Author: kristennill

WOWWWWWW. So Alex turned TEN on March 16. That’s like, a whole decade he’s been alive and let me say, it hasn’t been without impact. Alex has always been my sharp, funny, quick-witted, social butterfly. My friends see him, text me about the things he says and the stuff he does, and how he seems to make everyone around him just feel good. Examples:

I had no idea he even did this.

From his hockey coach, after we decided to leave for a different team next season:

From his basketball coach:

Then I have other moms telling me that Alex snapped them on Snapchat, that he was specifically needed for a team video because who else could do the intro besides Alex, and that they weren’t entirely sure but Alex might have gaslighted them when it came to getting what he wanted (candy). That last mom was very impressed with his prowess.

But this one is the best I ever got.

And so, fittingly, Alex’s new year’s “revolution” was to stay exactly the same. He wears Ugg boots, his favorite place is the couch, and he LOVES Bear.

What else about Alex. His favorite hockey player is Artemi Panerin on the Rangers. He has a life size decal of him in his room. Panerin is #10, Alex is #10. Panerin’s nickname is the Breadman, so, naturally Alex wears this on his head:

The other day Alex and I were out for a walk, he starts singing Smooth Criminal, walking backwards and lamenting he didn’t have a hat like Michael Jackson.

He also wondered how long it would take him to learn the moonwalk and if I could order him the special shoes to do the lean.

You guys he must get this off YouTube, and of course his iPad has strict screentime limits but, you guessed it, Alex knows how to get around them somehow. Hand to face. There’s also this game called Blooket they play at school on the computers. You earn coins and get to “buy” stuff in the store. The other day Alex was in my office NO JOKE modifying the source code on the website to make it look like he had 99,999,999,999 coins in his bank instead of 60.

So that’s Alex. The material he generates is pretty much non-stop. For instance, he very much enjoys playing “Solitary”,

he does the Wordle daily, his bracket is currently in first place for the NCAA tournament, and he comes home at least once a week having found anywhere from $5-$20 on the street. He finds money so often he is almost bored by it. I am not making this up.

Much to his dismay, Alex is still in elementary school with the little kids. He managed to pick a couple friends to celebrate on his birthday and here is what he picked for himself.

Wake up and pose with large balloons (these are black because his new hockey team, the Jr Bruins, are black and yellow). Chick Fil-A for lunch, followed by presents (i.e. all the sports cards, Ashton was just as involved 😉 ), a little Gel Blasters, and the Rangers game on TV. Then it was off to Puttshack, the cool new mini golf spot, with Jake and Ryan and this was great, Jason asked me if I thought he should let Alex win. I basically snorted and was like, you think Alex needs your help with that? I think you can guess what happened. We went home for pizza and cake, and had some knee hockey to end the day. March 16 was a good one 🙂

Dearest Alex, happy tenth birthday to a complete original. xoxoxo

Well I’m very excited to put up Alex’s 10th birthday post from last Saturday but I just have all these vacations to get through! 😉

While Aruba was a shining star on the calendar a couple weeks ahead, I knew what came after that would be a black hole: February break, with the boys home 24/7 and zero.plans.and.i.mean.ZERO.

So I said to Jason, if I can present a reasonable option to go somewhere with them when we get back from Aruba would you say yes. Like would you consider back to back vacations. To my complete shock and awe, he shrugged and said SURE.

Run at high speed to the office. Commence massive googling. Where is good. A cruise? No. Two one way flights maybe? If that’s cheaper? Preferably jetBlue since we have the credit card and we are Mosaic. Resorts – gotta be in the Marriott family since we have the points. Can’t be too far. Search vacation packages. Last minute deals. Boys have sports on Sunday and on Saturday so 5 nights. Click, click, scroll, click, click scrollllll. Am at least an hour in when Jason points out the boys don’t have passports, do they?

