Ella's First Day of Ballet

This is the day Ella's been waiting her whole life for -- ballet.  Of course she and Lily have pretend ballet classes at home all the time, but this time she actually got to go to the studio.

Her dance class name cracks me up.  It's a new class called "Pretty Princess Creative Movement," created only for 3 and 4 year-olds.  I asked Ella if she wanted to take that or a regular ballet class.  "Um, the Princess one, Mommy."  Of course.  Why did I even ask???

Ella always comes to Lily's ballet classes and loves watching through the one-way mirror.  This time it was reversed.  Lily loved watching Ella and the other tiny dancers.  It's a really fun girl bonding thing we share each week.

The traditional "dance train" going into class.  Precious.

I loved watching.  Ella has been looking forward to this for so long that it came as no surprise that when the other girls were acting crazy and rolling all over the floor and doing who knows what else, Ella took ballet completely seriously and danced her little heart out.  She cracks me up.  I loved every second of it.

Random Summer Happenings

Our neighborhood is across the street from a farm that holds regular events.  We love this farm so much.  They have all sorts of animals and the kids love seeing them.  They recently had a barbecue with a bouncy house and face painting and all of it was free!  It happened on an otherwise blue day, and so it couldn't have come at a better time.

A friend made me aware that a local large company sponsors a free science camp in each local city each summer.  This year's theme was magnetism.  I was fortunate enough to get both Lily and Skyler enrolled because the sign up was online and filled within a minute or two.  Skyler was on a waiting list and made it in!  They had a blast doing science for a whole week and I had a blast counting it as school with no effort on my part.  :)

"James wouldn't fit on my name tag."

On the final day we got to see what the kids had been learning all week and I was seriously impressed.  Most of them knew more than me about magnetism.  Lily and Skyler had a presentation on electromagnetism and were super cute.  Hopefully we can get them enrolled next year too!

Family Olympics

I ma slightly obsessed with the Olympics and was so excited to watch them this year.  The kids wanted to know why on earth I was spending so much time watching TV and finally they got glued to the Olympics as well.  I'm not sure whether I should be proud or not....  Anyhoo, for FHE we had our own family Olympics  complete with several different events.  Each of us received our dessert afterward in the order of how many events we won.

Ella and Skyler's birthdays

This year I told the kids that no one would be having a birthday party.  We would be taking the year off and just do simple family birthday celebrations.  I'm so grateful we did because July turned out to be a very stressful and busy month.  We did promise Lily and Skyler that now that they were big enough and strong enough swimmers, that we would take them to Emerald Point -- a really fun water park -- for their birthdays.  We had a ton of fun there.

Ella turned 4 and requested birthday brownies with chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream on top.  It was very specific.  :)  Her major birthday activity was going to get her ears pierced, but then I looked online and remembered that you can't go swimming for a few weeks after you get your ears pierced so we decided we would get that done when the pool closes in September.

Skyler turned 7 and requested a chocolate ice cream cake with mint oreo ice cream.  It was easy enough to make.  He ended up with tons of Legos for his birthday -- 3 of which were Star Wars lego sets.  He got a tie fighter, an x-wing, and a sith transporter which was a big deal because he loves Darth Maul.

The Outer Banks

WARNING:  Picture overload.

This year was the first year that Ben and I said we were going to do a "real" vacation.  We've never done anything more than just going out of town for a couple of days because every year we are thrown some huge expense (usually medical bills).  We started looking into beach houses and I just had this uneasy feeling about it.  Then I ended up in the hospital twice this year and after the thousands of dollars worth of medical bills started rolling in, I was so relieved that we didn't go that route.

But by fate, I found somewhere else that we could camp in a cabin on the beach with A/C, a small kitchen, its own bathroom, and enough beds to fit our family.  You would think that the price would be ridiculous and that summer would be prime season for being at the beach.  Unlike most other beach rentals, this one wasn't the case.  Most people camp here during spring and fall to fish, and that's when it's also most expensive.  So it's cheapest during the summer -- the off season.  I'm still laughing over it.  So we paid $200 and spent 3 days there.  Not too shabby for having a 22 mile island in the Outer Banks practically to yourself.

