Yes, there is. Please enjoy these photos from our trip to Florida to visit the inlaws while I use my internet time more responsibly. *sigh*

Many of these same folks would, however, enjoy copious pool time and cold beer, tons of good talks with their ladyfriendz, a little fine dining, a little dancing, a sexy Cirque du Soleil show, the best roller coaster in the world, long sparkly walks, and the delicious, rejuvenating, escape of it all.

click to embiggen, if you wanna

So. Firstly, let me say that he was GREAT on the flight to NYC. It was a dream, actually. He slept for the first half and was lovely company for the second, completely pleasant and entertained by his books and snacks. Then, for our whole trip in NYC, he was such a fun little companion. He seemed to grow up over the week before our eyes, constantly delighting us with funny observations and surprising us with his portability.

And then.

We had to leave on our lengthy journey RIGHT at nap time, so it was dicey to start with. He was OK in the cab to Penn Station, except of course he pooped. So when we got there, we had approximately 10 minutes for one of us to wrangle all of the luggage, buy tickets, and figure out where we were going, and the other to find a bathroom and change a diaper. I drew the poopy straw, so while I was pleased to learn that the bathroom in Penn Station was the ONLY bathroom I encountered in all of New York City with a changing station, I was dismayed to remember that SB had the diaper stuff in HIS carryon. I managed to find a diaper, at least, in mine, and made do with wet toilet paper. Yuck. But we made it on to the train. The Friday afternoon, packed to the gills train, where we could not sit together and poor SB had to manage the suitcases in the crowd. I pulled out all my best stops to keep Clark entertained and managed to keep him to a mostly manageable level of screeching and wiggling.

Then on to another train, through the waiting and checking in, an epic juice-surrendering security tantrum, to the gate, and then we took turns chasing him around the crowded gate area as he got more and more punchy and SB and I began to lose our composure a little.

As we were finally waiting in line to get on the plane, his eyelids were fluttering a little and I thought YES! He is totally going to fall asleep as soon as we sit down.

But of course, the airplane was exciting, so he didn’t. For the next two hours, he continued to get more and more AND MORE rowdy. Like, jumping up and down on the seat, kicking the one in front of him, yelling and just being a crazycrazy child, like nothing I’ve ever seen him do before. It was like he was manic. Like, happy, yell-y screechy manic. I did NOT know what to do. Even in retrospect, I don’t know what I should have done.

I tried every thing I could. Distraction, food, whatever.

As you can imagine, if our patience and composure were slipping hours before this, we were both on the verge of collapse at this point. Our extreme embarrassment and the obvious frustration of everyone around us was not helping, either. About 2 hours in, the attendants finally brought my pathetic little snack tray and some much needed wine, all I wanted was my sad little salamis and stale crackers in peace, and that was when he actually dialed it up a little more. I turned to SB, and was like, what are we supposed to do? I even said, I feel like we should video tape this or something, because no one is going to believe us. And that’s when he started throwing things. He would shout THROW and bam! Hard cover Thomas book to the face, precious drops of wine spilling into my lap. I removed everything he could throw, and then he started hitting me. Hard.

I lost it a little. I grabbed his leg roughly and made my face and voice scary and said STOP IT.

He laughed. He would not stop. He was out of control.

And that’s when SB said, I can’t have him hitting you, and grabbed him and physically restrained him. And Clark started screaming even more. SB put his hand over Clark’s mouth and was doing everything he could to try to get him to stop.

I accepted this was not going to work either, took him back into my lap and that’s when he BARFED ALL OVER ME.

Right into my face.

I had barf on my cheek and my neck.

All over my shirt. Chunks in my bra.

And now my poor baby was sobbing and having trouble catching his breath.

The three of us walked back 20 rows to the bathroom and all I saw were disgusted faces, so I kept my gaze focused ahead.

When we got inside and shut the door I finally really lost it and started sobbing, too.

After a little while and some deep breaths, we both stopped crying and SB washed the chunks out of my bra. He went back and got Clark’s sweatshirt and my thin, see-through, no-buttons, sweater-cape-thing and we got as dressed as we could. For the rest of the flight and all through the airport after, I was wearing a wet bra and a few flimsy threads and there was nothing else to be done. We got back to our seats, I looked at my watch and realized that we were not even half way through the flight. There were still another 3 hours to go. Mercifully, Clark finally fell asleep.

But wait! There’s more!

Around midnight, when we had about a half an hour to go, (which still seemed like a million years on The Longest Flight Ever), SB misinterpreted something I said, took it as a poke, lashed out in return, and then in our extremely weakened mental states, now we were in a fight. I may or may not have whisper-hissed the following winners:

“I am not wearing a shirt and I have barf in my hair. I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU ARE PICKING ON ME RIGHT NOW.”

“You could take a SHIT in the middle of my CHEST and I would STILL cut you some slack at this point!”

Yeah. It was just so so so awful. I’m sure everyone around us thought we were terrible parents and felt sorry for Clark. I could JUST. DIE.

So. There you have it. My friend Heather is about to travel by herself for 20 hours or something like that with three children, so maybe I should just shut my hole, but at least all three of them are GIRLS.

on the way there, my perfect angel.

Behold:

Three people packed for 8 days in two medium suitcases. Also, there is a pea pod in there. Yes, I RULE.

Anyway, when I realized that my camera gear was going to take up a significant amount of my packing real estate, I decided to try going all Chase Jarvis and doing the iPhone photo vacation. And dudes, I’m loving it. I have been shooting, editing and posting as I go. I don’t have a huge photo uploading/culling/editing task waiting for me at home. (For example, my PDX photos are still just sitting in my Lightroom.)

