Family Time

We got all dolled up for the library story time featuring Princess stories. The girls made these gorgeous hats since we didn't have any dress up clothes.

Our uninvited camping guest. This guy was huge and fearless. On the first night he ran off with our blueberries, cheese, and a pack of hot dogs. And have any of you ever heard a raccoon hiss? It's a terrifying sound when it wakes you up in the middle of the night. The girls have a renewed fear of raccoons. And this time for good reason. I'm a little scared myself.

Mmmm.. smores. Molly loved toasting the marshmellows, but I don't think she ate a single one of them.

Ella loved the water.

Molly loved the sand.

My little boating girl.

Enjoying our family's favorite game. Bananagrams. It's the best game ever.

Driving the boat with Papa.

Cuddling up with a cozy fabric remnant. Totally her grandma's girl.

We made an impromptu stop when we found a firefighters museum on the way to our tour of the Culinary Institute of America. Molly has wanted to be a firefighter for probably a year or more. She loves them. So we couldn't pass it up. She had a fabulous time, but it kind of sabotaged the rest of our day. Lets just say that we didn't exactly get to enjoy our trip to the CIA which was the focus of the whole trip. Molly also threw a world class temper tantrum that I'm pretty sure got everyone within ear shot questioning my parenting skills. The things we do for our kids.

Enjoying the ride from the bike trailer.

Red faced and exhausted after our bike hike. She was such a trooper. It took us about an hour and a half to get to our picnic spot, and 20 minutes to get back to the car. Curteousy of the never ending hill we had to go up to get there. About half way through Ella pulls her bike over to the side of the path and says- I give up! Molly calls out from her cushy spot in the trailer- Don't give up sissy! We're almost there! She pulled through. I was proud of her. It was quite a long hike.

Molly orders blue ice cream everywhere we go.

Can you believe the size of these Sundaes?
We went to an ice cream shop near my parents house that was featured on Throwdown with Bobby Flay. Great ice cream. But the sundaes were huge!

Visiting the museum and playing doc.

Ah.. there it is.

Sporting Grandma's glasses and looking good.

Molly looking so grown up.

We visited Papa at school and got to play in the fountain.

Love this picture.

We were able to enjoy a nice long summer vacation. We started out on our annual Waddington family camping trip- always a good time. We got rained out on the last night and ended up at a hotel (where Ella discovered and fell in love with the A&E show Billy the Exterminator...) but it just added to the fun. The girls and I went back to NY with my parents and got to spend two weeks there. We had beautiful weather. My parents found a bike for Ella on Craigs List, and she wanted to ride bikes every chance she got. They spent a lot of time on the trampoline. They would wake me up at 7:00am and ask- Can we go on the trampoline? They loved spending time with their Grandma, Papa, and Uncle Ikes. We were so glad to be able to spend this time with them.