Super Fun Camping Trip

Great friends=lots of fun!  This is the end of day two.  Link to pictures below.

http://www1.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=6546490016/a=8289532_8289532/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

7th Anniversary & Girls First Sleep Over

To celebrate our 7th anniversary, we first planned to stay local in DC at the St. Regis.  Angela was going to watch the girls at the house. Then, we decided to just stay home and worked it out so Angela took the girls to her Parents (they adore the girls!) and have a stay-cation.  Then, David booked a room, train tickets and tickets to the show Wicked in Philadelphia.  We kept the plans the same for the girls to go with Angela to Frederick.  They had a blast!  It was a rainy day so they painted pottery, colored, ate Larry burgers (Angela's dad makes great burgers!), watched a movie, went to church, and visited the fire department (Pam is a volunteer EMT).  Besides waking up at 6:30 (Sylvia was told to be quiet until Evelyn woke an hour later...and did!), they were great.

Of course, David and I took one picture while in Philly and it's on David's phone!

What a fun anniversary and first big step for Sylvia and Evelyn!  Special thanks to Angela, Pam and Larry for helping make this happen!  xoxoxo!  

August Fun!

August is going to be very busy, but a lot of fun.  Here's what we have going on (yes, there are 5 weekends in August, so an extra weekend of FUN!).

1st Week of August/Last week of July:

• Vacation Bible School for the girls at Aldersgate, a rivaling day school in the neighborhood.  
• 7th Anniversary celebration for David and I.  Going to Philly to see Wicked and enjoy some good food and drinks. 
• Girls have first sleepover at Angela's parents! 

2nd week:

• Vacation Bible School for the girls at St Luke's, another rivaling day school in the neighborhood.  
• Weekend of camping at Pohick Bay with 4 other families on Friday and Saturday!  We've rented rustic cabins, which should make it more enjoyable for the 11 kids and 10 adults.  Lots of fun planning all the food, drinks, games, etc.  

3rd week:

• Carolina's family (Mom, Mom's fiancee, sister, Aunt, uncle, 2 cousins) arrive from Sweden!  We are hosting them for dinner on Tuesday night.
• Trips to Mount Vernon and lots of pool time planned
• Depart for Michigan!!!

4th week:

• Full week in Michigan with Granny, Grammommy, Gramps.  Will also get to spend time with Uncle Shane and Uncle Kirk!  So fun!  Lot's of lake time planned!!! 

5th week:

• Final week of swimming at the outdoor pool.  They will go every day, at least once, assuming the weather is good.
• Mommy's birthday on the 30th!  
• Labor day parties.  Annual neighbor "swine" fest.  Lots of friends, food, fun for everyone.

Hopefully I will have a few pictures to share.  Evelyn and Sylvia have been so sweet and fun.  

Emergency Wardrobe

For the first time in a zillion years, Sylvia had an accident.  She peed her pants at the park.  Carolina came to the rescue with her pink sweatshirt.  You can tell Sylvia really liked it...way better than her shorts I made her wear to camp!

Dinner With Friends & Dressing Up As Garden Fairies

Dinner with friends.  7 kids, 6 adults = slightly crazy when too hot and rainy to play outside! 

 

Garden Fairies.  We created the crowns with live greens and flowers from the yard.  They looked so cute.

A Special Way to Celebrate 4th of July

We are very spoiled to be able to be able to enjoy the 4th of July at the White House almost every year.  We have a bit of a ritual, go downtown early to find good parking, have a good meal, and then head to the White House.  This is our second year taking Evelyn and Sylvia and dining at the Hamilton.  Once at the White House, they enjoyed face painting, popcorn, cotton candy, dove ice cream bars (this is a WH tradition), the band FUN. performing live, and fireworks!  Pretty incredible day! They have NO IDEA how lucky they are.  The President and first family celebrated on the roof! 

Camping with Grandpa

Super fun time with Grandpa in his fancy RV with cousin/niece Alexis for 3 nights!  We stopped on the way to pick peaches and blackberries. 

2 Weeks Have Gone By...

It's hard to believe 2 weeks have gone by already. I still need to update pictures from the last post!  Oh well, I suppose you could say we are having a good time enjoying summer.  Evelyn and Sylvia enjoyed 2 weeks of morning swim lessons and then almost everyday went to a playground and then back to our pool.  Some days they were in the pool 3x in one day!  They literally smell of chlorine, no matter how often they take a bath.  For the weekends, it seems to be the norm to have 1-2 families over for dinner one evening.  The Garr's and Berry's joined us (so 7 kids total!) on Friday the 12th. Saturday, we hit the pool and Sunday we met up with some friends for breakfast in Old Town to meet their new baby.

Last weekend, Grandpa and Alexis (14 year old niece and the girls cousin) drove all the way from Indiana to meet us in Luray for camping at Jellystone Park (or as Sylvia calls it, Jellybean Stone).  It was sooo hot, so we were very thankful for Grandpa's luxurious RV with air conditioning, beds, and full kitchen.  The DVD and popcorn helped too!  We pretty much swam all day and hung out in the RV after around 4pm.  We did go out on paddle boats and did a round of mini golf.  On the way out we stopped to pick peaches and blackberries.  David rode his motorcycle out so Grandpa and David enjoyed some guy time on skyline drive.
This week the girls are in drama camp at a local elementary school.  They are really enjoying.  They seem to be making the set and preparing for a show they will put on Friday.

