Saturday Afternoon PlayDate

On Saturday afternoon, the girls had a play date with Liam, Miranda and Sean. They had a "water park" set up in their yard and the girls had lots of fun playing in it while we hung out with Joe and Laurie and talked about grown up stuff like kitchen makeovers and cameras. After the kids got tired of the water, they had a snacked and played dress up inside. What a great way to spend a summer afternoon!!

All of the kids (minus Emily, of course) in the water
Snack time! Sean and Emily
Liam with the hose
Elizabeth and Miranda playing dress up

Grampy is (Doing) Good

The girls had a surprise (because we didn't tell them) visit from Grampy today - they were very excited to see him and to spend time with him and we were happy to see him looking so healthy and so good.

Elizabeth and Grampy
Lee and David talk shop about the house
Grampy and Emily pick out icecream at Cold Stone
Emily and Grampy

Sam's Birthday

This past weekend was one of parties for our family, as we ended Sunday with our second birthday party of the day! This one was for our neighbor and Elizabeth's playmate, Sam. There were tons of kids there and they all spent plenty of time running around, screaming and playing. Sam's parents are Wesleyan athletics coaches, which may give some insight as to all of the extra activity. The girls had a great time and were completely exhausted by the time they got home. You can see more pictures from Sam's birthday party here.

"Rough housing" with Sam's dad.
Birthday cake (and birthday cake in ice cream cones, which is pure genius!)
Emily literally fed Max, Sam's little brother, his dinner.
The not-so-long walk home (our backyards actually touch)

Jump

The other day, I noticed that Emily had learned a new trick - jumping, with both feet off of the ground. I think that she felt the "pressure" once the camera was on, because as you'll notice, she keeps falling, which she wasn't doing before. This seems like quite the skill for a little girl that just turned two!

Lookin' Good

The porch is basically done (except for the ceiling, which won't go in until the fall) and we've started working on the priming, painting and landscaping. While we still have a lot to do, the "big" job is complete and Peter can actually start spending weekends with his family!! We are very pleased with how everything turned out and we've been getting a lot of compliments from our neighbors and passers-by.

Anders' First Birthday

Yesterday, we celebrated the first birthday of Anders, the son of our good friends Nicole and David. Even surrounded by way more people than he is used (and lots more noise than he is used to for sure!), he hung in there like a champ, opening all of his presents and even having a little bit to eat. Elizabeth and Emily had a great time eating pizza and birthday cake, helping Nicole and Anders open his presents and playing with an awesome water rocket that Anders' cousins brought to the party. Click here to see more pictures from the party.

Daddy and Emily watch the big kids play with the water rocket (Emily made sure to stay a safe distance from the flying rocket and water....)
It was raining AND they were playing in the water - awesome kid combination!
Every little kid loves bubbles - it's amazing!
Birthday Boy!
Cool shades.
Enough of these presents - I want to crawl around and explore.
One of the many reasons why we get along so well with Nicole and Dave - they love dogs, we love dogs and we are all raising our kids to love dogs and our dogs to love kids!

Sarah's Bridal Shower

This afternoon, I attended my friend Sarah's lovely bridal shower and enjoyed such a lovely afternoon. She got a ton of beautiful presents and was such a gracious bride-to-be. You can see more pictures from her shower here (note: I was the unofficial-official photographer for the shower, so there are A LOT of pictures!).

The gorgeous cake...
Presents, presents, presents!
Sarah, Debby and Suzanne

Milestones

Those of you with children understand the importance of developmental milestones - and Elizabeth had a big one this week. On Monday, she drew a picture of our entire family on the Magna Doodle. Lee happened to notice that she was really into what she was drawing and when he took a closer look, he was pretty impressed - so impressed, in fact, that he saved the drawing and had her show it to me when I got home from work.

That's Mommy (with the hair), Daddy (with the big head), Elizabeth (more hair) and Emily - the the circles above us? Why, we're blowing bubbles, of course!

Six Years And Counting

Six years to the day we closed on our house, Lee and Peter installed the railings on the porch. Except for a lot of little things - like roof flashing, the ceiling, lattice and trim work - the porch is substantially finished. We still have a long way to go as far as completing the front of the house (paint, paint, paint!!!), but are starting to feel a sense of accomplishment. I'm so impressed with and grateful for the work that Lee and Peter have done over the last two months.

Unusual Sighting

While deer might be a normal sighting in some areas, they really are not in our neck of the woods. This morning, our busy little household came to a screeching halt when Lee happened to look out into the backyard and noticed this little girl. She hung around long enough that Lee and I went outside at different times to take pictures of her. It soon became clear that she was interested in our garden, but Lee stood guard until she was scared away by a passing car.

Second Birthday Fun

Although neither Lee nor I are "birthday people," we want to make sure that our girls have great birthday memories; and because we don't really buy them things except at Christmas, birthdays give us the chance to go a little bit overboard. We celebrated Emily's birthday last Sunday through Wednesday (gifts from us, aunts and uncles, friends and grandparents kept rolling in!). Our (mine and Lee's) favorite part of the whole experience? When the three of us sang "Happy Birthday" to Emily, she just had this amazed look on her face, like she couldn't believe that we were singing to her.

Emily's face while we were singing to her.
The water wheel table, which was her "big" gift from us.
Playing with her (their) favorite new toy.
She got tons of cards - and ran right to this table every day when the mail came to open them.
She's mastered the art of opening packages, that's for sure!

Just Monkeying Around

On Wednesday, we celebrated Emily's birthday with a trip to the Roger Williams Zoo in Providence. There were a ton of really neat animals there, although we each had our favorite. Mine was the giraffe, which we kept going back to as their height seemed to just awe the girls. Elizabeth loved the flamingos for some reason; she started asking to see flamingos the minute we got there. Click here to see more pictures from the zoo.

Masai Giraffe
Check out this expression - this is Elizabeth's first up close look at the giraffes.
Emily seems pretty impressed as well.
By this point, we had spent a good twenty minutes with the flamingos and both the birds and Elizabeth were getting a bit more daring.
Lee's favorite

Heat Wave!!!

Last weekend, we suffered through some crushing heat and humidity - temperatures reach 100 or nearly 100 for four straight days. Elizabeth and Emily stayed cool in the sprinkler - the toy of choice for parents that refuse to get their children a pool (Lee, who seems to get more and more like my dad every day, has yet to promise that "the bulldozer is coming tomorrow." I'm still waiting, Dad.) As you can see, Elizabeth loves the sprinkler, but Emily would rather watch (we think that she's scared of it).

Check out that running form!

Trying to escape ANY drops....
Elizabeth found this to be hysterically funny.
Watching Elizabeth from a safe distance.