My boys are waiting for me so we can go out for our last night in NYC so I gotta jet, but here are some of my favorites so far:

Many many more to come! xoxo

The tickets go on sale on May 1st, and they’re going to sell out in about 5 minutes, guaranteed. Even without the line up! That’s right, the lineup isn’t released until June. I was starting to get nervous about getting tickets, and then I saw this:

So last weekend, we took an 8 hour round trip journey with a 2 year old, and we were successful! TICKETS ACQUIRED. And you know what? It was such a fun day. It helped that the journey was broken up nicely with a ferry ride, and that we brought my sister along for back seat entertainment.

I was in my happy place. Ferries are very good places for photo ops.

I mean, COME ON. Look at that water! The islands!

And then we got to our destination!

There was another hour or so of driving on the island. Doe Bay is just north of BFE.

And then we were rewarded for our long long journey with TICKETS and this:

And then we did the whole thing again in reverse. Clarkie was delightful all day and he LOVED his first ferry. It’s so awesome that he’s getting more and more portable. And DUDES! We got tickets! I’m so stoked!

We will be taking my parents too, and sailing up there and sleeping on their boat. Hooray for epic summer adventures!

Look at my big boy, at the airport:

He was SO CUTE on the flights. He was thrilled about flying and at his most delightful, making announcements such as, “I POOPED ON THE AIRPLANE!”

My father-in-law’s wife is sort of like George Clooney in Up in the Air. (BTW, watch that if you haven’t) She travels A LOT and has tons and tons of miles and points and whatnot and knows exactly how to work it. See that taller area that the resort seems to be arranged around? That would be the Presidential Suite. OUR ROOM. See that verahndahh? Excellent for observing the commoners below.

WE didn’t use THAT pool, heavens no, we used OUR OWN PRIVATE POOL.

You guys, while the rest of the country was having a Snowpocolypse, I was sitting next to that bad boy in 70 degree sun. It was WONDERFUL.

Just off to the right of our verahndahh, there was a little play area that Clark loved and had all to himself the whole time:

We took a nice walk in a nature preserve one day and I got to play with my camera:

But the BEST best thing about my time off was all the QT with my boy. It’s been so hard to be back to work these last few days, since we were in eachother’s pockets for so long.

Here’s to 2011 and making life choices that allow for more travel and more snuggles.

Where are we going, Clarkie? Tell us, iPhone.

We saw many interesting sites along the way. Check out these cool community bikes! Clark liked them very much.

In the grass outside a community college, we had a major meltdown/blowout/many-wipes-employed traumatic event, but we recovered and were on our way once again, walking along in the hot, hot city.

And then we made it!

After that epic journey, we actually didn’t stay that long. It was hot and there was no nap. But we saw the cherry and the spoon!

Not sure why SB is so suspicious.

She is one of the most fabulous people, EVER. Doesn’t she look happy? She is SO HAPPY because it is her wedding day. Sort of. She actually got married in her dining room 6 months ago, but we were fortunate enough to get to fly out to beautiful Minneapolis, Minnesota over the weekend to attend her reception.

I’m so glad we went! Not only did we have a wonderful time in Minneapolis, we got to spend a good deal of quality time with the lovely Bride and Groom. I was reminded how important it is, whenever you can swing it, to show up for the big moments in the lives of your friends. That’s what life is all about, really.

I have many adventures to relay. I’ll begin with the gathering of family and out of town guests at their new home. It was so fun! I got to see in person all the various famliy characters I’ve been hearing about all these years, as well as see Dahli’s house for the first time. It is just as beautiful and interesting and unique as the Bride herself.

Here we are enjoying the patio she made with her bare hands:

Which brings me to a topic that must be discussed, a major part of my Minneapolis adventure:

THE MOTHER. EFFING. MOSQUITOS.

I wasn’t even outside at night that much! Just this one evening, and maybe a walk on another night, and people, I WAS EATEN ALIVE. Those things are NOT fucking around. I’m still scratching like crazy and applying hydrocortizone left and right, and we’ve been home for two days. I’ve decided that in future visits to the Land of 10,000 Lakes, I would need something like what is pictured below. If I am to spend any time out of doors at night, I will need a full body mosquito net of some kind. I bet someone has invented something like this already, but if not, Tee Em, bitchez.

More to come!

The highlights included:

1. Walking on the beach on Friday. It was so warm and bright, and the Pacific was big and wide and crashy. SB and I took a long walk, our pants rolled up, our feet happliy experiencing the sand, our shoes dangling from our fingertips. There may have been some skipping.

2. The middle rainy day. One of the best things about a rainy day is the permission it gives you to do something low key and indoors. There’s no need to feel like you SHOULD be doing something more adventurous, you can’t. You simply MUST curl up and read a book and then go see a movie. If it had been sunny, I’m sure we would’ve had a Big Day Out, and I’m sure it would’ve been great, but reading and movie watching was just splendid. Both are delicious and rare activities at this moment in my life.

3. Dinner at The Red Pearl Kitchen. You guys, this place was sah-WEET. It was super glamorous, with big, dark booths, red walls and flickering lanterns, and beautiful people everywhere. My cocktail was a work of art, my dinner was perfect, and the company was excellent. Incidentally, we all remarked how the service was both superb and performed by ridiculously attractive humans. The remarkable part being that you don’t expect super pretty people to be so nice. Funny, that.

Here are some of my favorite shots from the trip.