Proud Sister

Abby insisted on wearing her new teeshirt as soon as it arrived in the mail.  She is a proud cub scout sister!

Second Grade!

 Big boy wanted a new backpack this year...

 She sure does miss him when he is at school!

So, Alex is in second grade.  Yes, second grade.  I'm guessing I'll have this reaction every year for the rest of his school-aged life.  He's loving school, still, and we are all eager for things to pick back up there.  Right now they are still in "review" mode and he's ready to learn new things.  He is definitely a math/science kid but does well with his reading and his writing is improving everyday.  His penmanship looks terrific and he's working on writing faster and with more detail.  While most of his buddies are in other classes, he sees them at recess and is content with that. 

Alex does gymnastics and tennis during the week, along with scouts.  He is currently missing his two front top teeth and two along the bottom and is looking forward to filling those gaps.  There are 27 kids in his class and there's not much space to move about, but they make it work.  I think this year they are graded on Spanish and have that twice a week.  Maybe I should pick up a CD for my car to learn some of the basics...or start paying closer attention to Dora the Explorer!

Surprise Trip to Illinois

Alex and Abby, so surprised that morning when we woke them up and asked them if they'd like to take a trip!

Alex and Jaydon playing slip n slide

 Taking Abby and Vanessa to get their nails painted Saturday morning while Alex was at a play date with Brendan.  The weather was awful that morning but luckily cleared up as the day went on.

Baby Michael!!  Wait, what happened to that little "baby"?? We enjoyed visiting with Karen and Chris too while we were there.

 Heading out to New Buffalo, MI on Sunday morning

 We were quite the crew that morning! 

 Both kids had a blast playing in the sand and Alex especially enjoyed swimming between the boat and the beach.  We anchored up just offshore but had to swim/wade in to the beach.  Alex was a champ swimmer!  There are no photos of this as we left our phones/cameras on the boat until we could figure a way to safely float them to shore.  Turns out, floating them in Tupperware works great!

 Alex took a nice little nap on the beach that day.  Lots of swimming wore him out!

Abby opted to nap in the car en route to the beach so she was ready to run when she got there! 

 Not a bad Sunday afternoon!

 Dinner at Redamak's, of course

 Mark, Sherri and Vanessa. 

Over Labor Day weekend we surprised the kids with a trip back to Illinois to visit friends. They'd said numerous times this summer how much they miss their IL friends and it made us happy to reunite them for a few days. We stayed with our friends Mark, Sherri and their daughter Vanessa who were gracious hosts and took good care of us. All of the kids were thrilled to play together for a bit and we enjoyed catching up with all our friends there as well.

On Sunday, the clouds parted ways and the sun came out over New Buffalo, MI, giving us a beautiful day at the beach! We got to ride on Mark and Sherri's boat for a bit, which was a big highlight especially for the kids. We've vacationed there before and taken numerous day trips together to New Buffalo. It's such a family friendly beach and only an hour and a half from Joliet.

We headed back to reality in Virginia on Monday and Alex started second grade on Tuesday morning.

Fantasy Playground

When the Mikkelsens were in town, they visited this "Fantasy Playground" in Woodbridge, VA and it looked like a good time so we checked it out.  The kids had a blast there, despite the overcast skies and threatening rain.  Not bad for a free, public playground built by volunteers over 20 years ago.  You can tell this structure is well taken care of and probably stained yearly.  Good fun and not too far from home, we'll take it!