Water, water and more water

We have been spending a LOT of time at the pool.  Pretty much every day last week we spent multiple hours at the pool.  The girls are really enjoying their summer vacation and every morning when Ellie gets up she looks at me and says, "baby soup"?  You might wonder what exactly baby soup is?  Well, it is her version of bathing suit!  We have been working on this for a while and I think we aren't getting closer but still not quite there.  Oh well...baby steps are good too!  She has made a ton of progress in the water and though she would still prefer to be in the baby pool, the fit throwing has at least subsided some if she doesn't get to always be in the baby pool.  She can now "swim" with her floaties!!  Last year it took her swim vest and floaties just to keep her head above water but now she is able to kick her feet and kind of move her arms.  Wouldn't it be cool if by the end of the summer she could actually swim without them!  I think that might be a bit lofty of a goal but we shall see.  Mackenzie and Ainsley are like fishes in the water and they love going to the pool.  My summer sitter took them to her pool on Thursday while I worked.  Apparently her pool is pretty cool.  It has a water slide, a diving board and big rafts that you can lay on and float around the pool.  However it has some bugs in it.  They were debating which one they liked best.  Hers would have one hands down if it didn't have any bugs:)  So that's how we have been spending our summer vacation the last week.  In addition to going to the fun of the pool we have seen lots of friends at the pool too which is always a blast!  

Today we have speech and Ainsley is hoping to have a friend over for a few hours.  Then it will be time to get her ready to go to summer camp tonight!  Since her camp is only 1st-2nd graders, she will only be gone till Wed morning which is just the right amount of time for her.  I will be picking up Ainsley and two of the neighbors on Wed.  I will be working on Thursday and then we leave for SC on Friday!  Yea!!  Can't wait to see my brother and his family and the girls can't wait to hang out with the cousins!  And as an extra cool added bonus we get to see our friends Patrick and Kim and their two kiddos, Moyer and Keturah.  They are in the States for the summer from China so we made plans to meet up in SC.  I am pretty excited!  This will be our "first" time meeting Keturah in person though we have followed her pretty faithfully on their blog.  I believe she was born in December though I guess I would have to check their blog to make sure I am accurate...so we have never met her.  But I am guessing she's probably as cool as her older brother Moyer:)

So those are our last few days in a nut shell.  I don't think I have any new and recent pictures to post but I am sure we will have some cool ones when we get back from SC!

Happy Father's Day and Anniversary!

Jeff and I celebrated our anniversary last night by going out to Boi Na  Braza Brazilian Steakhouse.  We had a great time and the food was great!  It was a cool experience  and I am pretty sure I ate enough meat to cover me for about 3 weeks and eat vegan for the next 3 weeks. We walked around down on the levy in Newport and back home where Jeff fixed root bear floats. I didn't sleep well since I ate too much food so I got up and watched the West Wing on DVD for a few hours and played around with our budget.  I am pretty sure it was after 3:30 this morning when I got to sleep.  Ugh!  But the girls and I are now up and need to get Jeff cards and gift together before he gets up.  Happy Father's Day out there to all the wonderful dads!

Amazed

I continue to be amazed by all those who are able to keep up with their blog more faithfully than myself.  Once I get behind on things catching up seems to be more difficult.  But I will try to catch everyone up on the last few weeks.  School finished up well for the girls.  Nothing major happened but we seemed to keep pretty busy the last week of school making sure they had everything turned in and up to date.  They missed their last three days of school because we left for the beach so I wanted to make sure they were ok to go.  Mackenzie had her end of the year drama recital and I got a couple of pictures that I will post.  It went well but it was very long.  I have learned for next year that I probably need to find a sitter for Ellie because she just isn't ready to sit through a 2 1/2 hour recital.  

We left for the beach on Saturday morning, May 30th, I believe.  We spent the day driving and stopped at a hotel outside of Philly.  The girls of course enjoyed our hotel stay.  The next morning we stopped at Target on our way out to pick up a few things that we forgot.  As we were backing up, we hit another vehicle backing up and spent the next hour plus giving our statement to the police officer.  Jeff was looking and didn't see anyone so who knows.  But that took some time out of our schedule.  We did still drive into Philly to see some of the historical things that the girls have never seen.  We did the tour of Independence Hall and took some time to see the Liberty Bell.  We also took a carriage ride through the area and they gave us all the historical information on the area.  The girls loved it but not sure they paid a lot of attention to the history part:)

Then onto the beach later in the afternoon.  We spent a few hours down at the beach that night in our clothes.  I need to learn that anytime we go to the beach my children lack the ability to just play in the sand and they must get completely wet.  Even though it wasn't that warm I should have just put their suits on them because they ended getting wet anyway!  The weather this year wasn't nearly as stellar as last year.  We never had any days where it was really hot and I didn't actually get into the water all the way at any point.  We did have a few nice days to enjoy the beach and the girls got in the water.  Ellie didn't like the water the first day but Rachel came in and saved the day and after that we couldn't keep Ellie from the water!  As a matter of fact she seemed to lose all fear of the water and I had to be constantly on her to not go out too far or wander off.  Mackenzie did some boogie boarding while we were there and I think Ainsley got to see the very beginnings of going out a little deeper.  I don't think she actually did any boogie boarding though.  We unfortunately did get a few days of constant rain.  We took that time to hang out inside and play games/read/watch tv.  Denise and I took the our two older girls to see Up since the older kids had seen it a few nights before.  I thought it was pretty good and they seemed to be entertained.  Though I didn't think it as funny as some and thought it had several really sad moments which I wasn't expecting.  

We did take our bikes this year for the first time and did go on several long bike rides which was fun.  Mackenzie and Ainsley did well on one bike ride and then they stayed home for the second ride with Rachel.  I was glad we took them and were able to enjoy them.  We had a great vacation and had a fantastic time as usual with our friends.  

Since returning home we have been catching up on just general what not and enjoying our summer vacations.  We have gone to the park several times and I have taken the kids on one bike ride.  Jeff was gone a week and a half and he got home this past Tues night from Italy.  He took Thursday and Friday of this week off to hang out with the fam.  Yesterday he watched the girls for me so I could work and today we are off to pick Mackenzie up from camp.  Mackenzie has been at church camp all week and I have really missed her.  I can't wait to finally pick her up!  Well that has been the last few weeks in a nut shell and hopefully it has caught everyone up.