SKREEEEECH. Dead stop. Hmmm, no they don’t. Can we get them in time? Back to Google, US Department of State website, skim skim, triangulate the grid on expedited options…No we can’t. Realize our choices have just vastly narrowed. Florida? No good, it’s been cold there lately and there’s no guarantee for beach weather. Which leaves…

Puerto RRRRrrrrico!! You guys, we loved it. LOVED it. And we didn’t even really scratch the surface of everything we could have done and explored there. We did get to zipline through the El Yunque rainforest, but the day we had booked to take a catamaran over to Culebra and snorkel, the ocean was really rough and it was cancelled. We did walk briefly around Old San Juan for dinner but didn’t get to El Morro, the bio bays, Rincon, etc etc! We can’t wait to go back. Without further pontification:

Vacation 2 Puerto Rico.
Home Base: Marriott San Juan
Travelers: Me, Jason, Ashton and Alex

It was a rough start – our plane was incredibly delayed and I think when we finally got into bed it was 3:30 am. But we were up and at’em the next day and it was basically four days of beach time with dinner out every night and the rainforest trip in between.

The boys also played Bingo every day at noon at the pool, which coincidentally was the same time I had my first mojito. They had ping pong, volleyball, and Alex made friends in no time so for the last two days we barely saw him. Ashton was a slightly moody tween so he preferred to sit under the umbrella and listen to his airpods.

What I loved the most was that we went out to dinner every night. We got dressed, put our phones down and played games and talked. Our regular daily lives are so full of school, sports, work, walking the dog, chores, carpooling etc. that we don’t spend very much time all together.

Perfect family February break: check! 🙂

Time to post some pics before Alex turns 10 (this Saturday!) and then I have to do that post before I do this one and all of sudden these are lost because it’s too late. It’s been a theme over the past…year? two years? EEEEEK.

So, we had a pretty nice little February everyone. I don’t know how I managed to squeak out approvals for back-to-back vacations from our family’s fearless leader but ya’ll, I did.

Vacation 1 Aruba.
Home base: AirBnB
Traveling companions: Jason, Kari and Ben

This one was meant to be a getaway for just Jason and I, but once we realized we had two bedrooms in our condo (we saved our Marriott points for Puerto Rico, see Vacation 2), I gave Kari and Ben a nice long advance notice of about 10 days and said come with us to Aruba OBVIOUSLY. And they did!

We spent the first night watching the Superbowl on the beach, the next day on UTV’s exploring the island (despite having been to Aruba many times before, we had never done this!) and the rest of the time with our toes in the sand, not doing dishes, not working, not parenting, and not worrying about much besides our dinner reservations. It looked like this!

Night 1 Superbowl. It’s one of the only identifiable parts of the timeline since after this it was blur of beaches and cocktails. But seriously this was at Moomba Beach and quite the setup.
“I’m only watching the Superbowl from the beach from now on!” – Jason

Day 1. UTV’s along Aruba’s coastline. SO many pictures of this, the landscape was pretty incredible, very rocky and desert-y with rough waters. We rented from Arubiana instead of doing a tour – we were on our own timeline and followed a virtual guide on their app to hit the sights we wanted to see. Our route:

It was really, really awesome.

Here’s a video of Jason banching down the hill and doing a donut:

It was a dusty, hot, thirsty day during which we all got sunburned in strange patterns but we loved it!

The rest of the things went by at a nice cadence: coffee by the pool, pack lunch, beach, cocktails, back to the pool, off to dinner. Sooo relaxing.

The lenses on my iPhone camera were smudged with sunscreen half the time and the other half of the time I was blinded by the sun but I think the photos more or less tell the story 😉

This one took a village. GG, Grandpa, Grandma, Becky and Joe, and a bunch of parents who drove Ashton and Alex where they needed to be. Thank you! It took more time to plan being away than actually being away but it was all worth it. We got home on Thursday night, and three days later…see Part 2!

Ok everyone it is 2024. I either revive this blog or say goodnight, which I don’t want to do. SO- the best way I know how to tackle this is to update it one family component at a time. Like, what’s been up with who (or what) since my last real post which was shamefully last July. My hope is that by the end of this 6 month series, we’ll be solidly tee’d up for the rest of the year and beyonnnnnnd.

Without further ado, here’s what we know about Ashton, age 12 and in 6th grade. Well first, he actually had to TURN 12 and here are those pictures (August 3rd).

The real milestone here is that he got an iPhone. All he wanted was to text his friends and I admit the more he is out and about, the happier I am to be able to contact him. There have been several app deletions since August and MANY screentime rules in place, but as far as I can tell it isn’t ruining his life yet so he’s allowed to have it.

