East Coast Vaca

So far, our trip's been a whole lot of awesome.

Uncle Steve's awesome train table.
Cousins' awesome pool. The boys' first times off the diving board.Max about to experience his first belly-flop. Ouch!!

Some awesome relaxation at the Jersey Shore...good summertime fun with cousins. Strolling through downtown shops with a cousin...so sweet...My nieces getting henna tattoos. We also fit in a quick trip to Richmond last weekend to visit Andrew's very pregnant sister, where we got to meet our cute little one-year-old nephew for the first time. On the way down, we managed to get rear-ended in Delaware. It's such a small state, that it's got to be somewhat of an elite club to join to have been rear-ended there. (Luckily, it was so minor, we all just drove on.)

On the return trip, we drove right through the center of DC, so we quickly laid eyes on the Pentagon, the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. The megalopolis from Baltimore to Richmond is amazing...within 40 minutes, we drove by 2 NFL stadiums, RFK and the Ravens' stadium...and you certainly gain an appreciation of how densely the region is populated when you drive through it.

But all is well, and we're just enjoying our days at the shore. :)

I Promise To Do My Best

To do my duty to God and my country,
To help other people, and
To obey the Law of the Pack.He had his first official Tiger Scouts meeting tonight. He's a big fan!

And bless his heart, cute little one wanted some pics taken too. :) Man, I love those boys!!

Conversations...

In the car today:

Max, "Mom, know what I wish more than anything in the world?"

"What buddy?"

"I wish I could be six forever."

Holy hail-balls!

Fortunately, these ginormous hail-balls didn't come down very heavily. But they were huge!

We Heart Swim Lessons

Today was the last day of swim lessons, when the kids get to go down the water slide. Needless to say, this is my kids' very favorite part of lessons. Every time they shoot out of the slide, they are beaming and grinning from ear to ear. My friend Francie snapped this picture of Maxwell shooting out of the slide, practically upside down. Good fun!

Sylvan Lake State Park - Two Thumbs Up Again

For Memorial Day weekend, we headed to Sylvan Lake SP and had a great time again. We camped there last summer the weekend after Memorial Day and decided we liked it so much we'd make sure to go there again, this time for the longer weekend.

This year, it got as cold as it's ever gotten at night while we were camping, and we found ourselves saying, for about the millionth time, "I'm so glad we have the pop-up!" Its furnace ran almost the entire night both nights and it was set as low as it could go. ("Just enough to take the chill off.") Saturday afternoon was windy, but the rest of the time the weather was great!

A beautiful hike: My boys: Hiking brothers: Max's first fish...look at that rainbow trout! Awesome!!And our happy camping dog. Cedar discovered the rocks that had bacon drippings on them at the end of the picnic table. You could hardly get him away from this spot. :)All in all, a great kick-off to camping season!

Break out the SPF 50!

These pics are from the week before Memorial Day, when it finally decided to start warming up around here. We also enjoyed absolutely perfect weather last weekend and spent some quality time at the neighborhood pool - yeah!! (My apologies for subjecting everyone to my "royal" skin, as one of my brothers and I prefer to call our melanin-challenged skin. What can we say, we were made to fan ourselves in the shade, like the royalty from days of yore. Our other brother was the only one of us three siblings to get tan skin. Peasant.)