Summer Party VI

Summer, you fleeting friend, I can't believe you are half over!  We can always tell when our annual summer party rolls around that we are in the middle of our favorite time of year.  Six years we've lived here already!  Despite a rainy/cloudy day, it was still warm and we had another great turnout for our barbecue.  It was like kid-a-pa-looza!  Good times, good times.

Luke reading his map at the Botanic Garden

Claire now will smile and say "cheese!" when asked

He hates being cold - so loves to feel the warm stones on his skin to beat the pool water chill.

Six Flags with Isolene, Rose & Kirah

What a BIG girl!

park monkey

swimming playdate with the McCarney boys

Egg Harbor breakfast 

Lots 'o boys playing in the basement during the party

Lots 'o kids in the pool!

And more people by the playlet, bouncy house and tent

wearing matching pajamas with her dolly

Budding badminton player

Sooooo cute

Filling up his dump truck with his new shovel from G&G B's vacation

harvesting beans

4th of July Fun

We had a nice Independence Day weekend, choosing to stay local to enjoy the festivities with friends and neighbors.  Now that we actually have friends in our community, these community events have become a lot more fun and social!  We were so happy that Mom and Dad even came to help celebrate, coming to our house after Uncle David's annual party and then staying the night for a visit the next day, too.

Patriotic Kids

Patriotic family

Watching the parade

Kids sat on the curb, super cute-like

Our neighbors, Steve, Caroline and Max (+ soon to be baby girl)

We kept Luke and Jack occupied between parade pauses with a bag of corn chips each

Claire felt most happy when spontaneously trying to dart out into the middle of the street, usually right into a marching band.

I'm a big fan of the bagpipes

At the fireworks and concert later that night.  

Breakfast at the beach the next morning

Playdate on Saturday that was already scheduled.  Mom and Dad just came with!

Little boat trip before they headed home.

I went to the Sarah McLachlan concert at Ravinia that night with my friend/neighbor Cara.  It was awesome!

Randomly decided to go to Six Flags on Sunday

We took Claire this time, and we had SUCH a fun time as a 4-some.

Her favorite part was the frozen lemonade slushy.  Sharing is not her favorite thing in the world.

She LOVED the pirate water gun ride, both getting wet herself and helping Daddy shoot the water out of his guns.

Perfect dress for a Tuesday afternoon.  Isolene made this for her.

Accessorizing with a yellow noodle

It's a tough life

Here are some other kid updates:

- Luke has a bunch of play traffic cones.  He likes to set them up all over the house.  The other day he set up a bunch of them in his room and instructed me "this is the entrance and this is the exit".  I liked his vocab!
- Playing with his train table one night - "Do you like my cute little train track?  Bet you never saw one like this before."
- When I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, without hesitation: "I want an alarm clock that goes BEEP BEEP BEEP….and I want a stool for Claire Bear."
- He likes to use his shovel to dig up all the gravel and dirt around our back garage, or put it in his snow sled and tow it around with his Zoom Buggy.  The other day, he decided to make a hill out of it, and then ride his "dirt bike"over it for an hour.
- Almost every day he tells me, "C'mon Mom, let's go check our garden!"  He loves to see all the growing that is happening, and harvesting is the best part.
- Claire continues to be a total whiner/ difficult child for the past few weeks.  She is so stubborn, and so determined to have her way all the time.  She gets so jealous when I give attention to Luke.   If I'm reading him a book, she'll throw a fit and try to physically push him off my lap and will grab the book and try to throw it.  What a little stinker….If he finally gives up and gets up, she backs her butt into sitting down on my lap and I swear she smirks.
- We've introduced a pillow and blanket into her crib!  What a big girl!
- You've heard how Claire has been waking up SUPER early and being so cranky that we have to drive her around town, well that happened again on the 4th of July.  I was talking to Cara about this and she gave a suggestion that totally worked!  She said that they experienced the same thing with Jack and that it turned out that he was just cold!  So we started putting another layer on Claire for bedtime and now she's back to sleeping to at least 5:45-6am, sometimes even later.  Yippee!!!  Sleep!

June Birthdays

Beach baby

Getting in some light reading with G&G.  She has a short attention span so actually wants you to read multiple books at a time with her.  She points at all the animals and makes sounds like she's telling you what they are.