Next week and the week after they are in Vacation Bible School at local churches/preschools.  Lots of their neighborhood friends will be there too (it's the best deal in town!), and while we aren't religious, I'm not opposed to them getting a little Jesus in the summer.  They are well organized and a lot of fun!

Then, we go to Michigan to see Granny, Grammommy, Gramps, the Benson Crew (including 3 cousins), Uncle Shane, Aunt Sheri, and Uncle Kirk.  I'll be there 9 days with the girls, David will come out a day later.  Should be good fun!  Excited to see all that Grammommy and Gramps have done.  Lots of hard work that will provide many, many more years of enjoyment for everyone.

I promise pictures soon.  Maybe tomorrow, if you're lucky :)

Fun Week of Plans

The girls have a fun week of activities planned, just like most week's!  Last week was camp, this week they are getting together with friends for play dates on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

• Monday they went to a friend's house in the morning for play time.  In the afternoon, we had over 2 other friends for a drop off play date and dinner to help out some good friends of ours.  
• Tuesday they met the kids of Carolina's au pair friend (the host family's kids!); they are 4 and 2, then they had a picnic lunch and then went to the pool.  
• Wednesday, they will decorate their bikes for July 4th with friends and have an afternoon playdate with more friends.
• Thursday, we are going to a friend's pool 4th of July party with bouncy houses and swimming.  Home for a quick nap and shower.  Then we head into DC for dinner and then to the White House for fireworks.
• Friday, we are having a BBQ with 2 families from our neighbhorhood.  This day includes skyping with Granny and family at the cottage in Michigan! 
• Saturday, David and I are going to a National's game with friends. 
• Sunday, we will rest.  Go to the pool or hang out at home.  

Happy 4th of  July!

Slip & Slide Fun

We're pretty lucky we have great outdoor space at our house, so often we don't have to go anywhere to have fun.  They love to play in the sandbox, on the play set, trampoline or with the water toys. Here they are cruising down the slip and slide!  I should have gotten a video of David's attempts.

Weekend

The weekend was fun, but slightly uneventful.  The girls wrapped up a week of sports camp.  It rained every single afternoon, so attempts to go to the pool were a complete bust.
--Friday--happy hour playdate with friends.  Terrible storm that blew down our neighbhor's fence; David came to the rescue to help fix it.
--Saturday -- Absolutely nothing on the calendar.  Hung out in the morning at the house and hit the pool in the afternoon.
--Sunday -- Mommy had brunch with girlfriends (so fun!) and then enjoyed an afternoon of sweating in the back yard.  It was so hot!

Oh Sylvia

Sylvia has always loved to use scissors.  She says "I want to do my cutting."  She will cut out hearts or cut string to make a kite.  Well, on Sunday, she decided that she would cut her hair!  Yes, about 3 inches of hair from the front part of her hair I pull back into a pony tail.  I found the hair under our craft mat.  Clearly she knew she did something wrong when she hit it.

I found the hair 2 days later.  I asked her when she cut it, she said "a long, long time ago at Granny's cottage."  Ha!  Lie!  I asked her again and she finally fessed up.

Little booger.  Thankfully it doesn't look too bad, since I pull up that part of her hair anyway.

I guess I should have forced her to use the lame scissors that only cut paper.

Recent Happenings

We've been busy, so I haven't had a whole lot of time to post.  Here are some recent happenings:
-David was away for 17 out of 21 days beginning in late May.  He was in Latvia, a few cities in Germany and Bilbao, Spain. The girls raked in the gifts with a woven bracelet from Latvia, travel bag from the "pilot", and beautiful music carousels from Germany.  They wind them up all day.  Sylvia was the most thankful and carried hers around for 3 days.
-We celebrated Father's day with a surprise of the photos from a shoot of us in May.  He was so surprised.  The pictures are adorable and turned out great.
-We enjoyed a Swedish Midsummer Festival celebration with Carolina. Midsummer is their most celebrated occasion after Christmas.  It was very cool.  We decorated the maypole, played games and sang songs and danced around the pole.  We had no idea what the songs meant, but it didn't really matter.  Then, we feasted on a potluck dinner of lots of yummy Swedish and American foods.  Gotta tell you, pickled herring is not very good.
-After all of David's travel (and Mom may have been a bit exhausted too), we headed to Bethany Beach for some well-deserved R&R.  What a great trip!

In other developments, the girls can read basic reader books by themselves.  Pretty amazing stuff.  Their handwriting skills are amazing.  Further, we got these Brain Quest Kindergarten cards and they can answer all of the questions in the decks except for those about time and money.  So, that's what we will work on next.  They are masterful at patterns and sounding out words.  So proud of them!

Also, Sylvia has been sleeping in under ware for about a month!  Evelyn is a bit frustrated when she doesn't wake up dry, but we aren't worried or stressed about it.

Swedish Midsommer Festival

Decorating the maypole, games, singing and dancing.  So fun!

Bethany Beach

What a fun relaxing vacation.  Love that many of the pictures Evelyn just decided to go in with her clothes on!