Picnic

I love getting all the family together once in a while. The cousin's all love to play together, and we have a good time. We also try and get a picture of the kids. I took 16 pictures of all the kids, and this is the best one. We had 2 camera's and one person just in charge of getting all the kids to look in the same direction.

R and I are the cutest little boys.

My brother and brother-in-law. They were in charge of the little girls while the big kids were on the swingset.

Childrens's museum

While we were on vacation, we had a chance to go to the children's museum in Providence. The kids had a blast and got to do lots of cool stuff.

Buddy's favorite part was the construction area where they got to climb on a pretend bridge and play with the bulldozer. He loved wearing the hard hat.

Princess actually loved climbing on the steamroller with cousin C.
These are the cute cousin's who joined us. C is a month older than Princess, so they love to play together. J is about 18 months and just wanted to follow the big kids.

There was a cool pet area where the kids got to play. C was pretending to be a dog. Princess liked the bird cage better.

Grandparents

One of the hard parts about living far away from most of the family is the time spent with the Grandparents. We try to make it to see them as much as possible, but it is a VERY long drive, especially with 3 kids.
Princess loved to climb up on Grandpa's chair and watch the Red Sox.

This weekend was the first time that Grandpa got to meet the baby. Of course I took a picture, but it is on Grandpa's camera, and not mine. The baby loved to sit and watch the Red Sox too,

The kids were all in bed so they didn't get to watch the Celtics Win. We did get to hear all about on the news for the whole week.

6 months

While we were gone the baby turned 6 months old. It amazes me how fast she grows, she was 8 lbs 1 oz when she was born and now she is more than double that. She is the chubby baby out of the 3 and I love the rolls on her thighs.

We usually don't put her on the floor much, basically because we have hardwood floors and don't have rugs in very many rooms. While visiting my family (with wall-to-wall carpet) she was put on the floor a lot and in a week completely mastered rolling from one end of the room to the other VERY fast. She doesn't like hitting her head against the wall.

She also loves eating real food and even had some of my potato for dinner.

Cousins

Well, I made it. I just got back from a week's vacation visiting my family. We had a great time just hanging out at home and letting the kids play together. I will update more pictures later, but this is my favorite. All of the cousins hanging out.

Graduation

Graduation was today, and Princess did wonderful... I was very proud of her. Check out their poem.

We thought she did a great job, and they got to have cake, hot dogs and candy when it was finished.

The proud parents.

End of Year Picnic

We had the end of the school year picnic with Princess's class at school, it was crazy, but lots of fun. There were 3 classes of 4-5 year olds and they were crazy running around the playground. It was a beautiful day and not even too hot in the shade.

This is Princess with some of her friends.

Miss Ramona... the best Pre-K teacher. Princess loved having her this year.

Backpack

We got a baby backpack when Princess was a baby, she went hiking all over Oahu, Waianae Mountains, Kaena Coast, Mokapu Point, etc.... When Buddy was born, it broke, but they sent us a new one. (for free) He went hiking in redwoods, and mountains and along the Big Sur Coastline in California. Now it is Baby's turn. She rode in it for the first time Tuesday evening. She got to go around the block in Virginia. Maybe some more hikes are in store in the next few months.

Cooler weather

It is finally slightly cooler this evening. We had thunderstorms roll through this afternoon, so the weather is a little better. The temperature is down, but the humidity is up. The kids loved watching the rain.

Great other picture

See below for the rest of our camping stuff, but I forgot this picture.

HOT Camping

Word to the wise... DON'T TAKE SMALL CHILDREN CAMPING IN RECORD HEAT. We didn't plan it that way, but if you're taking kids camping, know when to quit.

We just came back from 2 nights camping on the Eastern Shore. We had a great camp site and the big kids did great setting up camp. We brought 2 hammocks, and those were the biggest hit of the weekend, the kids loved them.


The trouble started when we tried to out them to bed at about 8PM, after 4 trips to the bathroom. They didn't go to sleep until about 10PM when the whole family was finally in the tent. Amazingly they woke up in a decent mood and we made it to the beach. The beach is cool, they have a bunch of concrete ships partially sunk and filled that they use as a breakwater. It makes for a unique view and a wonderful calm beach for the kids.


