Beach Bums

So we got to take a little trip to a little place called Aruba :) The last time we were there was 2012 and perhaps the biggest difference between that year and this year was Ashton!

Um no that's not correct. The biggest difference was that this year Alex, Callie and Erik were with us! Alex and Callie didn't exist in 2012 - hard to believe looking at their sweet faces :)

Erik did but he couldn't come then :P So our group was made up of 14 people total! An upfront thanks to Poppy, Mema, Amy, Jason, Mckenna, Brody, Ben, Kari, Callie and Erik for an unforgettable week. THANK YOU, especially to Poppy and Mema - you know we know how lucky we are!

Back to the Nills. Well we did mostly the same things we did in 2012: snorkeled, floated, laid by the pool, lazed in the lazy river, played in the sand, ate, drank...all those normal vacation things. We went to the same beach and guess what I even wore the same bathing suits. But experiencing the trip through Ashton's 4 year old eyes especially made this year that much better. He was so excited and soaked in every minute. We fed the iguanas some lettuce (more fun than you'd think!), he found a giant sea star, paddleboarded, swam, sailed, tried his luck at poolside Bingo and played his heart out at the beach. At one point he dug a large deep hole in the sand and every time a wave came and filled it he would go "Yes! YES! YEH-HEH-HESSS!!" Whenever Alex tried to come near it he would snap at me to "keep Alex occupied doing something else! This hole is mine!" He actually used the word "occupied"! He didn't pronounce it right, but still.

The boys also each had their own set of puddle jumpers, which I know isn't the best for actually learning how to swim but I was most concerned about their safety for the week. They made them so independent in the water and Alex just floated and smiled, floated and smiled, all by himself.

While the boys had their fun, the grownups certainly did too. We had probably the best setup you can have while being on vacation in a hotel: a 2 bed 2 bath condo separated by an kitchen and living space. Which means, you can put the kids to bed, shut the door, and still hang out! Also makes babysitting easy as we shared a condo with Kari and Ben and Callie. Pretty much every night we headed down to the beach bar, sat under the thatched roof with little twinkly lights and generally enjoyed ourselves. Signature drink of Aruba 2015: the Phase 3 Black Russian.

The view from our balcony was also quintessential tropics! To the left:

To the right (the swim up bar and beach, and where we spent a lot of our time because that pool is zero entry at the end. Also, as I mentioned, the swim up bar :D )

Directly below (the lazy river and hot tubs):

See in the upper left hand corner of this photo, that teeny bridge? That's one of the main kiddie pools that the resort has and the boys loved it. Water guns, waterfalls, etc. That Marriott, they know what they're doing. Between that and the 5 pm standing group float on the lazy river, things were good.

But let's talk about the elephant in the room. The flights. In fact, we hadn't flown anywhere since the last Aruba trip three years ago! There were two each way. They were long. Each boy had his own iPad, loaded up with apps and videos that were age appropriate, and a set of headphones.

While I was sandwiched between two kids for all 4 flights, Jason got to sit across the aisle in a seat I affectionately nicknamed "Paradise". Overall, Ashton did great - the older he gets the more "manageable" he is. Thank goodness we had Alex's carseat. Not feeling like being a human jungle gym for 6 hours, we had bought him his own seat and I strapped him right down. His little legs were *just* long enough to kick the seatback in front of him, but only on the last flight did we sit behind someone who was clearly annoyed by it (AND she had her own small kid with her! It was quite bizarre). A few times Alex really needed a nap and cried his face off. But overall we did ok. By the end of the travel days the boys had had way too much screen time and way too many snacks and got off the plane in a googly-eyed daze. I don't think they knew whether to run a marathon or pass out cold on the floor. Luckily on the way down we had the pool to look forward to and on the way back, Thanksgiving and all the holidays!

So it's time for the photo dump. I'll try to keep it to a minimum. I actually didn't take nearly as many as I thought I would, mainly because I was swimming with the boys most of the time! Off we go...

So there we were, all happy with a little bit of a tan and refreshed from a week in the water. We came back to cold, damp, dark Massachusetts and our weekend was spent gathering up the completely and utterly ridiculous and I mean ridiculous amount of leaves in our backyard. The whole neighborhood is massive oak trees and even though we have a blower, it's been an ongoing process. Yard waste day (the town's only one!!) was Monday so we bagged up forty nine bags of leaves and I am so sore I can barely move, even two days later!

It's a lot more than it looks like, okay? But the whole time I was raking under the drizzling, gray cloudy sky I could easily imagine the blue water and sun and sand from a few days prior. It helped.

Next up...turkey day! We are headed to Long Island at 6 am tomorrow morning (Wednesday) because we procrastinated and there was not much left by way of ferry reservations. Us Nills are not letting much grass grow under our feet lately...here come the holidays!

