Taking a Snooze

The girls have had very active mornings with Steve, and it has made for very successful nap time. Even Lucy, who normally turns her nose at napping, has had very little trouble falling asleep.

See?

Another Summer Night

One of our new activities with Lucy is to pitch her baseballs to hit. Her hand eye coordination isn't bad, but the funniest part is watching her reaction when she misses the ball. Immediately following a strike she will look back at the pitcher and coach them about where they should be throwing the ball. It is funny ... and horrifying. We have tried with minimal success to help her realize that the ball won't always be in the same place.

Ready for Dad to pitch it to her

Swinging

Taking some time out to coach Dad up

 While Lucy had batting practice, Caroline ran around like a crazy person.

See?

Ready?

Throw!

We also took some time out to watch "Dad's Big Boys" (Steve's football players) do a workout.

It's Been a While

I started my summer job teaching Algebra I for three hours a day, five days a week. Clearly I have been living in Teacher LaLa Land, because this was a rude awakening. Who are the crazies who work in the summer? I say that now, but my guess is that this will be a regular occurrence. You can't beat the money, and the kids that I teach are really great. Steve isn't technically "working" but he is surely being put to work each morning while I am away. He has been having some quality time with his girls each morning, and so far it is going well. One week down and five to go!

So, here are a few photos that I snapped this week.

We headed to the playground one nice evening while Steve had football practice.

Cheese!

She was waving her stick as the "conductor" and I was the band -
which amounted to me making lots of ridiculous sounds and her
thinking it was hilarious.

We found some awesome tricycles to play with. Not shockingly, Caroline
stood up in the middle of this ride and it ended poorly.

A Short Stop

After we landed in Boston Grumps was nice enough to pick us up at the airport and bring us back to Marion. Why Marion, you ask? Because this stinky monster was waiting for us:

Boog was very happy to see us, although I think he is feeling woefully neglected today without Cookie's attention.

We were lucky enough to overlap with Cousin Cate's visit and we played outside on the swings for quite a while:

Grumps in his element

We then had pizza for dinner and were treated to brownies made by Cate and Cookie.

Happily waiting for brownies

Cute cousins

This was their reaction when asked, "Who loves brownies?"

Caroline was also very excited.

Before we knew it, we were back on the road and headed for home. It is nice to be home, but it does seem very boring compared to our time at the grandparents' houses.

A thank you goes to Nana, Yoinkie, Cookie, and Grumps. Thank you so much for letting us invade your space and for putting up with our shenanigans. The girls (and the adults) miss you already!

We're Home!

So, after a LONG day of traveling we are home. The girls were so good in the airport and on the plane, even when we had a 1 hour delay. Here they are reading up on the safety features of the plane before we took off:

That's it for now. I will post more tomorrow. For now, I am off to bed and I am leaving all of our luggage fully packed and sitting on the floor. So there.

Family Pic

We clean up real nice, huh?

Nana's Garden

Today after an attempted nap (read: the adults were really excited about sleeping but the children were not) we headed outside to burn off some energy. If you have followed the blog at all then you may remember that Caroline LOVES rocks. My parents have a huge pile of rocks that they use in and around their gardens, and it provided quite a lot of entertainment for the girls:

Note that Caroline is already covered in mud from "helping" Nana
water her flowers.

Couldn't be happier

After I was able to lure the girls away from the rocks, we checked out the rest of Nana's gardens. They were quite impressive:

Helping Nana with her tomato plants

Of course, eventually Caroline just couldn't help herself and she headed back to the rock pile:

 
And LAID DOWN.

Beach

Today we went to "the lake." I put that in quotes because it is really a man made body of water that is chlorinated and closely resembles a small lake. In any case, it is a sandy beach with clean water and lifeguards. It is perfect for little kids.

The weather has been brutal lately - tons of rain and incredibly buggy outside. Today was the first  nice day in a while and we decided to take advantage of it. It wasn't supposed to be super hot, but we weren't being picky at this point. Unfortunately, the wind was strong enough that it was pretty tough for the adults to get into the water. The kids, on the other hand, loved it and wouldn't get out of the water even though their lips were blue and their teeth were chattering.

Eventually I lured Caroline out of the water with the promise of juice, Nana, and S'mores Goldfish (a mix of graham cracker, chocolate, and marshmallow goldfish). 

I only like the marshmallow ones.

We then happily played in the sand until it was time for lunch and then home. Although chilly at times, it was a great visit and I think we might go back tomorrow!

Giddy Up!

We let Caroline ride her first ride at an amusement park today. Part of the zoo we went to had an amusement park aimed at younger kids and the girls had a great time. While Steve was off riding uncomfortably small rides with Lucy, I had the joy of taking Caroline to the pony ride - not a real pony, but instead she sat in a car attached to a metal horse and went around in circles.

It was nothing special, but she LOVED it. She kept yelling, "Yee haw!" and "Giddy up!" It was adorable - even when she cried when we had to leave after riding it three times.