2nd Annual Mattens/Burr Camping Adventure

Last year's camping adventure was such a success, we decided to do it again this year.  This time we stayed at Wilson State Park in Harrison, MI.  We stuck to two nights again like last year, and given the kids' ages I think that's still sufficient to let them have fun without the parents going crazy.  The kids had a few rough moments, but thankfully we all made it out of 'wilderness' with our sanity.

I'm going to take the liberty of speaking for Megan and Dan and say we do this trip for the kids.  Sure they see each other about once a month, but only for a few hours usually.  This gives them the opportunity to spend tons of time with each other and make memories that will remain with them forever.  Adam still tells stories of the times he spent with his cousins at the lake and Megan and I talk about camping trips we went on as kids.  We've mixed those together, combining camping and cousins, to get one fantastic weekend. 

So the highlights from this year: playing for hours at the beach ~ teaching the kids how to build drip sand castles (grandpa would've been so proud) ~ watching the girls play together ~ eating s'mores ~ Adam burning his mouth on a campfire pizza (because he just. can't. wait.) ~ seeing Barney riding a bike around the campground

Next year we'll have one more Burr cousin to add to the adventure.  Though I don't know how Mason and Mya are going to be able to wait a whole year - they're already asking when we can go camping with Julia again!

Saying Goodbye to Broad Street

For ten years we lived at our house on Broad Street.  We spent ten years grumbling about the decline of the neighborhood and about the parts of our 1940's house that just didn't work for our lives.  All the while we were complaining, we were building our little family and making memories.

It was an easy decision to move.  It was much more difficult to leave this house behind.  You see, it wasn't just us that had lived on Broad Street.  Adam's grandma had raised her kids just a few blocks down.  When we decided to put an offer on the house, we didn't even know this.  How, in a city with hundreds of streets and thousands of homes, we ended up on the same street just 16 houses down from where Adam's mom was raised is a crazy coincidence.  I think Adam's grandma felt proud we lived there.  She often asked whether people still lived in certain houses, referring to the houses as so-and-so's house instead of by the house number.  That's how it used to be in this neighborhood - you didn't live at an address, your family had a home there.

Obviously a lot has changed on Broad Street since Adam's grandma lived there.  The schools and the homes have declined, even since we moved in.  I once said that the city wouldn't get better unless good people moved there.  And so we stayed, much longer than we wanted to, out of necessity thanks to a terrible real estate market.  We sought out other schooling for Mason.  We learned what time to take the kids to the park so as not to expose them to things they shouldn't hear or see.

And it made me sad.  The neighborhood used to be so much better than this.  Ironically, it was the passing of Adam's grandma that afforded us the financial opportunity to move from the street she'd raised her kids, and from the street we'd started to raise ours. 

The day we moved I went with the first truckload to our new house.  I stayed there to direct furniture traffic while two more truckloads were brought over.  I went back to Broad Street to fill up the truck one last time.  Our house was empty.  And it made me sad.

On Mason's wall still hung the decal we put up before he was born "From small beginnings come great things."  We weren't able to take it with us.  And it made me sad.  I cried, and my dad reassured me we were doing the right thing - the new house is so much better, with a bigger yard, in a much better neighborhood with much better schools.  "But we had our babies here, and I can't take that with me," I cried.

But he was right, and the memories will go with us.  In thinking about this post, I thought I'd add a picture of the house.  I scrolled through the last six years of photos I've got saved digitally, and couldn't find one of the house. All of the pictures are of us, and of the memories we made.  All of these pictures and albums and images in our minds will go with us, and the shell of our home is all that's left behind.

Even though everything around us kept going down, our little family kept getting bigger and better.  "From small beginnings come great things."

Mya's 3rd Birthday

How can three years have gone by since this little princess came into our lives?  We celebrated Mya's 3rd birthday last weekend with family and friends.  I did my best not to go overboard with the Minnie theme this year, and thankfully had enough other distractions that I didn't have the time or energy to go crazy.  Still, I think Mya had a wonderful day, playing pin the bow on Minnie and eating her Minnie cupcake.  

I've been comparing Mason at 3 to Mya at 3 quite a bit lately, but I've come to realize I don't really know exactly how old Mason was when he did certain things.  (And I know I shouldn't really be comparing them anyway.)  But in an attempt to at least have some memory of this snapshot in time, here's what Mya's up to these days:

• Asking why.  "Why? But why? Why, mama?  Why?"  It's endless, and sometimes frustrating, but at the same time a good sign that she's questioning the world around her.
• Saying no - while frowning and stomping her little foot.  I have no fear this girl will be able to put her foot down when she gets older, we just wish she wouldn't do it with us.
• Pick me up.  She still likes to be carried, which is sometimes nice and sometimes a work out.  This kiddo has never been light!
• Smiling then crying.  She is the happiest little girl you've ever seen, and then will switch to the most dramatic little girl you've ever seen.  The teenage years should be interesting.
• Helping out, unless you want her to.  She's great at offering to help - with the dustbuster, doing dishes (playing in bubbles) or picking up sticks.  Until you ask her to help with these things.  She's got a mind of her own this one.  
• Loving pink. And anything girly really.  And not letting Mason play with anything pink or girly.
• Following the leader.  Whatever Mason does, good or bad, Mya does too.  

We're looking forward to what the next year brings for our sweet baby girl, but we're hoping the time doesn't go nearly so fast.  

