{Another} Weekend in Vermont

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Meghan

We had another fun filled weekend in Vermont (when are they ever not fun? oh yeah, when I have to drive thru a snowstorm…thankfully it’s spring and we had a blissful ride up because Avery slept 2/3 of the trip!). In addition to our family 5K on Saturday morning, Avery played outside, we spent time with family & friends for dinner and a bon fire, and we spent Mother’s Day morning with my grandparents… and I took about a zillion pictures, so sit back, this is a long one…

When we got back from the race on Saturday, the rain was holding off, so Avery spent some time outside with Grampy. Us ‘womenfolk’ stayed inside to prep dinner. Before I knew it, I could hear the lawnmower doing laps around the house. Avery loves it. Then, they were onto bubbles…

Avery loves bubbles… almost as much as our dog, Mickey, growing up. He used to chase them with his mouth wide open and chomp on every bubble he caught. Luckily, Avery doesn’t eat them too…

We took a walk around the yard… first Avery played with Dad’s compost bucket, made our way around the back yard where Dad told me about pollinating his apple trees by using a q-tip (cool idea!), checked out the wood shed where Fraiser sniffed around for a mouse and Avery oogled at the snowblower (any car/truck/machine on wheels excites this kid…such a boy!). Avery saw the giant wood pile and just had to climb it…

…oh and so did Fraiser – thanks for the photo bomb, dog. And this was the best of the many pictures I took…because all the other ones had the dogs butt….

Then Grampy took Avery for a boat ride…

Yeah… kinda missing the water part of a boat ride, but it was good practice for this summer!

Then we were all off for a walk (as if running/walking the 5K wasn’t enough exercise for the day). We hoped it would calm Avery down so he could take a nap before our guests came over for dinner that night. Avery loves walks in the stroller and especially with the dogs because he loves to watch them… or walk them himself!

On our walk we had an impromptu photo session – and thanks to instagram, the pics came out pretty awesome…

After all that excitement, Avery was out for a two-hour nap. We all showered, prepped dinner, and Sarah and I ran out for supplies (beer, cheese, a lime, Mother’s Day hanging flower baskets for Mom, and I grabbed a VT souvinier for Avery’s pen pal in Texas).

Avery woke up rested for an afternoon of fun. While we waited for the guest to arrive, there were more bubbles…(and dogs bombing my pictures)

Some truck fixin’..

Safety first!

We had the cornhole game setup (my Dad makes these, aren’t they awesome?!), but Avery had a new way of playing…

The things that amuse this kid! Then it was off to join Grampy in the swing…

And take a break to watch Elle-Moo (Avery’s finally got past his trouble gettings stuck on the “L” and now says ‘elmo’… except the ‘mo’ comes out at ‘moo!’) with Grammy

Then the guest arrived, and aside from my graceful moment where I tipped over the picnic table (sorry Nic and Mina!), it was a pretty fun night of grilled food, Sarah and I won corn hole, Avery even took a few bites of veggies thanks to help from Uncle Mike…

Avery ate a whole hot dog, and ended the night with a bath tended to by Mina!

Avery went down pretty well, especially since he had a pacifier tonight…Friday night when we got in, I couldn’t find his pacifier and it’s not like at home when we can drive 1 mile down the road to Walmart, so we ~~cried~~ stuck it out and Avery eventually went down. So after our race Saturday, we picked up a pacifier at the pharmacy in town and when I gave it to Avery that night, man was he out like a light.

A bon fire, some yummy lemon squares (Mina, send me that recipe!), some fun doctor talk with Nic (he delivers babies!), and I called it a night by 9/930… I was so tired I couldn’t even read 3 pages in my book before I passed out.

Sunday was Mother’s Day! Grammy had got her flowers the day before, and Avery gave her a homemade card. Then he helped her make crust for the kiesh we brought to my grandparents for breakfast.

While we were all busy in the kitchen, there was a bang on the window – a bird had flown into it (something that’s happened many times before growing up). So we went outside to investigate…

Avery was hesitant, but he did touch it once! The poor thing was so stunned, but he was fine. Then we spent some time at my grandparents house and Avery played with the ORIGINAL Little People farm set…

Avery got tired pretty quickly and we hit the road before noon. He passed out and slept all the way to Mass. We made a pit stop for a snack, and then hit the road again…

When we got home, Mommy got some flowers, a card, and a running shirt from her two boys! So sweet!

Avery was excited to help unpack from the weekend…

And spend some time with Daddy…

Whew… enough pictures?! Remind me not to take so many pictures this weekend… oh yeah that’s not gonna happened because my parents are coming down for a couple home renovation projects… so yeah, even more pictures to come next week!

Happy Friday!

B Strong & Escape to NYC

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Meghan

The past two weeks has been full of emotions for our city of Boston. First the bombings on Marathon Monday, hundreds injured and in surgeries all week, the manhunt on Friday that closed down the city, and now a week of funerals for those lost. Running my virtual 5K for Boston seems so insignificant compared to the pourout of support from around the world for Boston. Can you believe the charity fund created has passed 21 million dollars!? We did our part to help. I bought ‘One Boston’ T shirts for my parents & Vinay (They didn’t have my size because they sold out fast).

It took a little research to find legit T shirts, because there are already so many scams out there (so sad). I found them on adidas’ website – the same company that makes all Boston Marathon gear, and 100% of the proceeds of these shirts go to One Fund Boston! In no way will money replace what was lost, but the commradery of Bostonians and runners around the world is just such an amazing tribute to those affected by the horrible events last week – and we’re so happy we can do a little to help.