We were there during the week and so hardly anyone was camping there.  It's far more popular during the weekends.  This meant that most of the time we had the beach to ourselves for as far as we could see.  

Before we came we bought all the kids new life jackets.  It put my mind at ease knowing that they were fine the whole time.  Plus Thad's a really independent swimmer and he didn't always let us hold him in the water.  Those life jackets were an awesome investment.

Don't let the face fool you. We had to pull out of our driveway at 5 AM to catch our ferry to the island and she was sick the whole way.  She had a tummy bug and refused to eat and was pale the entire morning.  She had little interest in anything until after she took an afternoon nap and then she was as happy as her usual self for the rest of the trip.  Thad also caught a cold from nursery which he passed on to Skyler.  Fortunately, nobody got terribly sick.

Our cabin was the one on the right.

We ate all our meals on the cabin deck.  From this view you can see the ocean...

... and from this view you can see the sound.

(This is a much more accurate picture of how Ella was feeling)

Since two of the kids were sick and we were all sharing one room to sleep in, it was only expected that we would all wake up really early.  Ben left at 5:45 to go for a walk and I was on the deck 10 minutes later with the kids waiting for the sun to rise.  If you've got to wake up early, you might as well do it when you're at the beach to see the sunrise.  

P.S.  It was so amazing being on such a narrow island.  We were able to watch the sunrise and the sunset on the water in either direction.

When Skyler woke up, we met up with Ben on the beach and went for a mile long stroll.  We did it the next morning, too.

And yes, they were still in their jammies.

Skyler still had sleepy eyes. 

Mine and Lily's shadows.

She holds my hand even when I take pictures.

Skyler and I had a blast looking for hermit crabs at the sound.

Skyler is our collection kid.  At first it was just seeds because he wanted to be a farmer (still does).  Then he started collecting bones that he'd find around the yard because he was convinced they were all dinosaur bones.  How he finds so many bones is beyond me, but we started calling him The Bone Collector.  #parentsoftheyear  

But while we were at the beach he started a crab claw collection.  He had quite the stash before we left and I'm not exactly sure what happened to them...

When it's a hot sunny day and you're only 2 years-old, what do you do to cool off?  Stretch your mom's swimsuit cover up over your head, of course.

This taught me that though kids and teens feel like their parents make them feel awkward, the truth is that they make us feel awkward first, so they kind of bring it upon themselves...

Either a hermit crab colony or a snail colony.  I couldn't tell because they use the same shells.

After the ferry ride back to the mainland we headed over to Pine Knolls aquarium.  Thad is obsessed with frogs and as soon as he saw this he yelled, "It's a huge-normous ribbit, Mom-Mom!"

He has a stuffed frog named Ribbit that he sleeps with every night.  It's the cutest thing in the world.

We walked along a boardwalk outside where I noticed all these huge insects were crawling around on the ground below.  Then I took a closer look and realized they were actually hundreds of crabs.  Skyler was in crab heaven.

I was so proud of the kids.  All of them pet the stingrays and Skyler even got up the courage to pet a shark too.

It was a great trip minus the sickness and those dadgum horseflies that attacked us.  The ocean was amazing.  Ben and I took turns watching the kids so that we could boogie board or swim in the deeper areas.  The kids had a blast sleeping in the same room as everyone else.  And we were neighbors with some retirees who we talked with for hours after we put the kids in bed.  We shared awesome stories while watching the stars come out and listening to the ocean roar.  It was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip.

I'm so grateful we were able to make this happen.  I'm so grateful that the kids consider a simple trip like this as such a fun and exciting thing.  And I'm thankful that we had no access to the rest of the world while we were out there.  It was so refreshing not to have to see all the terrible things that are happening in the world for a few days.  It was just the kind of break we needed.