Beautiful Life Made Easy: Checking off the bucket list

I just want to hold onto summer with all of my might and not let it slip out of my hands yet.

I walked through the grocery store the other day and tried to avoid the bright, bold 'back to school' aisles that sit there tempting us, teasing us, reminding us that summer is coming to an end soon. So I look away, and pretend that it's not real. I'll remain in my little summer bubble and deal with school sneaking up on us when I'm literally forced to. So in the mean time, we're ticking off our summer bucket list and trying to squeeze in as much fun and chaos as possible while we still can.

Sometimes being home with little people all day long can start to feel like one day just blends into the next. So getting the opportunity to sneak out of our normal routine and pack up, take off and spend a few days away was welcomed with open arms. So we took everything but the kitchen sink from our house, stuffed it into our van, strapped everyone in and followed the caravan of the rest of our family to London--and spent a few wonderful days sleeping on hotel sheets, swimming in hotel pools, venturing out on day trips and ordering a table for 11 please at every restaurant that we went to.

It's these moments that I want to hold onto and never forget. Because this little mini vacation was great. Great because with five little people to care for, there were actually very few meltdowns (win!), lots of laughs, lots of happy kids and everyone slept (minus the littlest one of course--but that's just a given). But the best part, as Terry said himself, is that we learned that we actually CAN take our two year old to a restaurant (something that we have avoided like the plague...for obvious two year old reasons, of course)--he sat, he ate, we took him for walks around the restaurant, we brought out our restaurant survival kit bag (full of things to keep him entertained while sitting) and he did great. *I can feel the cheers from other parents with two year olds out there...because you know what this takes.

So with day trips planned, we packed up the crew and started off with a trip to Story Book Gardens where the day was packed with rides on elephants that went round and round...

Ridiculously huge slides that gave me a heart attack...

And ridiculously high ferris wheels where I watched from below with Sophia and had other multiple heart attacks as I watched my littlest boy fly round and round in circles with his dad, thrilled, --while all I kept thinking was this is RIDICULOUSLY HIGH. HOLD ONTO HIM TERRY!!!!

I think I discovered on this trip that I clearly have a fear of heights ever since becoming a mom--not for myself...but seeing my babies way up in the sky is not where I want them to be. Feet on the ground please (*insert Terry here telling me to RELAX they'll be fine!). He's probably right--but I still had about a million heart attacks on this trip.

And by the way, is it really necessary to have ropes for kids to climb and balance on (the lowest one about 7 feet off the ground??) REALLY??

She had a ball. She would tell you YES.