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.)

Kindergarten - Check

Mrs. Baker and Maxwell this morning, kindergarten certificate in hand. Awww...

Anyone make any progress on that pause button??

Roar!!

We have our own little Tiger Scout roaring around the house these days. And I mean that literally. He is walking around the house, roaring on a regular basis. He is doubly excited because orange is his favorite color. And a brother that wanted in on the picture action. Now a few notes about Ben's wardrobe. He loves clothes that his brother passes over to him. So much so that he packed every single shirt Max recently passed over to him (about 6 shirts total) for a one-night stay at his grandparents' house last weekend. There's still (thankfully) a certain mystique to clothes Max passes over to him. This firetruck shirt is one such shirt.

You can also see his turquoise shorts in the top picture. You will be seeing a lot of these shorts this summer because if they're clean, he's wearing them. Here's the back-story to those. His very favorite shorts were three brightly colored tropical print pairs - size 24 months.

He is now 4.

You can see the problem.

He insisted that because he could still get the shorts on they still fit, never mind how short they were. He also has a gift for conjuring up big fat tears and whenever I'd bring up how small these favorite shorts were, the big fat tears would start rolling down his cheeks. We finally agreed to buy some replacement shorts in equally bright colors and rotate the itty-bitty shorts out of the wardrobe. So the turquoise shorts are the shorts he picked out. It's funny because while he certainly loves hand-me-downs, he, being the second child, still lights up big time when he gets to pick out new clothes for himself at the store.

So the outfit is pretty much perfection for Ben: hand-me-down shirt with favorite shorts. Sweet boy!

Twelve years ago today...

Where's the pause button?

Maxwell is winding down his school-year, and the traditional end-of-the-year Field Day was this week. His class enjoying their Jamba Juice.One of the cool things about the year-round schedule is that except for a few kids moving in and out or switching tracks, the classes pretty much stay the same throughout elementary school. So it'll be fun to watch the same group of kids as they progress from kindergarten to fifth grade together.

I can't believe he'll be going to school all day in about 6 weeks! And with a full June, the time will fly! The transition to kindergarten was pretty easy because it was basically the same hours as preschool and he was home by lunch. Having him gone all day though will be a whole other story - sniff! They even practiced eating lunch in the cafeteria this week. He'll thrive, but his mama and his little brother will miss him!

Seriously, I need a pause button! Anyone?

Benjamin wrapped up his first year of preschool last Tuesday and had a little end-of-year party. They got to paint a little pot and plant a seed.

Serious artistic concentration.
Snacks - always the best part. Oh my goodness...a gummy worm! Does it get any better than this?
All the little rugrats.

Grandparents and a New Dessert

Last weekend Andrew's parents stopped in for a couple of nights during their journey of moving from NM to PA. In honor of their visit, we decided to try a new dessert: Oreo Pizza. Nobody had yet reviewed it on allrecipes.com, but with ingredients like Oreos, Oreo pudding (who knew they made such a thing?), whipped cream, and some strawberries (which rendered it practically a health-dish in my book), we figured it was worth a shot. As the boys would say, it was "Yum, yum and extra yum!" Oh, the anticipation as the boys put the strawberries on!

Mother's Day

Mother Nature was kind to us on Mother's Day. It would be an understatement to say that the weather this winter and spring has kind of stunk, so the feeling of warm sunshine on my skin and wind that blessedly decided to stop blowing for one day was a welcome change yesterday - it was going to be a good day indeed!

Max's kids' choir performed their oh-so-cute spring musical at church. Ben working the 3-D glasses (there was underwater 3-D footage on the screens behind the kids singing). I also enjoyed a nice run, some time to just chill and read, and dinner out where I dined on crab enchiladas and a mango margarita - YUM!

And of course, Happy Mother's Day to my own mama!