The Journey of Parenthood…

Old Town St Augustine

Brittlynn woke up from her nap at nurse at 3 and Kye never did sleep so we just let him get up then too. We got all ready and drove down to Old Town! At 3:30 in the afternoon. In July. It was HOT. Prior to coming on the trip we wrote out everything we wanted to do while in St Augustine then wrote out the kids schedule and filled in the empty spaces with the activities we wanted to do. I’m SO glad we decided to do that. It made the whole trip run so smoothly because we already knew what we were doing when 🙂 You know me, I love some plans 😉 We planned to eat our traditional pizza dinner at Pizzalley’s but figured we’d walk around Old Town for a bit first. We lucked out and found parking at Pizzalley’s!

Brittlynn’s first time sitting in a stroller like a big girl!!!

If you don’t own a clip on stroller fan…they are the best invention ever. This is the one we own!

She seems too little to be sitting up like that!!!

First stop was to our annual cannon pictures. This was our most successful cannon pics EVER!!! Yay! Here are the ones from last year, from 2010, and from 2009! Someday maybe we’ll be able to get a family picture with the cannon…but we make it work taking turns for now 🙂

Britt’s first cannon pics!

First year he can sit on it all on his own!!!

The reason behind why I like the cannon picture tradition is that we had a similar tradition in our family. My dad is from a TINY town in Maine called Bowdoinham (like legit…a one stop light town!). There is an old cannon in downtown Bowdoinham and every time we visit we get a picture with it! Since we, obviously, won’t be going to Maine on a regular basis with our little family (we ARE hoping to plan a trip in the decently near future though…I promise!) I want to continue the cannon tradition in a place that is so special to us 🙂

A couple of my old Bowdoinham cannon shots!

 With my brother, Brandon

If you crave a LOT of attention from random strangers then I highly recommend investing in the stroller fans. I mean we like our fair share of attention, don’t get me wrong, but it was even a bit much for US. Literally EVERY SINGLE PERSON would comment on the fans when they saw us.

I laugh out loud at this picture. Our kids have fans for heads…no wonder people were staring hahaha

We cruised around Old Town a bit. Always on a mission for a Christmas ornament we did luck out and find one! We went back to the same shop we got Kye’s shirt from last year. It is GREAT because they make St Augustine t-shirts while you wait so we had her do one for each of the kids and she included the year for us 🙂 While we waited Kye stayed in the stroller and Zach parked it in the store. I went over to check on him and realized Zach had parked it in front of a towel display area with towels of practically naked large chested women on motorcycles and Bob Marley with a lovely joint dangling from his lips. Awesome. Kye didn’t seem to notice the girls (I mean he sees me nurse Britt so I don’t think he cares?) but he was very interested in what the man had in his mouth. I try to be honest with him but only answer with brief explanations. I simply told him it was something very, very yucky and nasty and very bad for people to do. Then I quickly moved his stroller 😉

While we walked around we also stopped in to watch a magic show. The magic shop is Zach’s favorite store haha. Like he even owns a couple of the magic tricks they sell there! It was a little over Kye’s head so he got bored pretty quickly but it’s one of those situations where you feel bad dipping out. Especially when we were a pretty large clan to try to be sneaky! We made it through though and headed over for dinner.

You know when you go out for a nice meal and you get seated next to a family with crying babies and annoying children? That was our table. The tables at Pizzalley’s are kinda cramped and we had the HUGE double stroller we had to park. Then we had Brittlynn who was over it and very, very fussy. It was comical. She was fussing. Kye was wanting food. No one could get around our table b/c the stroller. It was just nuts! I took Britt to change her diaper and realized she had a blow out…awesome. It was all over her little bloomers but, thankfully, not on the dress. I swear this child NEVER has blow-outs at home. She likes to save them for really inconvenient times and places 😉

Kye tried to cheer her up!

We let him get a prize at the t-shirt store and he got this cool cannon

I felt rrrealllly embarrassed at Brittlynn’s behavior. I hate that feeling. She was crying and I felt like she was ruining everyone’s meals. But what could I do? Gah I wish that child would take a paci sometimes!!! I ended up bouncing her around and trying to keep her happy by walking around the restaurant. Of course she just kept crying so instead of just ruining the people’s meals around us I let her affect everyone elses meals in the place haha. 

While I was attempting to make peace with my baby, my other baby was fascinated by watching the guys make the pizzas. I rigged up a chair so he could watch  and they even handed him some dough so he could practice making his own! So sweet 🙂

Thank the lord for the food!!!

Britt was much happier when we started giving her some stuff to eat!

Notice our stroller behind me haha

I got a calzone…AMAZING!

We even gave Britt some of the pizza crust to gnaw on…it kept her quiet 😉

We survived Britt’s first Pizzalley’s experience!

We weren’t about to leave Old Town without hitting up Kilwin’s. Kye was JACKED about it. He was dancing like crazy around the store. He got to pick out his own ice cream and of course he picked out some bright blue one that was just perfect for the white shirt he had on. Thank God for bleach 😉

Killin’ for some Kilwin’s 😉

Yes, Kye also had to have his bread with him. No joke when it was time to go Kye was more concerned about his piece of bread than his ice cream. My kid loves him some carbs!

I promise I did NO flirting or anything…but for some reason the guy behind the counter hooked me up maaaaaajjjor time with the ice cream. So much that it literally couldn’t fit in the cone. His boss even got him in trouble about it! It was sweet of him (or stupid depending on how you look at it) but it was SO much that I couldn’t even really enjoy it. I threw probably 80% of it in the trash!

Kye performed his ice cream dance for us and would take breaks for some bites of ours

He liked eating mine and his…he said he was “sharing”

Poor Brittlynn wanted some too…I’m a cool mom but not that cool. She enjoyed some toys instead!

We got back to the room with PLENTY of time for the kids to get their baths, for Britt to nurse and for them to get in the bed nice and early. We watch more of The Office and got ready for another busy day on vaca 🙂

Emily Parker
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