Ashton chose not to play football this past fall which was just fine with me. He instead opted to play on his full time hockey team (the 2011-2 Boch Blazers) and is an alternate for the 2011 Select Assabet Patriots team, which is the same club Alex plays for. It’s a lot of carpooling and late dinners, but he loves it. The Blazers were selected to play in the CAN/AM Lake Placid tournament in October so we packed up for that. Talk about an amazing experience. It was incredible competition and they ended up with silver medals – one of the best weekends we’ve had as a hockey family. Ashton got to carry the flag at the opening ceremony, was selected as his team ambassador in the shootout, scored a goal, and the list goes on.

If I had been keeping up this would have been its own post entirely, it was that good.

Now, part of playing hockey is the hair. By this point (end of October) Ashton had not had a true haircut in 6 months. It was long, shaggy, and so important to him that his hair became like the 5th person in our family. It was talked about, fretted over, etc.

And then, middle school reared its ugly head. He started to come home really upset. Kids were teasing him about being a girl and saying all sorts of mean things. His hat was constantly stolen. It went on for a week or two and then Ashton was sufficiently beaten down that he asked Jason to cut it. He was SO conflicted. He loved his hair but couldn’t deal with the negative attention. He cried the whole time and kept telling him to make it shorter. My heart was just shattered for him.

I bring this up because one of the major things Ashton has faced in the last 6 months is navigating social situations by himself. He has reported kids taking his sandwich at lunch and sitting on it, unzipping his backpack so things fall out, his hat being taken and crushed, kids blocking him from sitting on the bus. In the past, I would have taken zero issue with texting the mom and getting myself involved. But Ashton said to me the first time something like this happened: “Please don’t do anything. The mom will talk to the kid and then the kid will be all over me that I told you and got him in trouble. It will make it way worse for me.” Fair enough, but one of the hardest things is listening to him and doing nothing. I hate it.

What else about Ashton. He gets all A’s and B’s in school, and actually gets himself up and on the bus by 7:10 am all by himself. Make no mistake: this is the only thing he does all by himself. He can’t hang up his towel, get his clothes in the hamper, or throw wrappers in the trash, but the one thing he does do is almost worth it because I don’t have to get out of bed 😀

Ashton’s best friend is Max. That gets tricky sometimes because Max is Max but they play hockey together, rollerblade, compete in stumble guys, and eat a lot of food together.

Speaking of food, Ashton still struggles with a lot of allergies – random stuff like pea protein, SOME tree nuts, eggs, and sesame. Sometimes he eats things that I have no idea caused a reaction, luckily Benadryl stops it but like, UGH. His skin in winter is also horrific, so dry and scabbed from scratching but he won’t let any lotion within 10 feet. Itching < Greasiness.

I’ll leave you with some live action footage. Ashton read a book called Into the Killing Seas and then for a school assignment, had to pretend he was the main character Patrick trying out for the TV show Survivor. It went something like this: https://youtu.be/RS_HSY1YB70

That’s a wrap on our Airpod wearing almost-teenager, who got braces in December, often acts like he has fluff for brains and says the word Bro a lot. Likes: sneakers, hoodies, hats, hockey cards and buffalo chicken. Dislikes: early bedtimes, showering, wearing a coat and walking the dog. Just a star in the making 🙂

Welllll we are back to school as of 3 weeks ago and of course, running into everyone that we didn’t see in June/July/August. “How was your summer?” is the frequent nicety exchanged and the answer for us is always, “Awesome! Too short!” Indeed, summer came crashing to an end so suddenly that the night before school started, Ashton (12!) had a complete and utter meltdown. 45 minutes of wailing that his hair was not right, his shoes were not right, and he hadn’t done the reading he had 3 months to do. Middle school is tough, man.

But before we talk about school, let’s remember the summer! It started right off the bat with golf camp in Vermont, 4th of July in New York, and then our beloved Block Island week, which looked really different this year. Rather than a big house with all manner of family members, the Nills roughed it in a one bedroom condo with a full-over-full bunk bed. Yes. Evidence in the real estate listing and it says queen-over-queen but it was not. We just pretended our bedroom was on a submarine for the week.

Anyway, Lizzie and Owen came just for the day on our first day and then Kari and Ben did come for 4 days but stayed separately. Our crew was little this year, but the view from our condo was beautiful (and so was the weather!), and we did all our usual things starting with the Bloody Marys on the boat 🙂

The boys started off nice and hot which, who doesn’t love complaints on the first moments of vacation?