Birthday Breakdown

I'm 35 years old! But, lest I dare to think that today would be about me, I left the house this morning to a crying preschooler who was upset because he wanted it to be his birthday, not mine. No love for mommy. At all.

This entire week, Thursday loomed not as the day that officially marks that I'm a year older, but as the day before we leave for our vacation in Aruba. Ahem, trip to Aruba. (Vacation means "freedom or release from duty, business, or activity". Considering the boys are coming...it's a trip.) Anyway tonight is PACK NIGHT. We leave at 6 am tomorrow morning so it's serious I have a list of a thousand things to do. Off I go, see you when we get back!

Once upon a time...

There was a ninja and a puppy. Even though their mom suggested tons of cute matching costumes, the ninja needed to carry a sword and the puppy wanted to pant and bark. Welcome to

Where toddlers melt down, pre-schoolers run amok, and their parents drink hot toddies out of travel mugs while walking around in the pitch dark. Fun for all!

October 31 started with [finally] carving our pumpkins.

Hmmm...what is in here?

Something Alex did not like. No sirree.

Those scary pumpkins! We put him down for a nap and Ashton finished up.

From the inside looking out...

Eventually it was time to don the COSTUMES. After much ado (like seriously, the entire month of October).

Ta-dah! Tell me, do I look like a covert agent in feudal Japan that specializes in espionage, sabotage, infiltration and assassination?

Ashton really has no idea what a ninja even is. When he first put on his costume he said, "Great! Now watch me make things DISAPPEAR!" Ummm...meanwhile:

Just a dog and his iPhone. Frankly Alex looked more like a baby seal. It's hard to describe.

Berg and Karen came over for Jayden's first trick-or-treating experience, so we had a ninja, a puppy, and an elephant!

And there ends pretty much all my decent pictures. The boys were off like a shot as soon as we said go.

The whole loop didn't last long. When we got back to the house around 6:30 pm, I don't know what I was thinking, but I tried to make Ashton sit down and have dinner. The doorbell kept ringing so he kept popping up and running full speed to the front door. Listening to him tell the trick-or-treaters "Guys! Look you could have this one. Or look at this one! You know, you can take two!" it was just too much. He was obsessed with the candy - the bright colors, the shiny wrapping, all the different kinds...

When it was over, I told him to choose his favorite piece to try first. 

He picked out a totally disgusting marshmallow lollipop and luckily hated it. Alex had a dum-dum and no joke, handed this back to me when he was done. 

Ashton was on cloud nine in his costume with his candy. He told Jason: "Daddy! I have a secret. I'm gonna stay up late tonight, and if Mommy asks, start talking about something else." !!!

The entire next day Ashton dragged the green pumpkin that housed his beloved candy around with him. It did not leave his sight. He would empty all the candy out, count it, organize it, admire it, put it back and then do it all over again. He took his nap with the pumpkin right by his pillow. He asked over and over again which kinds he could have. Did this one have egg in it? What about peanuts? Could he have this one piece after lunch and this one piece after dinner? Actually, no, how about this one and then this one? What if he saved the piece I said he could have after lunch so he could have two after dinner? It.was.all.he.talked.about. He actually cried at one point because Halloween was not every day. 

By the end of the weekend I was like ENOUGH WITH THE CANDY ALREADY!!! But what proved to be far scarier than Halloween was how long Sunday was. We turned the clocks back. The boys were up at 6 am and it was officially the lonnnngesssssst daaaaaay everrrrrrrrrrrrrr. It was dark at five pm. Five! It was almost enough to put Ashton back in his ninja costume so he could make me disappear.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Family Photos 2015

We've come a long way from Family Photos 2014. But even though Alex is now 19 months, Ashton is 4.2, I keep waiting for things to get easier because everyone promises me they will! Haha. Stillllll waaaaaaiting, especially because Alex's new favorite word is the big fat "N-O".

In preparation for our family photo shoot this year, which was at Regis College and shot by August and Iris Photography, I took the boys for their requisite haircuts. Jason usually does them, but he has had a super busy fall and I just knew he would not get to it. So we went to SnipIts, the haircut place for kids. Ashton was done in about 5 minutes - that lady knew what she was doing. Alex, I fear, got an inexperienced stylist who took forever. Which meant he cried for 30 minutes while bits of hair clung to his cheeks (made sticky by his lollipop and tears). It was actually a disaster. I finally told her to please just stop, stood back and studied my red-faced toddler with the choppiest, most uneven haircut you've ever seen. Sigh. I went to the counter, and, too tired to sugar-coat it, told the receptionist I wasn't leaving until someone fixed it because we had our family photos coming up and while I usually would not care I was paying a lot of money for the photos and a lot of money for the haircut and really didn't want both to come out bad. She understood. I actually think the entire salon did - Alex's hair was a mess. Back in the chair he went and after more tears, more lollipops, and more teeny weeny bits of hair stuck everywhere, he was nearly perfect. Good enough.

