Team Phipps

This past weekend, we packed up Elijah and accompanied my family to the Poconos. Every year, family friends of ours hold the Lake House Olympics. This is a competitive and crazy day of fun sports, such as wiffle ball, horseshoes, quoits, badmitton, swimming, pie eating, etc. There were about 6 teams and we were on Team Phipps. My Dad had shirts made for each of us and we all had nicknames emblazened on the front. As you can see from the picture, Chad's nickname is White Rice because that is his favorite food....his only favorite food. He gets teased a lot by my family about that. :)

Anyhoo, the trip up to the Poconos was a breeze. We left at Eli's naptime, hoping he would take a 'shortcut'. My Dad coined that little word for when we would go on long car trips as kids. He would encourage us to sleep on the way because sleep was a shortcut to where we were going. Lo and behold, he was right. We would doze off with hours left to go and wake up at our destination. There was something to be said about taking this shortcut. :) Eli did take a shortcut 15 minutes into our trip and didn't wake up until we were 5 minutes away from the house. Nice!

Once we were there and unpacked, we took Eli for walk around the neighborhood. It is very rocky in the mountains, as it should be.



Eli really liked the rocks.....scratch that, he loved the rocks. He liked to throw them too. We are working on that one because Chad thinks all boys throw rocks and that it is a rite of passage or something. I think it is dangerous. Can you tell I am a firstborn and he is a lastborn? :) Sorry, I am reading The Birth Order Book by Kevin Leman and am having very eye opening revelations about why Chad and I are the way we are. :)

There was a big puddle there and Eli had a blast running through it, splashing away, splish splosh.

He loved jumping in the puddle too. It seems like he has Chad's jumping skills. Look at that height! I have video of his escapades too, so that will be tomorrow's post.

Team Phipps also included my parents' friends/neighbors and their kids. They were great with Eli, keeping him happy and entertained. And of course that is my awesome nephew Nathan on the left.

The events commenced at 8:30 in the morning (early, I know!) and kept going well into the night. Eli liked watching the wiffle ball events and wanted to get in on the action. But since he was too small and the players would most likely trample him in an attempt to catch a pop up (very competitive!), we gave him his own bat and ball to play with. Because of his age, he ended up just using the bat and ball to play golf. Fore!

Here is an action shot of my sister Christine showing off her mad wiffle skills.

Whenever you go anywhere with the Phipps', we always bring the trusty water balloon launcher and many balloons in order to cause some trouble. Here, they are launching water balloons at innocent bystanders water skiing, boating and cruising on the lake. Of course after launch, they would drop the launcher, pick up their drinks and look the other way as if nothing happened.

When the lake got boring, they decided to launch at other teams in the competition. And they had the perfect cover behind all of us yellow shirts.

Team picture of Team Phipps. We are a motley crew, aren't we? :)

This is a shot of, from the left, my sister Michelle, my youngest sister Christine and myself. I know what you are thinking.....these are three hot mamas!

And this is Eli taking a break and resting on the hammock. Unfortunately, we did not win the Lake House Olympics. But it was a fun time and we enjoyed ourselves, despite Eli having many tantrums before he took an unprecedented 3 hour nap.

On our way home, we decided to again leave at Eli's naptime and have him take another shortcut home. Well, this time, it did not work. I am not sure if we missed his sleep window (we left a little later than we wanted) or if he got my cold (it is nasty one!), but he cried almost the whole way home. We had to stop twice to console him, one time having to get off of the turnpike in Landsdale and then get back on! Ah, the trials of traveling with kids. :)