The Journey of Parenthood…

Our First Family Tradition

When you get married it seems like every holiday gets divided up through a million little compromises. Christmas with his family, Thanksgiving with mine, alternating Easter..etc, etc etc. A lot of times I think people forget that once you have children YOU become a family too and it shouldn’t always be about “his family” or “my family” it should also be about the family you create together!

Zach and I did a good job remembering that and we decided awhile back that the tradition we think is important to us is to spend every 4th of July in St. Augustine with our family! It was so exciting this year to take Kye with us and talk about alllll the years ahead and fun times we will have as our little family continues to grow!

(typical hotel bed pic!)

We’re hurting for dough right now and I actually called to see about canceling the stay and just go for the day but the hotels had a no cancellation policy! Yuck! We are glad we went though and had a great time…we stayed at the Cozy Inn and it was COZY

(this is one of the first pics that I can actually tell he’s my child!)

We drove down Friday afternoon and relaxed around the hotel until it was time to go to Katie’s condo. Her family has the same tradition we do so it’s pretty neat that we both are in St. Augustine the same time every year! It worked out great for us b/c they invited us for dinner! It was super sweet of them and I think they have a neat tradition that I’d never heard of before…every 4th of July they sing America songs and say the reasons they are thankful to be Americans! Of course I don’t know any of the words to the songs but it was still fun to be part of it.

(Katie’s mom was PUMPED to meet Kye! She’s so sweet!)

(So fun to spend some time with Katie!!!!)

I was a little nervous at how we’d all sleep in our “cozy” room since Kye is SUCH a loud sleeper but Zach had a great idea…we put him in the shower! His pack and play fit PERFECTLY and we were able to close the curtain so it was super dark for him!

Saturday was the 4th (and Kye’s 4 month old marker). We sat around the room in the morning to make sure he got a good solid morning nap but we had such a busy day planned that we decided to break schedule some for the day (and yes, I’m devoting an entire post to it later).

It was great to have Zach around so much because FINALLY we were able to get some pictures of Kye and I together! I always feel like I’m the one behind the camera and the cute ones are always Daddy and baby not Mommy and baby!

We went to the outlets for a little while to check out the sales. I had $30 of Gap Money from using my Gap card and it felt AWESOME to buy some new things for myself. It was great to go in the dressing room and be able to put on new clothes and actually look good in them! I LOVED it!!!! I bought size 6 and they fit perfectly…I probably could have bought 4s b/c they fit okay but I’d rather stick with what fits best and right now that’s a 6.

While we were there we had to stop at the maternity clothing store because if I’m going to continue to nurse for 8 more months I need some better fitting lounge around the house bras! They measured me at a 34D! She told me that the bras I’ve been LIVING in offer no support and that unless I want saggy ladies I’d better get something more supportive. We got me a sports type bra and also a strapless bra b/c she said I shouldn’t be wearing “bra tanks” either because mine are too big for those to offer enough support on their own.

After the outlet we ran back to the room to feed Kye and to eat lunch (we packed our own food for breakfast and lunch to save money and to stick with weight watchers!). Then we headed to Old Town! It was a ZOO to find parking but we got a spot and had a loooong walk to St. George street. We took a little break at the college to snap some pictures, and I’m so glad we did as they turned out great!

Zach used the Baby Bjorn around town and Kye loves that thing! It’s so funny to see all the reactions people have to it too! We did have a little issue at the restaurant (Pizza Alley’s our FAVORITE place in St Augustine!) because we didn’t have his car seat or the Bumbo so we had to hold him the whole time…not fun!

(our only family pic of the weekend…next year we want to do Old Time Photo with Kye!)

After dinner we walked around Old Town for a little while and got to see where Brandon and Chrissy are getting married! It was super pretty!

On our way back to the car we stopped at a cannon to take some pictures. Growing up whenever we’d go to Maine we’d ALWAYS get a picture on the cannon in downtown Bowdoinham. While I wish we could afford to go to Maine every year with Kye we know for sure that we’ll be in St. Augustine every year so we thought we could do our own cannon picture tradition here!

Once we got back to the room we fed Kye, bathed him awkwardly (taking both of our efforts) in the sink, then got him 100% ready for bed before heading out to watch the fireworks!

We were in the car waiting for the fireworks for an hour and a half. We decided to leave Levi (yes the dogs were with us on the trip!) in his crate but bring Sadie because she FREAKS out with fireworks and we didn’t want her to take a dump in her crate since the shower had Kye’s pack and play in it and we wouldn’t have been able to bathe her. So we sat for a long time with a loudly panting dog (what she always does when she’s scared) and a fussy baby (after a looong day he was so wired it took him an hour to fall asleep).

(in our boredom we messed with my camera and took pics with the night vision! creepy!)

All the hassle was worth it to see the beautiful fireworks show! Even though Kye slept through them this year it was still fun to know that we started a family tradition that will come to mean more and more to us as revisit each year!

Emily Parker
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