Lots of Dettingers in Indiana

We've been spoiled to have lots of visits from Josh's family this summer!  Josh's brother Jake had a work conference in Indianapolis in May shortly after we got here so we went down to hang out with him for a little bit and swim in his hotel.  They love their Uncle Jake!

 And Rachel came out to visit in July and spent a week with us.  The kids were in heaven with her and Josh and I got to go on a date!

 And we are going to get lots of visits with Josh's parents because they moved just a couple hours away from us for Greg's new job as a principal at a high school near South Bend.  We are excited to be able to see them more often!

 Uncle Matthew may get sick of them real quick:)  But they sure love him.

Alright who's next?  

Free Fun

I am always on the lookout for good free fun, and thankfully there has been lots of it for us here this summer.  One weekend there was a festival at the local university, where there were all kinds of bouncehouses and kiddie rides and activities for the kids to do, all for free.  I didn't bring my camera, so this crappy phone pic is all we got.  

 They had another free children's festival there a few weeks later so I took the kiddos again.  Here is Marissa being too wussy to go in the bounce house with Shane.  And a good shot of chunky baby legs.

 But she got to go on this airplane ride that he was too tall for.

 The county fair was free for kids 5 and under.  I walked up to the booth and said, "They are all under 5.  Wow, for once that is a good thing!"  There were of course lots of animals there, rides, games, and face painting.  When I asked Marissa what she wanted, she said "a shark!"  I tried asking her if she wanted a butterfly or something like that, but she was adamant about having a shark.  The lady had never gotten that request so she did her best.  Marissa thought she was pretty cool.  

And Shane picked a tiger.  And roared at everyone on our way out.

 And we live by a Chic-Fil-A now!  You know we dressed up like cows to get our free meals on Cow Appreciation Day.  They also have free kids meals on Wednesdays with purchase of an adult meal- I might just be taking them when Josh is working.

Lucky Kids

We had a great vacation in Nashville, Tennesee with my parents, siblings, and their families.  Since my sister Shannon lives in North Carolina, my sister Jamie lives in Missouri, and I live in Indiana, we thought to find a place that was equidistant that we could all drive to and spend the week together.  We all stayed in a big rental house together that had a pool and had a lot of fun swimming, going to the zoo, Cheekwood botanical gardens, the Loveless Cafe, the park, and of course good old Chic-fil-a (my family is slightly obsessed).  As I looked through the pictures and tried to decide what to post, I realized just how lucky my kids are to have so many people who love them so much.  Josh was the only one that couldn't make it (next year hopefully!), and everyone was so great to step right in and love on my kids.  They had a blast, and it was so cute to see how much they loved being with everyone.

 This series of pictures is entitled "Shane making himself comfortable with everyone..."

 and this next series is "Shane getting every capable person to read to him"

 including his cousin Kate, which was really fun to see.

 She is growing up so much and was so good with my kids!

The next pictures are entitled "Me and Jamie had entirely too much fun dressing our daughters alike"

 

 These ones are "I'm so glad my family still loves Marissa in spite of her being "crusty" sometimes, in fact sometimes I think they might love her because of that"

 "My dad is a superhero because he volunteers to wear my hefty 4 month old,

 and answers 5,000 questions during dinner, all while getting him to eat his chicken"

 And of course my mom is a rockstar.

 I love my family.  And Nashville.  The end.

I'm back!

Well hello again.  I am attempting to dust off the ole blog and hope to keep the posts coming in the next little bit.  I just got back from vacation with my family in Nashville, and am trying to somewhat get back to normal, whatever that is anyway.  I will post a bit from vacation and a bit from the posts I have been wanting to do for awhile but haven't gotten to yet, and there will probably be no rhyme or reason to the order of the posts.  That's kind of a reflection of the way things go around here lately anyway- I kind of have a vague plan of the things I want to get done and I know they will all get done sometime but I kind of end up hopping around from one thing to another often before one is even finished, depending on who is crying the loudest or what/who smells the most.  I was so frustrated a couple days ago because I made a point to stay home that day instead of taking the kids somewhere fun so I could get some things done around the house.  Only at the end of the day we hadn't really done anything very fun, and I still hadn't really gotten a whole lot done!  Sadie had been a little bit more needy, Marissa was in tantrum mode, and Shane had asked approximately 1,800 questions, most of which he already knew the answer to.  There were definitely a lot of ugly moments, and I was feeling bad about myself, but I thought Hey, there was that bike ride/walk I took them on.  That went pretty well.  Shane rode all the way to the lake and back without whining while Sadie slept in the stroller and Marissa rode happily.  So I counted that part as a win and tried to not focus so much on the other parts.  And that has been my strategy lately- try to find at least 1 thing out of the day that went great and feel good about that, even if the rest of it was a little hairy.  Yesterday it was Marissa deciding that she liked slides again.  And today it was that she walked our whole bike ride instead of riding in the stroller.  I guess when I think about it, a lot of my greatest joys as a mom are seeing my kids do the things they thought were hard or couldn't do before.  And I guess that goes for myself too.