But once we hit the beach, the rest was history.

Perhaps not, but Alex is easy to ignore so I did.

Cue the surfing, eating, and the rest of the week!

It was another really good one 🙂 Readers, this was our tenth anniversary of our first trip to BI when Ashton was 2, Alex didn’t exist, and Jason had first started at Brae Burn. https://nillfam.com/2013/07/25/block-island-2013/ Here’s to another ZILLION more 🙂

OH, and just for fun…

Ya’ll, I have thrown some money at this problem. I’m working on customizing the new site and I have figured out how to add subscribers (I think). One of the wonders of Blogger was that it would deliver emailed copies of my posts to anyone following, and when they ceased to offer that service, I floundered. I was like, at this point NO ONE will read, because who checks websites? Motivation level = zero.

But NOW! If you are getting this, I have opted you in as one of my readers. Boy are you lucky. Real posts start next, but for now please enjoy this video of Bear eating watermelon. Imagine literally not being able to chew with your mouth closed. Not only does it take a long time, things fall out. So hilarious, thanks to Bear for this special content.

Link.

Readers of a New Nill, you are few. And you became even fewer when Blogspot stopped using the feature that sent my posts to peoples’ emails. Alas, I was forced to move to a different platform and I *think* I successfully migrated the whole thing. It’s not going to look the same until I figure all this out but at least the content is here now. So let’s pick up where we left off! The end of the fall, which contains Halloween and Thanksgiving, for the most part.

OCTOBER 31 meant a creepy lurking banana (Ashton’s “drippy” costume, whatever that means but it’s what kids say these days), a werewolf boy, and a grandma in a golfcart. 

We went around with our usual crew and the golf cart was a huge hit. We played Thriller and any other spooky song we had and rolled the streets with flashing lights and Grandpa at the wheel. We were quite the show! And if you’re asking yourself where on earth did you get a golf cart, well the answer is Brae Burn and it came on a truck.

When you’re married to Jason Nill, the wonders never cease.

After Halloween, I turned 42 in a very unexciting way.

We had sushi the night before because on the actual November 12 Jason had to work. Sushi not pictured. But I did get to open presents. This is what I generally look like in the morning and it’s only going to get worse.

But the real big thing was Thanksgiving and for the first time in many years, I don’t have the same pictures to show you because we didn’t host! No we did not, because our house is under construction. We are putting on an addition (about 7-8 weeks from being finished from today, December 8), and our whole property is a mess. I guess I’ll have to blog later about that. But I knew it would be a mess so I told my sister she would just have to host and we packed up the car and headed to Vermont. I actually don’t have many pictures from the weekend but here is our one grownup group shot.

Erik’s friend Cinthya was visiting from Florida so it was fun to meet her, but the surprise hit of the night was Kari’s make ahead gravy. I’d say certain people in the group were a bit nervous because gravy is very important at Thanksgiving and it was AWESOME. It’s Ina’s recipe and will be what we make every year from now on. Big success. Big. HUGE. Thanks Kari and Ben for having us 🙂 We went to a UVM hockey game and had a great visit.

Chugging along, the weekend after that we went with Ashton’s hockey team, Boch Blazers, to a tournament in Waterville Valley, NH. It was honestly SO fun, and they ended up winning the tournament which was an added bonus.

I have a lot to learn on WordPress but hopefully this is the start of a new era for our little family blog. Stay tuned for our sad Christmas tree, addition details, and all the fixings!

Updates from the Nills! It’s been a long time since that summer vacation on my last post, oy. And it’s been a VERY busy fall. 

As a point of orientation, Ashton is in 5th grade at Wilson Middle (age 11) and Alex is in 3rd at Lilja still (age 8). Middle school has been a whole other animal – Ashton is so much more independent, has made all sorts of new friends and is really becoming his own person. A lot of the time that means he is a really annoying silly adolescent but hey. He seems very happy and besides needing extra help with reading, is doing fine. Alex on the other hand thinks school is dull and a complete waste of his time. Not unlike Calvin in fact. Two strips that could just as easily be him:

They even have the same hair.

Next, the boys are each on a new hockey team (Boch Blazers/Dedham for Ashton, Assabet Patriots/Concord for Alex). Records aren’t great so far, not going to lie. But they do love it which is the most important thing, considering the miles we put on our car and the hours Jason spends getting them to their games (like, in other states). 