Next I had to pick their outfits. I wanted them to coordinate yet not match exactly. I went bin-diving in the basement to see what old stuff we had that Alex could wear and squeezed Ashton into one of last year's sweaters. I had shopped quickly for a cute fall outfit for myself, but of course ended up throwing on something that's been in my closet for (no joke) a decade.

Lights, camera...

The day of the shoot was Saturday October 10. We were getting ready to go, Jason was meeting us there, and of course I was already running late when my neighbors, whom I had not met yet, decided to stop by and introduce themselves. 15 minutes ticked by, Ashton was still in his sweats, Alex was still napping, and I was trying to be polite. When they left, I realized Ashton had had an accident, which required a tub, and then I woke Alex up, who cried his face off the entire way there and through the first five minutes of the shoot. Ashton would not stop grimacing, I was cranky and like last year, just wanted to go home.

But, also just like last year, the pictures say none of this. The photographer did a gorgeous job in the 25 minutes we had and this one in particular that she captured of Alex...I die.

My two peas.

And a couple more favorites (some of these are not high-res so if they look fuzzy, that's why - I have the originals).

And a couple more.

And what the heck, a couple more.

So that's the Nills, 10/10/15, cliche fall photo shoot in hopes of getting a good christmas card picture. We'rrre so-oh vaaaain... ha ha  :D

Weekend awaaaaaay!!

So Jason and I managed to get out of the house this past weekend. Three days, two nights, zero kids. It was poetic. We attended a fabulous wedding, shopped til we dropped at the Tanger Outlets, went out to dinner and slept late. And I did not change one diaper or perhaps more significantly, I did not wash one dish. I wasn't in the kitchen at all! Sorry to say, I loved every minute :) STARTING WITH the completely gorgeous wedding of two of the most beautiful people ever: Evan and Kaelyn. I am 100% certain they don't read this but I'm going to post about it anyway. Evan is one of Jason's best friends from college, he and Kaelyn live in Manhattan and we try to make it to a Giants game with them every fall. Except this one, because they were busy getting married :) This past Friday, October 16 at Wolffer Estate Vineyard in Sagaponack, NY, this was my view at approximately 4 pm:

That's rosé, of course. Some of my other favorites from the wedding and events:

.

The story about my dress. Back in September, I had ordered two dresses from Rent the Runway for this black-tie-optional occasion. I wanted to wear a really special cocktail dress and knew that even if I could find what I was looking for in a store, I didn't have time to shop for it. So I picked out a couple of sparkly numbers to have delivered to me on Thursday, the day before the wedding. 

Fast forward to last week. There I am in TJ Maxx and I think to myself, "I should really have a backup dress for the wedding, just in case the dresses from RTR don't fit, they don't come, etc." I perused the racks, found a gold one, forty bucks, loved it, done. I ask you, when is TJ Maxx not the greatest.

I won't bore you with the long saga of what happened but the dresses from RTR were not delivered in time. I was very stressed and very disappointed, The package did eventually arrive (sometime when we were already at the wedding) so I tried them on for fun the next day.

Excuse my morning-after hair and makeup ha! Although the dresses were fabulous (the navy blue one has an open slit in the back), in the end my backup dress was perfect. Funny how things work out.

Anyway, after my fashion show, Jason and I headed over to the Tanger Outlets and spent 2.5 hours in the Pottery Barn outlet. I'm telling you, I was in some sort of heaven. Feast your eyes.

No boys to worry about and nothing but time! Plus a new house to decorate...we got a new dresser, two rugs, a mirror, a lamp, bedding and all sorts of odds and ends that fit in my car no problem because oh yeah we had no carseats :D 

Then we headed over to JCrew, Banana, etc. before it was time to go home, change, and head out for cocktails and dinner in Southampton (Le Charlot and Tuscan House, for those that know). We got home on Sunday around lunchtime and I made a mental note to not let another 4 years go by before we do that again!! Ashton showed us how happy he was that we were back by sneaking into our bathroom during his quiet time and squeezing out the entire tube of toothpaste all over the place. I was so relaxed though, being fresh off our weekend, I didn't even get mad. I instead chose to savor how minty everything smelled. 

Anyway, it was a wonderful couple of days. Thanks so much to Evan and Kaelyn for getting married - it was the kick we needed to get out of the house! And thanks even more to Poppy and Mema and Jen and Mike for tag-teaming the boys while we were gone. Awesomeness all around.