(When you ask him to smile this is what you get, I think he honestly thinks he is smiling)

 (She rode her bike when we got back because there was no way I was going to carry that back with me when she got too tired)

(I already had this little chunk to carry)

 

Life Lately

Josh started his official clinical duties as a resident on July 1.  It is really starting to sink in that he is really a doctor!  He is prescibing medications people!!  

 Let's take a closer look at this.  I don't think seeing the letters Dr. or MD next to his name will ever get old!

 It is kind of like medical school in that he has different rotations every month.  He started out with a busy one, the inpatient service at the hospital.  One day he came home and told me how he was in charge of the pager that afternoon and he felt like he would be trying to work on an admit or something and then the pager would go off and he'd have to go take care of whatever it was that needed attention and he just never felt like he could completely finish what he was doing.  I said, "Welcome to how I feel every second of the day!!!"  We are both busy and working very hard in our respective areas, he is working about 70 hours a week (it could be worse!!), which means that I am left to take care of most everything around here with 3 small children in tow.  But, I wouldn't trade it.  It is so cool seeing Josh do what he has been working toward all this time, and even better to see how much he enjoys it.  And to get treated well- they really do treat them very well here even as lowly interns.  It is just not something we were used to with Ross!  I have my hands full that's for sure, and get told it several times a day by strangers, but amidsdt the craziness there are always at least a few moments each day that make it all worth it.  Yesterday it was the dance party in my bedroom to Shane's self-proclaimed favorite song (Die Young by Ke$ha- not sure why he likes it so much but every time it comes on he goes crazy!)

I ♥ The Y

We are really really loving it here in Fort Wayne.  Sometimes I feel like parts of this city were designed with me personally in mind. Like the Y.  I'm sure the Y is great everywhere, but look how pretty this one is!  This picture shows about 1/3 of it, it is pretty big with a workout center, indoor track, climbing wall, indoor pool with waterslide, indoor playground, etc. etc.  

The one downside is that I have to call ahead of time to make a reservation for Sadie, but there are trails outside and they let you leave your kids in the childwatch if you are running on them and have your cell phone on you.  So I usually take Sadie in the stroller while Shane and Marissa play inside.  You can kind of see in this picture but there is also a big park next to it.

And if all that wasn't enough, they just opened their new outdoor aquatic center that is included with your membership.  (One of the hospital systems funded it, they really sponsor a lot of cool things in the town).  There is no way I could take my 3 kids to a regular pool by myself, but I can to this one because there are lots of areas for them to just wade around and play.  Marissa likes this area,

and Shane likes the little slide area behind it.  I like that there area lots of areas for me to sit with Sadie and supervise, and several shady areas right next to the pool too.

This was 4th of July, but usually it is a lot busier (and Josh is not usually there)

Basically, we will be spending lots of time here!

My Little Holy Roller

Marissa's latest obsession?  The scriptures.  A good one to have, except we are trying to keep her from ruining all of our nice ones!  They are some of her favorite things to play with, she loves putting them in and out of Shane's scripture bag. 

 She loves flipping through the pages, and will string together random things she's heard and say them as she turns the pages- "prophets.... blessings.... he was mad at him....in the city...."  She loves the prophet song right now too and for some reason is especially obsessed with Enoch.

She can be a real feisty one sometimes, but oh she makes us smile and laugh a lot too!  Sorry future Marissa, had to throw this awful picture on here to document.  I'm pretty sure she got a bug bite/s on her eyelid and it got infected, this picture was before it got even worse, it was swollen completely shut.  Glad it's pretty much back to normal and we can see those big blue eyes again!