They also each play football. Ashton is one of the stars on his team (even though I’ve been told a hundred times which position he plays I still couldn’t tell you. There are at least 2, one offense, one defense?)

The biggest news of all though is that the 6 Craft Road Great Improvement Project has begun! I don’t think I ever really shared the full story, but it began when we realized we wanted a garage and we wanted one BAD. We hired an architect last summer (and also looked at the idea of just moving to a house that had one, only to be continually outbid by hundreds of thousands). Despite my many protests to the Natick building inspector and the Zoning Board of Appeals (“Ma’am, just because you want to put a garage on your house doesn’t mean you can. It doesn’t work that way, you don’t meet the setback and we won’t grant you a variance, so, move on”) we knew we had to pivot. At least we could add the spaces we also needed: a gym, an office, and a finished basement for the boys. Here is a link to the plans, if anyone is interested. We went about finding a contractor, waited more than a year, got delayed with stormwater permits and other riff raff, and finally as of today, 10/31, we are ready to pour the foundation. We have a giant hole in the wall and in the ground – I’ll take pics as it goes up. We first had to do some masonry to get ready to add the portico though:

We did add some new landscaping (which ended up all getting torched this summer in the heat with the water ban):

And here we are today, for the most part:

 Well Blogland, it’s been a minute! I can’t tell you how many posts I’ve started, only to get overwhelmed at simply how much there is in our life to share, so I don’t end up sharing any of it hahaha because I just say the heck with it.

BUT, our annual summer vacation this year was back on Block Island (for the first time since 2018) and it was epic. The group was mostly the same, with taller kids and older adults. We were all SO happy to be back that we made sure to get lots of photos of ourselves.

Every year we go we are in a different house and this year was Island Adventure which served us pretty well. There was a huge front lawn that we used to play all kinds of games and the kids even set off rockets. (Tell me this video is not the most joyous children’s voices you’ve ever heard.)

We managed to get to the beach every day, go out to dinner, shop, moped, fish, etc. But first: Bloody Marys on the boat!

And then, all the activities! 

While we mopeded (?), GG took the kids on a walk all the way out to the North Light and I have to post this next one for no other reason than Callie’s face:

And us girls stayed home to do our nails. EQUALLY as exciting if you ask me.

Fun fact: Ashton ended up catching the biggest fluke of the summer at 28.5″. We submitted it to the Block Island Times and they published him!

https://www.blockislandtimes.com/article/letters-editor-huge-fluke/61188

So they caught a porgie, the fluke, and tons of sea bass and we ate it all.

Beach photos – good ol’ Fred Benson!

I had brought the boys speedos to wear under their board shorts and hopefully avoid the chafing issue that usually plagues them. For a time there, it was all Alex wore (and if you know Alex, he loved making a show of it).

Official meeting of the Professional Beach Lunch-eaters Club (PBLC):

We also had some birthdays in the house! Callie turned 8 on 8/2:

And then Ashton turned 11 on 8/3. He got a skimboard so it was breakfast, beach, and then dinner and cake. Of course he will get a whole separate post on turning 11 as is the blog’s tradition. I love to bore everyone with the small details about his shoe size, etc. Muah ha ha. 

Fishing party at the inlet

Out to dinner at the Spring House!

Out to dinner at the Oar for our final night.

Of course, our favorite view.

Ok now, here is something super cool. There are hundreds of handmade glass orbs hidden around the island: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/style/orbivores-block-island.html 

And Erik found one! He’s number 529 on the 2022 list: https://www.blockislandinfo.com/glass-float-project/found-floats

It was the coolest. And of course Ashton was drooling over it, he’s totally into this kind of thing. He and Erik went out at 6 am for a walk the next day to try and find another, and Jason and I took the kids for a few walks to keep looking, but alas. 

The wonders of BI never cease. Of course by the end we were all plotting how we could get a house there someday, it is that magical for us. 

On the last day, it was just us the Nills left until the afternoon. We went to Ballard’s Beach Club, Rebecca’s for lunch, and set sail. 

To GG, Erik, Kari, Ben, Callie, Holden, Grandma and Grandpa: thanks for sharing the sun and sand with us for a week in our favorite place. It is always the BEST!! xoxoxox