Wait, so this is REAL?

**I wrote this post last week on Thursday, but had trouble getting it posted until today!**

So it is finally hitting me that this dream of Sean's is really happening, and in turn so is mine.  Before school let out, it didn't hit me that I'd be staying at home with my little love for good because it just felt like I had an extra long maternity leave.  But now that all my teacher friends are headed back to school, it is finally sinking in that I get to stay home on a four month tour of the country in an RV with my little man.  Hey, so we had to mesh Sean's and my dreams to make it work.  No big deal.  We are so thankful and blessed with the success of Metro Dash.  The past month has been an amazing blur of bouncing from house to house and spending lots of time with our family.  It's been awesome.  Sean told me today that the girl who cuts his hair said, "man you must really love each other," in response to his description of the next three months.  I am pretty sure that the craziness of it all is going to really help us appreciate the little things in life (like the ability to have two people moving in a room at once--our home is tiny, people!; or not having ankles and feet that look I have chicken pox from neverending bug bites; oh! or not having to pull some random boxer briefs out of the campground washing machine in order to wash my baby's diapers without contaminating them with stranger cooties)  But I promise, we are having fun, and don't regret it for a minute!  (even if I seem to complain sometimes! ;) )

So we made it safely to Charlotte after a long day on the road yesterday.  We are slowly teaching our big chicken dog, Cooper, how to smoothly transition from the scary campground to the scary city all in one day, but there are so many things to be afraid of.  I mean, take today's experience....while walking by a crowded bus stop, a man jumps out of his seat and immediately starts petting Cooper.  Then, his questionably pregnant lady friend comes to pet him too.  She sees Beckett's little toes poking out from under his sun shield on the stroller, points to him, and says, "I got me two of them coming."  Before we could wrap our minds around her statement, someone sitting about ten feet away decided to bark at Cooper.  SomeONE, not some DOG, someONE.  Keep it classy, Charlotte.  Keep it classy.  We are ready for Metro Dash this weekend, and hopefully will get some free time tomorrow to explore the nature trails.

Sean and Cooper shortly before we were accosted at the bus stop

So let's rewind a bit....we had a fabulous week last week staying with Sean's mom and stepdad in New Jersey.  We spent lots of time with his siblings and their families and enjoyed getting the babies together.

Beckett got LOTS of snuggle time in with MeMa and Pop Pop Jerry.

Beckett also got to visit with his Great Grandmother 3 times and make her day as she recovers from her broken hip.  It was the first time she got to see both boys together!  What a special time it was!

We also got some rays in at his Aunt Kelly and Uncle Bob's pool.  Ryder even shared his police float with Beckett.  Beckett LOVED kicking and splashing in the water.  It was the first time he actually showed that he liked it instead of just being neutral.  We were lucky enough to spend the day with Bob's sister and her absolutely precious daughter, Lily (who is FULL of personality) and her 7 week old cutie, Molly.

We ended the week on a celebratory note, celebrating Aunt Erica's birthday at a great seafood restaurant.   We even had the baby.....in a bar!

Unfortunately, just about everyone who ordered the wahoo got food poisoning.  Thankfully I was a lucky one, but the wahoo took Sean as a casualty.  However, our sweet Beckett likes to keep things fair, so while Sean was up late night doing very un-fun things, I was up late night with a HYSTERICALLY screaming baby who only wanted daddy (who was REALLY not available to soothe a screaming baby.)  That was a fun night.

The night before the Philly race we stayed at a campground that provided us our first experience with a trailer park.  We were used to nature, trees, privacy.  Nope, not here.  Hello to your neighbor who is about ten feet away from you.  We got some funny looks when we unloaded 15 5-gallon jugs of water, and 3 40-pound boxes of bananas from our RV.  No big deal.

The set-up at the race in Philly was awesome.  We parked the RV and trailer on the sidewalk directly next to where we set up the Gauntlet.  This sidewalk was on the grassy area in front of the Liberty Bell, Constitution Hall, and the Federal Reserve.  Should we be worried that nobody said two words to us about our parking job OR what was in our big scary van and trailer between the hours of 4:00 a.m. and noon?  Hey, I won't complain, just saying.

Cooper, overseeing the setup

The Gauntlet, with our home in the background :)

It was another great event, and we even got to cheer for Uncle Bob and cousin Ryder!

 

After the race in Philly, we got to stop back home to see Mormor and Gramps again!  Yay!!!  We got to spend a wonderful evening and half the day on Sunday with them before we sadly had to hit the road again.  We spent a whirlwind two days in VB.  It was awesome, though!  Somehow a group of us girls were able to get together on a Tuesday morning for breakfast to celebrate our dear friend, Michelle's belated birthday.  It was awesome to see Andrea, quite possibly one of the cutest pregnant ladies ever.  I lucked out because she was visiting from Hawaii.  It was also wonderful to see Jules and Amanda!  Yay for girl time!

My beautiful besties!  I LOVE them!

I also attended a bachelorette party, dinner with our FUN neighbors, Caleb, Jenna, and sweet baby Brylee (Beckett and Brylee are in love--Beckett has multiple girlfriends these days!)  We also had to do laundry and take lots of showers to enjoy it while we could!  And my favorite was repacking everything in the RV now that we know what we really need since we will be gone from home until the end of November.  Oh, and Beckett's doctor's appointment.  All jammed into two days!  I wish we could have stayed longer, but the races are calling us.

Our adventure has begun, and now I must head off for my first shower experience in Charlotte.  *sigh*