First day of Kindergarten!

Sun, Sand and Fun

We spent the week of the 4th in Jacksonville, visiting friends and family and hitting the beaches–something we don’t do much of in chilly November.

We all had a blast, visiting the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine

hanging out on Jax Beach for the 4th with family was a blast!

Sophia LOVED boogie boardingand playing in the pool with Grandpa and her cousin Gabe

We also went to the Museum of Science and History (MOSH) where they have amazing scary looking dinosaur and fish skeletons we finished our visit hanging out with friends and making “frost your own cupcakes”

But alas, its back to business here with  deadlines and work travel for the rest of the summer…good-bye Jacksonville, we’ll see you in November.

Summer Daze

I’m trying to make sure summer *feels* like summer for Sophia even though we’re both working a LOT.  We have a whole list of activities planned but are trying to make time for last minute treats as well (like last night when we had a last minute play-date/happy hour with our neighbors).  We’ll get to it all, the beach, the pool, ice-cream eating and popsicle making, firefly watching and all of the other fun things that make summer special.

We’ve had a LOT of fun so far its been great and BUSY!  In the last week we went to Lovettsville’s carnival, had “happy hour” Friday night at our cousin’s pool (complete with Soph jumping off the diving board.  Before you ask, yes she was wearing a life jacket–BUT jumped right off without proding AND did it again and again!!!).  Saturday we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant and finished with a GIANT fried ice-cream for Sophia.Sunday we met up with  Armando and Felicia (her godparents and their two year old twins) and headed for one of favorite new spots Sunset Hills Vineyards, where we had a picnic, listened to some tunes and had an overall beautiful  afternoon.

I wish I could say I’ve been dragging my camera along to all these events but alas I have not.  I will get better again but for now my iPhone camera is all the proof I have…..

Angelie trying her skills at rolling down the hill

Sophia with her “glass headband” she made at “camp” aka Lovettsville Community Center Day care.

never underestimate the fun of a picnic and a ball to play with!

Sunday night I was also lucky enough to head up to Baltimore to visit with my college roomie who was in town for some fancy lawyer stuff.  This was our view from dinner.

Father’s Day BBQ

Soph’s godparents are back in town for a month between their time in Barbados and before heading out to Boliva for their next posting.  We had them and some other friends over for a little father’s day fare.  Five kids, four dogs and 8 people made for some crazy fun.

I know you’re all jealous of our fancy pool!

Keith went to town on the smoker and made some AWESOME pulled pork–so glad we have leftovers!

Breaux Cajun Festival

The Breaux Cajun Festival is always a good time, they fly in crawdaddies from LA just for the event–YUM!  That and some great music make the afternoon a lot of fun.

Sophia was full of daddy love for Father’s Day weekend–we had friends over ON Father’s day but took this afternoon as family time.

I think Daddy had fun too!

Even when Sophia tried to “cool him off” with a little H2O!

Happy Father’s Day!

We were grilling outside yesterday evening when the most gorgeous rainbow appeared–pretty good way to start our weekend!

I love chocolate

As an end of school year treat we went up to Hershey park.  Last year we just went for the day, this time we decided to do two days in the park and spend the night in the Hershey Lodge.

Soph cracks me up, as you can see from the pictures below she’s not scared of the characters–runs right up and gives them a giant hug, high-five whatever but WILL not take a “good” picture with them….

she’s a reese’s peanut butter cup this year meaning she can go on some slightly bigger kid rides.At first she was terrified of any and all rides, a little pushing along though and we ended up taking her down the coal crasher (water/boat based roller-coaster) twice!!! The second time with her saying she wanted to be in front which DIDN’T happen but it was fun to see the change!  The ride below needed mom the first day, the second not so much!

It was an awesome family weekend full of all kind of treats.

There is a pretty cool zoo there, in addition to all the rides.

she tried her hand at  skeet ball (sort of) and learned the value of tickets when playing arcade games.  The biggest high-light to ME was back at the resort in the swimming pool she started swimming for real (well she now propels herself underwater, and blows bubbles –she still need to work on her arms) but I think she’s in a great place for her swimmming lessons that start next week.  She also started just jumping off the side with no encouragement and without us standing there. Pretty cool!

Hershey from the rides to the swimming to the most delicious chocolatini’s back at the resort we had a great time and we’re already planning next year’s trip!

Schools out for SUMMER ;-)

I sound like a broken record about busy and lots of stuff going on –but it’s true!

In the last few weeks there we tried roller-skating at her friend Bella’s birthday partyThere was the art show at school (iphone picture)

the end of school picnic- I forgot my camera but got this picture from another mom –Soph and her friend Katie who will also be going to KindergartenTuesday the last full day of school the “afternoon girls”, there are 3 that stay until 2pm,  went out to lunch with Ms. Frederick to celebrate the beginning of summer.  That night we had kindergarten “orientation” at the elementary school–the highlight for the kids was a short ride on the SCHOOL BUS!

We are excited for summer, sad to see the end of Montessori which we LOVED and looking forward to Kindergarten–onward!

What happened to Spring?

The last month has FLOWN by…..celebrating, celebrating, celebrating!! Started back in April with Easter, then my birthday, followed by Mother’s Day, Keith’s sister Ray graduated law school (Keith and Soph went down to celebrate),  Keith’s grandmother turned 80.  Added to that some other fun things, I met my cousin’s new guy, planting the garden, end of school year fun, on top of that work has been nuts, Keith has been traveling (though not too much which is nice), and our house is in full “bed and breakfast mode” with visitors every weekend for the last three.  I love it but its busy!

I have many pictures to catch up on and things to post about but thought I’d share this from yesterday at Sophia’s recital.  She did tap this year, but says she prefers ballet –we’ll what next year holds!

Easter

Sophia rocked the Easter bonnet this year–she loved dressing up for church and getting all “fancy”.   After church we enjoyed a huge family dinner and a little egg huntin’.

Happy Grandma’s!

Might have to work on this a little bit, will try again next year!