4th of July Fun!

For the 4th year in a row, we spent 4th of July weekend with Grandma and Papa in NC and what a beautiful weekend! Lots of fun on the boat, pool, and hanging with family! The fireworks were beautiful - quite the production for little Washington!

Waiting the fireworks on the boat!

playing in the water before the fireworks

They played hard and rested Harder! (look close, all 3 are in this pix!)

Everyone rested hard! LOL This is mom & dads new room - beautiful!

Fishies

Everyone is now swimming and swimming well! It is amazing, I can even sit and relax while both kids are in the water! Yippee!!

Riley joined the swim team this year and is doing Great! She has place in the top 5 in the 25 Free each week and last week swam and placed in the 50 free! The backstroke has not gone so well, since she refuses to get in the water! We make it a little further each week, so we are hoping that this week will be the one where she gets over her fear! No matter what, even with storms each week (which makes for very late/long meets) she is having a blast!!

This is Ri coloring late into the evening waiting to swim her first race. Riley with Ashley and Abby

Riley with Leigh - Riley adores Leigh!

Now that we go to the 'swim team pool', the kids have discovered the diving board.
This pix is Kyles 1st time jumping off! As soon as he did it, Ri ran into line and did it as well!
A friend turned to me and said, "Kyle is Riley's test crash dummy!!"
And there goes Ri!

Kyle swimming to the stairs! Whew, he made it!

The end of Kindergarten!

It is amazing, Riley's first year of Kindergarten is over!! What a year! She has loved every minute and learned soooo much! She is an excellent student and looking forward to her 1st grade year! We are so lucky to have had Mrs. Sullivan this year and thank her for ALL her hard effort and patience (which you need to have a lot of when you teach 22 5 and 6 year olds!)!

Riley and buddy Marissa

Riley with Mrs. Sullivan
Singing for the parents

Our class gift for Mrs. Sullivan - sailing into Summer

USA Day (aka Field day)

The kids also sang Wonderful World and had drawn pix of various images in the song.

(which happens to be the song we danced to at our wedding!)

DelFest 2011

As always, I'm BEHIND so the next few entries are my catch up on all our summer fun!!
The summer kicks off with DelFest as it has for the past 3 years and every year it gets better and better! The kids are wonderful little music lovin hippies and suck up the heat and mud with the best of them! All three are becoming excellent hoopers as well!!

This is the first time Riley has ever touched a worm!

Hanging at camp!

This pix is of Riley watching a solo, up close and personal banjo performance from one of our tent neighbors - she is in awe!

LOTS of mud this year!!

Sports & Critters

We have had a full couple weeks of sports and critters!
Below is just a cute playgroup pix! We've been meeting with some of these kids for over 4 years on a weekly basis - sooo fun!!
This is Kyle on his new spiderman bike behind the super cool gate Grandma and Papa got! However the most exciting news is that we took off the training wheels of his old, 12 inch bike, threw him on... and get this... he can ride (I'm amazed b/c Ri was 6 when she learned and Kyle just turned 4 less than a month ago)! 1st try the kiddo just took off! Kyle also learned how to hula hoop this week - but I'm sure there will be plenty of pix of hoopin after Delfest!

I mentioned critters... this is what I found in the garage when I got home from work the other day! When kids got off the bus, they went crazy over this little guy (now named Boo-boo!) they loved and hugged him till I thought he'd pop! Boo-boo is now back in the wild! We also found a chipmunk (still alive!) when getting our camping gear down in the garage. I think Taz is getting old - he bring them in and then they get away! (whew!) Our baby birds have also flown the coop - I hope thats what happened anyway!

Ri's tennis just ended and look at this rainbow! However swim team has begun and she LOVES it! This summer is going to be fun!

We also participated in the Dolphin Dash - a one mile fun run.

Riley and Marissa held hands nearly the entire mile:-)

We are excited about this summer - however Riley will miss school and Mrs. Sullivan a LOT! I got an email from the other day from Mrs. Sullivan - "How cute is Riley's giggle...when she really gets giggling:-) She has had a case of the giggles for the past few weeks. It makes me so happy to hear her fantastic laugh!" We love Mrs. Sullivan!

After the dolphin dash, the kids had a Wii Just Dance party in the gym:

May Catch up!

Playing catch up... in no particular order, the last month of Riley and Kyle:

Soccer: Kyle loves it! He would much rather play the game than practice

(which happens to be the absolute opposite of Riley!)

We have baby birds in a bush right off the deck! Spring is here!

We have all loved watching them grow! What a great experience!

This is a GIANT ball you roll inside of! Thanks Aunt Darcy!

On Kyles actual bday, we went to a May Day festival in Bebe's neighborhood. Below is a series of pix of Kyle dancing... he was nuts!

Below is Riley and Lexa doing the sack race!

Moon bounce!

Easter!

For Kyle's 4th bday party, we went to Jump Zone - insanity!

Batman cake! Kyle is not 36.5 pounds and 41.5 inches

He had soooo much fun!

Spring break was in the past month as well. We took the kids up to DC for the day:

The Butterfly exhibit at the Natural History Museum

The Washington Monument

The best part - the metro ride!

The ride there (they were up EARLY because they were so excited!)

random cute pix from church!

Such a cutie - enjoying a beautiful spring night!