Since the baby is not quite old enough for sunscreen or bug spray, we have a little tent for her. She took a little nap, and we took turns sitting on the beach with her during her nap. She did go in the water for a little while and she absolutely loved it.






After we went back to the campsite and had lunch and took showers it really started to get hot. After a short little walk, Leah and Nathan were both a little glassy-eyed, and started on their way to dehydration and heat exhaustion, so we took an afternoon ride, and then an evening ride out to dinner. We got Buddy rehydrated and found this wonderful tavern (it reminded us of the Mucky Duck in Monterey) with outstanding food. Since it was about 100 degrees out, the kids didn't go to sleep until 9:30. It was supposed to be hot again Sunday, so we gave up. Instead of going to the beach and taking our time getting home, we packed up before it got really hot again and came home. It took us a while to get unpacked, and to try and get the AC working in the house. This turned out to be a REALLY GOOD choice, as it was over 100 degrees.

We all survived our trip, and no one got sick... but next time we go camping, I am really hoping it is not as hot.

Frustrations resolved

A while ago, I wrote about the frustrations I was having with the military hospital and with our taxes. I am now excited that I put in the work to get those resolved. I got a check from the insurance company and it is always great when big checks show up in the mail. AND I got a call from the tax preparer. Our refund is going to be more than we expected.... It is wonderful to get some money that you weren't expecting! It will go towards tuition for the Princess next year, and it is a wonderful blessing not to worry about tuition payments, for a little while anyway.

Grandma Stroh's

I have to brag about one of my friends, but first I have to tell the story.

When we were in California, we lived in military housing. We lived in a brand new duplex right across the street from a huge playground and park. We had some great neighbors and I pretty much met all my friends at the playground.

On the other side of the duplex lived Becky and her family. She had a little girl a little bit younger than the princess and I was pregnant with buddy when they moved in. They became pregnant with their 2nd child while we lived in that house. Needless to say with kids about the same ages we had a lot in common. We became great friends, part of our joy of living in that house was our little ritual we had. Each duplex had a privacy fence seperating our tiny little backyards. It was very common for the phone to ring and just hear "over the fence" We would each open up our back doors, take one step out and pass food, toys, goodies, or whatever "over the fence"

Around Christmas time, we got the best "over the fence" goodies ever. Becky had made hot chocolate mix. This was a recipe from her Grandmother and was the best hot chocolate I think I have ever had.

As life in the military continues, they moved to Maryland, we moved to Virginia, and we continue to be friends. She is a fantastic woman and has gone through a lot of work to open her own business to sell her wonderful hot chocolate. Go to http://www.grandmastroh.com/ and try out her hot chocolate. Be warned it is not in-expensive, but it worth every penny of what she charges.

Swords

A common site around our neighborhood is swordfighting. When my husband was preparing for deployment last spring, I found these foam swords at K-mart. They are special Daddy toys, and Mommy does not play with them. They played with them for about a month before Daddy left, and now that Daddy has been back for a few months, we see the swordfights frequently.


The Flip-Flop on his hand is his Shield. I don't know where he got the idea, but it was important for him to have it.

I don't know who wins these duels.

Princess usually is a very active participant in the sword-fighting, but I think she gave up by the time I got the camera out.

Baby

I just realized that I don't have many pictures of the baby.... she does join us on all our adventures, but usually in the stroller. Sometimes sleeping, and sometimes just watching the world. I did have a challenge using clothespins and a baby blanket to rig up a sun shade out in a windy field, but it worked.

Strawberries

We did it again, we spent a hot Saturday morning picking strawberries. It took a little more than an hour to pick 20 lbs of Strawberries. The picture above is only part of our total.

I don't know if you can see, but her face is very red from eating all the berries in the field.

Buddy loved to eat all the Strawberries out of our basket, it took a long time to teach him to pick the ones off the plants.

Then after taking the afternoon off to go to a party it took several hours to make 3 batches of Strawberry Jam (my family doesn't like store bought jam anymore) We also froze a lot, and put a huge bowl in the refrigerator for eating the next few days. I am sick of strawberries for a while.