Home Sweet [New] Home

Adam and I have been talking about moving for a long time.  Back when Mason was just a baby we even put our house up for sale.  Nothing good came of that, but it's still been in the back of our minds for a long time.  I don't think a week has gone by when I wasn't looking at listings, getting excited about one home or another, only to have us not pursue it.  The timing was never right.  Our finances were never in order.  The market is terrible for selling our current home.  Our excuses could have been endless.

Finally, we decided to get our ducks in a row.  The day before we met with our loan officer to get pre-qualified to begin our search, I'd mumbled to Adam that it was too bad there wasn't anything available in the Hidden Forest neighborhood.  We'd driven through that area a few years back when one of those homes that had me momentarily excited had been on the market.  It sold, without us having done so much as inquire about it.  The day we met with our lender, I was looking at listings again and a new one came up right in that very neighborhood.  We looked at it a few days later, made an offer a few days after that and a few hours later we learned it had been accepted. 

Everything had finally managed to fall in place at just the right time. 

We took the kids with us for the home inspection, so they could check out their new place and inpect their new rooms.  I think they're just as excited as Adam and I are.  That night when I put Mason to bed, he started talking about the new house.  "Mama, it's not as big as I thought it would be."  So I explained that we didn't need a really big house, just one that fit the four of us.  And besides, I didn't want to clean a really big house.  "Mama, the garage is touching the house."  Why yes, we are especially excited to have an attached 2-car garage.  "And mama, the garage is on the same side of the house as our house now."  That little guy is so perceptive.

The whole process of buying a house is so much different than it was when we bought our current home ten years ago.  Back then you could walk into a bank, throw a couple W-2s at the loan officer and be out the door with a 0% down, 30-year loan for twice the amount you really wanted.  Now don't get us wrong, we don't think that was okay and we understand why things are different today.  We knew that going in.  But it was so drastically different, even though we were working with the same lender.  I don't know that I've ever been so stressed or felt so lost in my whole life.  At one point I commented on all this to our lender and she informed us that things were actually going really well.  I can't imagine how it must be when you don't have excellent credit, when you don't have all your documentation, when you don't have 20% to put down. 

Now the tasks of moving and selling our current home (which won't be listed until we move out) are before us.  But on our closing day today, we are going to pause and bask in this moment.  It's been a long time coming, and we're so glad it's finally here.

Ten Years Gone By So Fast

Back when Oprah was still on, she had a special theme song for her 10th season.  I've never been a big Oprah watcher, but I remember that song and even though I've never known the full lyrics, I've often sang the part I do remember:

 "Ten years gone by so fast/I might as well have been dreaming." ~ Paul Simon

Today I'm singing this little tune because ten years ago, I married my best friend.  In some moments it's seemed like a really long ten years and at other moments I feel like I've only blinked.  The hectic days, especially of late, have strung themselves together and brought us to this point.  We've set up roots, started and expanded our family - made some decisions that will impact the rest of our lives.  And sat on the couch together many an evening.


Our lives are so much different than they were ten years ago, but I can't imagine our life together turning out any differently.  I can't wait to see what the next ten years have in store for us.

Kids Say the Darnedest Things, Part 5

Mason has been quite the chatterbox lately.  Once you manage to peel him away from the TV or his DS, he's likely to tell you a story you wouldn't believe.  But you should believe him, because even when his stories go off on a tangent, they're usually rooted in fact.

So just yesterday I packed up the kids and we went to a different playground across town.  On the way we were driving through a very wooded neighborhood.  Mya said, "I see trees!"  She's very good at I Spy but instead of letting you guess what she's spying she just tells you.  Okay, so she's not really good at I Spy at all. 

Mason took her observation of the trees and ran with it.  I wish I'd been listening more closely so I could quote this story word for word, but I was apparently also staring at the trees (or more likely the houses) and only half listening.  Oh wait, I mean I was concentrating on driving the car carrying my precious cargo.

At any rate, he started talking about beavers.  I can only assume because he thought they would like to live by all these trees so they could cut them down.  He's seen his fair share of beaver cartoons and specifically has enjoyed Beaver Boy from PEEP and the Big Wide World on PBS.  So he's telling me about the beavers and all of I sudden I hear, "You naughty beavers! You go back to your dam house!"  Of course I heard, "You go back to your damn house!" Thankfully before I began chastising him for using bad words, I realized that he was, as usual, correct. 

I love this kid.

Third Time's a Charm

 As everyone is well aware, this winter has been just horrendous.  With bad roads keeping us home on two prior weekends, we finally managed to get up to Bridgeport to visit my parents and belatedly celebrate Julia's 3rd birthday.  The only problem was my mom had to work on Saturday.  Never fear, Grandpa and I kept the kids occupied by taking them over to the Mid-Michigan Children's Museum in Saginaw.  The last time we were there it was St. Patrick's Day 2012.  Especially with Mya, I was reminded how little they were at that time and it made me happy and sad all at the same time.  We hope you enjoy these pictures from our trip!

The kids spent most of their time at the water table, Mason building with the pipes and Mya with the water wheels and pink fish.  Don't you love her expression in the bottom center picture?  She is not happy with the kid next to her whipping around a fishing pole.  Of course Mason and Grandpa found the train table as well.  But probably the highlight of the afternoon was watching Mya organize the bugs in the bee house.  She took out every little bug and bee and lined them up.  Yep, that's my girl!