Seeking Advice: Traveling with Toddlers

This post is mainly posing a question and concern I have; any advice, input, comments, and stories would be appreciated!

So... we are all traveling out of the country to Finland in about a month. (We leave July 30th, after the BAR exam! YAY!) We will be gone for three weeks. Luckily when I say ALL of us, I do mean Shad, me, Owen, AND the grandparents... so extra help will be available! But I am just looking for some ideas on how to handle and help Owen on the looooooong flight, maybe some advice on how to handle the time change/sleeping patterns, new food (OWEN is SO PICKY!), and all the new family/faces. Does anyone out there have any experience on traveling so far with little ones?? Any ideas?? I have a few tricks up my sleeve for the actual travel, but am sincerely DREADING the time change and jet lag. Oh dear! Any tips?

Thanks!

Photo Shoot with the Babies!

While Kirsten was here with her little girl, I decided I wanted to do a little photo shoot with the babies! Since they are both so busy and all over the place, it was a little crazy (lots of movement and blurry pics!). But they were just so dang cute in their sunday best!

McKinley girl is such a little model! She loves to smile, clap, and wave at the camera! I wish I had more time to shoot her at better timing!

It was close to impossible to get a great shoot of the both of them looking at the camera. Owen is past the point where you can just dance and smile behind the camera to get him to look and laugh. So... these were a little difficult, they were both all over the place!!

McKinely loved Owen, but Owen was not as "touchy-feely" as her... so its funny how he has his backed turned to her all the time!

I just loved this one, because this was Owen all week. Everytime we'd ask "Where's McKinley?" he would point to her, and NEVER EVER touch her! One time I asked Owen "Do you stink?" and he immediately pointed at McKinley! Funny boy.

Cute babies... thanks for coming Kirsten and McKinley!

Visitors

Last week my family and I were lucky enough to have some fun visitors in town-- One of my oldest and dearest friends, Kirsten and her little baby girl McKinley!!! Her husband was sweet enough to buy her a plane ticket up here for a mother's day treat.... yay for us!! It was the first time I got to meet 9 month old McKinley, and the first time they got to see Owen. We had a blast with them here for a whole week! Shad is crazy busy prepping for the bar exam, he is CONSTANTLY studying... so it was so nice to have some company while he cracks down on his studying. My mom was also able to take a few days off from work and tag along! We ventured out a bit here and there. We shopped, ate out, had a girls night out, and took the kids out to some fun places. However, with the babies both teething, not sleeping well, and on opposite napping schedules it was hard to plan for all day events when we only had about a 3 or 4 hour window of time! But somehow we made it work and had a great time!

I miss them already!

One of the first days they were here we took the kids to the Seattle Science Center. Here is Kirsten and McKinley:

Owen and McKinley LOVED the water fountain/play area:

Big smiles!

Owen threw a really embarrassing tantrum when we had to leave the water. I got a lot of funny looks, many from moms who I could tell where like "oh I've been there..." ha!

They had a really beautiful butterfly garden, that was really fun!

I love how you can see the little straws they drink from:

When we first got in the garden there was actually a big butterfly on Owen's back that we didn't notice until someone told us, then TONS of people came over to look and take pictures! It was a little weird. But I did get a pic of the one on Owen's tummy:

My mom was like the butterfly whisperer, she could catch any of them!

Owen thought these masks were great! He could wear it all day! So funny...

Such a sweet girl:

We also took the kiddos to the Seattle Aquarium, which they also loved! It is so fun to take them and just look at the awe on their faces! The pictures in the aquarium were really hard to get, because it was really dark, and with the flash on it looked darker and over exposed, so just ignore the blurriness!

When we first arrvied, they have this HUGE wall of fish. Owen immediately went up to it and was saying "WHOA... Whoa... Whoa... WOW!" It was so cute!

Me and my cute boy!

They also had this "wave simulator" which both the kids loved. McKinley is such a little model... she always poses for the camera!

I love these faces of McKinley and Owen, such wonder:

So much fun!

Owen and I were checking out the salmon swimming up above:

"Whoa!!!"

Owen loves to point at everything right now...

They were really cute together... it took Owen a while to get used to having her around. But he eventually learned to share, and appreciate her presence!

Owen sure loves his grandma!

I sure love her!

We had such fun together! I miss them both already... it feels lonely now around here. I did a little photo shoot with the two babies at the house after church all dressed up...so cute! I will post more pics of that later. I figured there was already TONS here! So more to come! :)

Woodland Park Zoo!

Like I had mentioned in my last post, on Memorial Day we took Owen to the Seattle Zoo! Oh man, we had so much fun!!! We decided to head over there right when it opened to ensure optimal zoo time, and before nap time! :) We ended up spending most of the day there! Owen loves animals, and is actually pretty fearless when it comes to petting animals and wanting to be close. So much so, that he was ready to literally climb/jump the fence of some of the animals and run after them! (e.i. the Giraffe!) He loved every second. Watching his face expressions and reactions to the animals was priceless! He is at such a fun age right now where he is just exploring the world around him. He loves to walk around and jabber all day long! He loves to make animal noises and I swear this kid is learning 2 or 3 words a day! I know I always say this, but really... can we PLEASE freeze time... please???

Please enjoy the many faces of Owen:

"Oh my gosh dad! Did you see that!?!" When he is super excited he grabs our faces!

"Whoa..."

Don't they look like you could just snuggle them??

I like this one because he was smiling for me!

For anyone of you who know Shad really well... you know that this is TOTALLY a Shad face!!!

Waving at the monkeys:

I think Owen may have enjoyed "petting" these statues more than the actual animals.

He loves to take our hands and guide us around. He's pretty much the boss around here.

More statues... I actually have a similar picture in the same spot when I am just a few years older than Owen!

The Lion... Owen growled at him the whole time!

The Giraffe exhibit was actually kind of lame, which is why Owen wanted to climb the fences to get a better look!

Trying to get a better look... at Daddy's expense!

Owen LOVES birds... daily he requests all the window blinds open so he can "bird watch." So getting to feed the birds was a real treat!

And the zoo did not disappoint in the bird department, it offered A LOT of types!

The mountain goat posed for us nicely.

The gorillas ended up being one of our favorite exhibits. Very cool.

They actually had a dinosaur exhibit too, but you had to pay to get in. So we decided against it... but this was a "preview" to it. And the only family picture we took.

And finally, I think this picture pretty much sums up the day:

I'm excited for our next zoo trip!!