The Last Days in the Burg

A few last babysitting days with the Fla-la which meant lots of pool time for the crazy toddlers.  

Shae has been obsessed with collecting all of these little acorn thingys at the park. He brought a whole bunch of them home with him last time we went and loved playing with them in the pool.

It's a tough life being two.

Daily baby wrestles (and baby kisses). This one will most likely continue on to our new apartment.

We used up our final ice cream coupons from the Summer Reading Program.

 We took Anna to Jamestown for her first time and our last time (and were lucky enough to have Sara and Fla-la tag along with us).

 Took tons of pictures of this girl. I just can't help myself.

  

These ducks. Shae got one each week for the past three weeks of the Summer Reading Program (even though I tried so hard to convince him to get books instead...). He's obsessed with them. Can't sleep without them. 

 Said good-bye to the institute.  We are eternally grateful for this awesome job that Darin has had for the past two years. It is exactly what our family needed.

Also grateful for these awesome coworkers that Darin worked with and happy that we can call them friends. This was at a going away cook-out that they threw for Darin and Nicky. They had so many sweet things to say about these two hardworking Project Managers.

So glad that I got to know this great girl through Darin's job (his bosses daughter). I had an awesome time tutoring her in Spanish over the summer.

Me trying to pack games = Shae finding new games. (Definitely should have pulled this game out sooner, he sat and played with these tiles forever).

Shae led his very first story time when we were unable to get in to the ballet performance because we showed up a few minutes late.

Another one of the things he ran off with while I was trying to pack them.

So many fun memories in this town with these sweet babies of mine.

5 Months

At five months, B is smack dab in the middle of her first ever move. Sadly, she did not get to enjoy her birthplace for too long.

Thanks Alejandra for the onsie!

She has entered "grabby phase." She went from swatting at things a few weeks ago to grabbing on to everything in her reach. "Grabby phase" and "everything-goes-in-the-mouth-phase" seem to start at just about the same time.

Time to pull all the baby toys back out! (Shae is already having a hard time with her touching "his" toys as she rolls all over and finds things that he has left out).

We've got some hardcore teething going on. We've felt the little tooth stumps for a couple weeks now and one of them has finally broken through the surface.

Went up to size 3 diapers (probably should have done that last month but we still had size 2 diapers to get through so we kept squeezing them on her).

Sucked on some watermelon and pineapple. Besides that she's still a 100% mama's milk girl.

Wakes up at about 10 p.m./2 a.m./7a.m. to eat. (But then there's still the occasional night like last night where she woke up at 11 p.m./12:30 a.m./2:30 a.m./4:50 a.m.--thankfully these nights are much less common than they used to be). 

Usually takes 3 naps a day, unless the second one is really long and later in the day, then she'll take two. Or if the first couple naps are really short, then she'll take four shorter naps--but usually three. Depends on what we do during the day. She's not as prone to just fall asleep in the stroller/car seat anymore and just like Shae, as soon as the car stops, she wake up (so annoying!)

Still smiley as ever. And quite enjoys the Bumbo that some friends from church gave us. 

We are loving life with this little lady. 

Surprise Visit

Semi-surprise visit. 

Molly and I had discussed her coming to visit us at some point before we moved. We weren't sure if we were going to be able to make it happen. Then two weeks before we moved, she asked me, "Is it okay if we come tomorrow?" Of course I said, "Yes!!" She drove up from NC on Tuesday, we had all of Wednesday to hang out, and she left Thursday morning. It was a quick trip, but we had so much fun hanging out with them while we could.

Tuesday night we stayed at the house enjoying each others children. Reese and Penn are just the cutest things ever. Penn is at that adorable stage where he is just learning to talk which is cute all on its own, but then Penn and his big blue eyes staring up at you makes the stage all the cuter. After putting the kids to bed, we talked forever and caught up on life while watching the All-Star game. 

Wednesday morning we took the ferry to Surry and picked blueberries. 

Neither Penn or Shae were much help. They would put two blueberries in, then pull about 10 out to eat.

Everyone knows that the real reason that we come to the farm is for their ice cream...sadly the strawberry ice cream was gone and they hadn't made any blueberry yet. We had to settle for vanilla and chocolate. Still homemade, and still quite good.

After blueberries we went and got Pupusas for lunch and then went home to try and get the kids to nap. After they didn't take naps, we went out and explored CW a bit. The Summer Reading program prize was gummy bears from the awesome candy shop in CW. We stopped and got the gummy bears and ate them up while walking around. While there, we stopped to sit on a bench and let the kids run around on the grass for a bit. From across the grass, Penn locked eyes with Darin and walked straight to him, not blinking once, or turning his head. He walked straight up to Darin and stood in front of him and just stared. Maybe you had to be there, but it was hilarious and I don't want to forget it.

Thursday morning we slowly got the day going. We let the kids run around the house and play for a bit (Shae LOVED Reese). Then we went to the park and let them run around one last time before leaving to go home.

It was ssoooo nice to see these guys one more time before we left. I don't know why we didn't see each other more during these past two years, we were only about six hours apart after all. It's going to be a bit harder to see each other at least once a year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can some how figure out how to do it.