June Birthdays wasn't quite the same this year since we were missing two of the guests of honor, Aunt Allyson and Uncle Dan, not to mention Kristin, Cory, PJ, Jason and Jessica - but for those that could make it we had a beautiful day and a nice visit.  We're glad that Uncle Dan is feeling much better!

This week we also took Luke to Six Flags for the very first time!  He LOVED it (well the kid parts anyway).  It turned out that Isolene had a special offer to buy season passes for only $10 more than a one time pass, so since we live so close we decided to do that instead.  So for the first time in my life I am a season pass holder - even if we go just one more time it will have been worth it!

Here's a little Claire update:)

Claire has still been waking up at all hours of the morning, ugh.  And when she's not showing her attitude in the wee hours of the morning, she is Miss Attitude during the day.  What a fuss bucket!  We think it has to be because of all these teeth she is getting in, including a few molars.  It just puts her in a bad mood, and really she just wants what she wants and she wants it right that second or she is carrying on and whining.  The whining is especially grating on the nerves.  I swear I don't remember this from Luke.  "What?  What?  What do you want, Claire??" can be heard from us dozens of times throughout the day.  Just make the whining stop!  I'm hoping this improves when she can speak and communicate what she wants, but gauging from other little girls I've seen I think we are in for many, many years of whining to come.  She also doesn't want her diaper changed anymore, ever.  Mass protests every time we have to do that.  Other than that, she is so funny lately because she likes to sit up on the sink and help me put on my makeup in the morning.  She holds one of my brushes and brushes it on her cheeks like she sees me do, and then likes for me to put chapstick on her lips.  She purses them out at me as her signal.  She LOVES the water and would spend all day in the pool if we let her.  She splashes and plays and pours buckets of water out, shrieking with delight.  Definitely way more of a water baby than Luke was at this age, although Luke is much more interested in the water this year than he ever was before.  Even if we are not planning to go in the pool at all, she will go and get her floaty and bring it to us, pointing vehemently at the water.  She can go up and down the ladder of Fort Dukerson now, and while we still spot her, she really doesn't need help anymore.  Once she's up there she'll scare you by leaning over the edge way too much, but I think before long we won't even need to help her with that.  She is starting to have a consciousness for danger, and looks for help before attempting to go down stairs or anything a little dicey.  She hums "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" song, the whole thing, all by herself. Finally, she wants to be with the big kids now all the time, so if we're eating dinner and Luke has friends over by the kid's picnic table, there's no way Claire is content to be in her booster seat at the adult table.  Oh no!  She's gotta be by where those other kids are!  She SO is not a baby anymore, she is full on kid!  So fun.

In awe of Six Flags

The Whizzer!!

He liked it until the end….then he didn't.  At all.  Tears followed.

Pure joy on the kid's rides.

We rode the pirate ride twice in a row.

Beach playground visit 

Open Lands

Fording the stream

Back to the beach!

Trip to Costco preceding our party. Shopping is infinitely easier when these two monkeys are contained.

Matt and I had a date night Sat night for tapas and Jersey Boys, the movie.

Making Ian's birthday cake Sunday morning

Back to the beach for the third day in a row for some live music and breakfast

Water was like glass - this is what Matt calls a good "Claire Mae" day, since we only take Claire Mae on her namesake boat on non-wavy days because she likes to walk around.  

June birthday party weather was perfection!

Blowing out the birthday candles

Luke took this picture

SUPER ugh…..another night of Matt having to sleep in the basement to keep our basement from flooding.  

This time even the second pump couldn't keep up, so Matt had the brilliant idea to use the shop vac to suck up the water in the sump pump before it could overflow into the basement.  Unfortunately this meant lifting this gigantic shop vac full of rain water into our utility sink a bajillion times.  But he averted disaster again, yippee!!!

Same night….Claire woke up ungodly early and I actually got her to go back to sleep in our bed.  She was sleeping so close to the edge, but I didn't want to move her!

Unexplained rashes were showing up all over her body one night - we had no idea what it was!  It would come and go within only 5-10 minutes.  Weird, but hasn't happened again since.

Mom and Dad got back from their trip on Wed, with gifts for the kids including the famous nesting dolls.  Claire took one of her nesting dolls for a stroller ride, making sure to whip her other doll Tabitha out of the stroller first.