunt & Uncles house for a swim. I just had to. I spent so much time there as a kid and LOVE swimming in the lake. It was too cold for Grant to willingly go any farther than his waist so I was the only one actually swimming (and it was really too cold for me but I had to!).

So pretty and peaceful :)

I love bringing Grant to the places where I spent so much time as a kid!

4) FOOD. There is so much food I miss from back home and I bring back as much as I can with me. This time it consisted of my favorite cheeses, favorite hot dogs (3 packages in my freezer and I'm the only one in the house who likes them!), favorite store-bought cookies, and salt potatoes - which are really just little potatoes boiled in extremely over-salted water and they're fantastic!

THE best store-bought chocolate chip cookies!

Salt potatoes cooked with Monday night's dinner

5) For about year we've been scouring places looking for the perfect toy box and just haven't found anything worth buying. My sister still had the toy box my dad built for us when we were little and was willing to part with it so we brought that home for Grant's room. I started re-organizing his room this week and got the toy box set up in its new home. I love that we're able to use what my dad made!

Happy Friday!

Have a great weekend!

A Day Out With Thomas

Raise your hand if you love all the stuff your kid is into. Anyone? Me either. But given some of the stuff that's out there...Thomas isn't so bad. I'd even go so far as to say I don't mind him anymore. Grant isn't as into Thomas as he used to be. Cars, Avengers, and other superheroes seem to be more his thing these days but when I saw that Thomas the Train was going to be at Tweetsie Railroad, I mentioned it to Husband. The mountains in summer with a super excited kid sounds fun, doesn't it? It does to me :)

I'd been counting down the days for Grant for about a week before the event. And the day of he woke me up with: "Mama! It's time to wake up! It's morning! IT'S ZERO DAY!!" 

I booked our tickets for a weekday (Thursday) which turned out to be a fantastic plan. It wasn't crowded at all. We got there shortly before our scheduled train ride and Thomas was right there when we walked in. Grant was so excited "It's THOMAS! Do you see him? He's RIGHT THERE!"

We had some time before our departure so we
just wandered and took pictures.

Grant couldn't wait to get on the train (a big difference from almost 2 years ago) and had already picked out which car he wanted to ride in.

Husband hates my family selfies everywhere we go.
(Also, I hate the word "selfie".)

I think the ride is about 20 minutes "around the mountain". Usually they do a western gun fight type thing but they didn't use the guns this time.

Over the bridge

Past the fake cemetery

Past the little village

To the fort to look for indians (a.k.a. a bunch of white guys
painted up to look like indians)

There they are.

They let us go. Clearly you can see from their body
language that we weren't worth it.

Headed back to the station.

We only got to ride the one time but Grant didn't seem to care. There was a lot of other stuff to do and I'd been promising the chair lift all morning. I wasn't sure how he'd feel about it but he acted excited.

One more picture before heading up the mountain. (I like that
it looks like Thomas was looking at me for the picture.)

Next we found their Thomas activity area:

Hahahaha!

Trains to play with...

Stuff to color...

And a tattoo booth. He picked Harold the helicopter
and for the rest of the day tried to only hold hands
with his right hand so as not to mess up Harold.

On our way to the chair lift we passed the candy store with
these adorable marshmallows in the window.

Not being a fan of anything suspended from cables, Husband took the shuttle to the top of the park. I figured Grant would see the chair lift and then we'd be on the shuttle too. But he loved it. "We're flying!" he told me and he took every opportunity to wave to people.

At the top was a ton more stuff to do. They have their petting zoo and some kiddie rides up there including a smaller train ride that Grant went batty over.

Panning for "gems" (rocks) with Daddy.

Showing off the souvenir badge we got him (I
couldn't resist - there is never anything with Gran on it!)

Riding the airplanes

 The petting zoo. If you know me, you know I'm not a fan. I'm not that mom that runs around with hand sanitizer like a crazy person but I don't think people get how sick you can get from petting zoos! Husband says my job has ruined me. Anyway...I really branched out this time and actually let Grant touch and feed the animals. And I watched him like a hawk! 

He was a big fan of the deer.

But the goats were definitely his favorite.

After the petting zoo, Grant asked to go on the Twister (I've always heard it called the scrambler). He called it the spinny thing. I tried explaining to him that it goes really fast and that if he gets scared they won't stop the ride. "I want to do it." So we did.

Can you see that face? He was cracking me up! Yelling "HAHAHAHA!
OH MY GOSH! THIS IS CRAZY!" Later we went on the tilt-o-whirl
and got the completely opposite reaction.

He did the boats too but after the Twister, the boats just
were...well, just boats.

We took the chair lift again back down to the other ride area. Grant was only too happy to ride that again (and I was excited that I have someone to ride the chair lift with!). Shortly thereafter I discovered that the tilt-o-whirl isn't fun anymore so I smoothed out that experience with the helicopters.

Which he, of course, loved.

We stopped at the candy shop on our way out for some edible souvenirs and headed back to the resort. We all had such a great time, I'm so glad we decided to go. Grant hugged us both at the car and told us "Thank you for coming to see Thomas". I love this kid!