For those of you that don’t know, I work in Watertown, Mass. Yeah, the sleepy little suburb of Boston that was the epicenter of last Friday’s manhunt for the second bombing suspect. I had no idea what was going on until I was about to step out of the kitchen at 6:15am to head to work and a coworker called me and told me not to go in because the office was closed. Closed!? Why would they close the office? The office never closes – unless the city is shut down – which it was for the Hurricane warning last fall, and this time… something even scarier – a marathon bomber was on the loose! We switched on the tube and after catching up on the lockdown in Watertown, we decided I would stay home with Avery. I was itching to make a trip to the gym, and send Avery to daycare for a 1/2 day (it was paid for so why not?) but because they kept saying on the news that they had no idea where the guy was, we weren’t going to risk it.

So, Avery and I stayed home while Vinay headed off to work. We snuggled on the couch while I caught up on the events on TV.

Then we did some stacking – Avery loves this toy….

And even some laundry…

Vinay worked in Boston, which wasn’t affected with the lock-down (yet). He got halfway to work when he had to turn around because they put Boston on lock down too. When he got back, we decided to make our (previously scheduled) trip to NYC a three-day weekend. We were already packed up from the night before, so we loaded into the car and got far away from the city.

We were happily on the road at 930AM and I had the pleasure of playing with Avery in the back seat. Someone was in good spirits…

That’s his ‘cheese’ face.

And of course a 4 hour ride for a toddler isn’t fun for long…. so after we ran out of toys and games (I could only hide the stuffed dog in so many places and wearing toys as hats wasn’t funny to Avery after 10 minutes of that), I let Avery watch some “Elle”. AKA Elmo.

Avery is too cute… he tries to say ‘Elmo’ but gets stuck on with his tongue on the ‘L’ That kept us occupied until we stopped for lunch 2 1/2 hours later. Wendys! Avery ate some apple slices and nuggets. He was thrilled to get out of the car and say ‘hi’ to every person that walked into the restaurant. When we got back in the car, Avery took a nap.

When he woke up, we were in NYC and someone was very happy to see him.

Avery was a little shy and sat reading his book (the kids meal prize from Wendys) before he started running around the place.

We had a fun day visiting Vinay’s Mom, Aunt, and Grandma. After Avery went down that night, we put the news back on and were updated on the events in Boston. Vinay and I headed out for desert together (mini date) and when we came back, they had caught him!

The rest of the weekend we visited, played outside, Vinay and I snuck away during Avery’s nap Saturday and caught the new G.I.Joe movie. Then Sunday it was time to head home.

But before we left, Avery had to play in a different kind of laundry basket while we waited for Daddy to bring the car.

Vinay’s family was sad to see Avery go, but at least we had an extra day with them.

How often do you get to visit with parents and in-laws? Are they around the corner or accross the country? Luckily ours are within a short enough drive to make a weekend visit.

Avery’s First Red Sox Game

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Meghan

In light of the events on Monday in our city, I held off sharing this fun post. There’s just so much emotion and guilt when sharing something fun and exciting about your family when there are people in surgery, missing limbs, and families that are mourning deaths. I am so thankful that our family and friends are all safe and we’re here another day to share about the fun and exciting stuff going on in our lives…. like Avery’s very first Red Sox Game.

Now let me backtrack a little – On Thursday I won a pair of Tickets to the Red Sox game, that night. How? Our company has tickets that they sometimes raffle off if the ticket holder can’t go. I was lucky to see an email pop up on my screen that said the first 2 people to respond would each get a set to the game. And fast fingers me, I got them!

Now, this was early afternoon, and a 7PM game is NOPLACE for a toddler that goes to bed at 7. Scrambled for a sitter. All set. Fast forward to 30 minutes before we were to leave for the game and our sitter had to bail. I was pretty upset. Red Sox games are rare, and tickets are so expensive – these were free and great seats! It’s times like that I wish we lived close to family so I could easily call my Mom, or Sister, or Aunt to come watch Avery no problem. Oh well. So we again scrambled – this time to give the tickets away. But since I was south of the city now, at home and the game was only 1 1/2 hours away, nobody wanted them. So, what to do? I marched over to our neighbors house (a nice lady with 4 daughters that has helped us shovel before and is always so kind), and gave her the tickets. At least somebody could use them. (side note – got a thank you card today from her daughter who went to the game with her boyfriend. Yay!)

I was hoping this would create some good Karma, and what do you know…. when my parents came down for the weekend, guess what they had? Tickets to the Saturday Red Sox Game. Front Row Third Base Line Seats! A coworker had a death in the family and couldn’t go, so they handed them off to my Mom. And guess what? The game was a 1PM game. And little kids under 2 get in free…. so Grammy and Grampy took Avery to his first Red Sox Game.

Not only were the seats amazingly close, we recorded the game on TV and you can clearly see them a bunch of times!

Avery got a warm-up ball from the opposing team, scarfed his first Fenway Frank, danced along with Sweet Caroline, and the game went 11 innings, and he behaved so well that they stayed the whole game!

Avery even threw a mitten and water bottle over the wall. Good thing there was a kind cameraman there to hand it back to Avery. Too bad for him, because Avery of coarse thought this was a game and kept doing it.

Avery enjoyed the music and cheering and joined in. He was even on the jumbo screen a couple times – dancing!

So excited our little guy got his taste of the Boston spirit and had a great time (almost as much fun as Grammy and Grampy). Now Vinay’s got to take him to his first Yankee game and we’ll have to wait and see which team he likes more, because as you know, we have quite an in-house rivalry

Do your believe in Karma? I do! Well, at least that doing good for others with come full circle at some point…. this time the turnaround was quite fast!

RatnamResidence

Documenting life in our home…

Category Archives: Travel

{Another} Weekend in Vermont

B Strong & Escape to NYC

Avery’s First Red Sox Game

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