The Lane Syndicate

September 13, 2015

Jacksonville Trip!

Given Charlie's obsession with the Jacksonville Jaguars (and general obsession with football) and that our friends Dave and April lived there, we decided to check out the Jaguar's home schedule and plan a trip down to catch a game. Imagine our delight when we found that their home opener was against the Panthers... the #1 and #2 most favorite teams. We knew we had to go!

Unfortunately travelling there wasn't so easy. After getting stuck overnight in Charlotte with no luggage, Kerrington screaming at the hotel until 4AM (due to missing her blankets), having a #2 accident on the airplane we made it to sunny Florida!

On hour 2 on the RIC runway waiting to take off!

Feeling chipper the next morning after screaming all night and having 5 hours of sleep

The afternoon we arrived, we swam in their pool and then ate at an awesome restaurant with a real alligator in the lobby and crazy stuffed animals everywhere...

On Saturday we went to St. Augustine. It was a really cool little town. We went to an awesome alligator park that boasted every species of alligator/crocodile. It was perfect for our crew of little ones.

Selfie in our third row bench spot

Sunday was the big day! We all sported our best Jaguars gear (the Smithwicks wore their Panthers gear) and went to the game. Charlie was very quiet throughout just taking it all in. It was like he was with his people, all loving the Jaguars. They lost unfortunately but Charlie didn't seem to mind.

We found a store and couldn't resist

Popcorn!

Football cards!

Eventhough K didn't get to go to the game, she had a Jaguars shirt too

We also had tons of fun hanging with the Smithwick family at home. The kids all became fast friends and it was just like good old time especially for the two old geezers...

Everyone busy playing

The girls giving a good bye hug

Thankfully our flight back home was much less eventful!

September 2, 2015

Big Month for Being a Big Girl (Part 1)

After becoming a pro in her new big girl underwear and knowing school was starting soon, we decided it was time to say farewell to the beloved mimi's. Kerrington's mimi's have been a staple of her baby years. They are an important part of bedtime and naptime, and extra long car rides sometime too. She has had several of them over the years, starting with a ducky the Teagues sent her as a newborn and transitioning to lamby mimi, froggy mimi, lamby mimi, red doggy mimi and brown doggie mimi... always making sure we have two at any given time. There have been this many because she likes to crew on them and about 9-months into that the tips start to break off (and we also lost ducky at a truckstop on the way down to NC one time early on). We had talked some about giving them to Baby River when Ericka came back. For days she seemed down with that plan but then one day it clicked what we were REALLY talking about and the pure sadness she expressed broke my heart. It didn't seem like a good idea to make her go through with this plan, especially not wanting to start of her relationship with her new friend in a rocky way. I decided that when the latest friends (red and brown doggie mimi's) had their tips chewed off, we would not buy new ones. Well those suckers hung on for weeks partially chewed off. Then one evening when I came home from work she was happy downstairs so I did the unthinkable... I snuck upstairs and ripped the tip off of our last mimi standing:

Well at bedtime, she discovered her mimi was finally broken. She at first didn't make a fuss about it. We read our books and sang our songs as always but when I laid her down she was understandably sad. I left her room to see if she would settle down but after 2 minutes of super sadness I went in a rocked her to sleep. And she hasn't expressed an ounce of sadness since then. Worlds Easiest Baby again with the win!