Nina Turns 9 and Memorial Day Weekend 2015

Since Nina’s birthday this year fell on Memorial Day weekend, we decided to take an extended weekend away at Hartfield and visit Busch Gardens and Water Country while we were down there.  We got to Hartfield on Thursday night then woke up early on Friday to start getting ready for our day at Busch Gardens.  The weather was beautiful – a perfect day to be at an amusement park.  While both girls enjoy the rides and the roller coasters, Nina is nuts about them.  Now that she’s over 52”, she can ride any of the rides in the park, and that’s exactly what she did.

Her two favorites were Apollo’s Chariot (which she rode 5 times) and the Griffon (which she got to ride two or three times).  I was actually pretty shocked that she wanted to ride the Griffon, and and was the smallest person in line by far, but she loved every second of it.

  

She’s definitely fearless when it comes to rollercoasters.  When I’m riding with her, I’m hanging on and screaming, telling her to hang on also.  Meanwhile, she’s riding with both hands in the air, having a blast.  The apple doesn’t fall far from her father’s tree on that one. 

After a long day at Busch Gardens, we rode everything at least once, and we were all completely wiped, but we had a really fun day.  Cayenne, who spent the day at a doggie day car near the river house, was also exhausted from the day.  I guess it’s quite stressful to spend your first day at day care – even if you’re a dog!

   

Saturday was Nina’s birthday, and the Williams family arrived to help us celebrate. 

  

It was another beautiful day to be on the river.  The sun was shining, the water was calm, and everyone seemed to enjoy the nice ride on the boat.  Lyla reminds me so much of myself when I was her age.  I loved to drive my grandfather’s boat – it was absolute favorite thing to do when we were on the water. 

 

We dropped off the boys back at the house so they could go play nine holes of golf, and we girls took the boat back out for some more fun.  Even though the water was cold, all the girls (including Mousey) got in the river to swim.   They laughed, jumped off the boat, danced to music, and generally had a lot of girl fun.

   

They were cold when they got out, but that didn’t seem to last for long.  It definitely was a fun girls’ outing!

By Saturday evening, we were ready to celebrate Nina’s birthday, so she got to open her gifts and have her birthday cake.  Nina is a frog lover, hence the cake theme for this year. 

On Sunday, we headed out for Water Country USA – a huge water park that is a partner park to Busch Gardens.  We rode water rides for the day on Sunday, then again, made our way back to the house pretty wiped out.  Sunday was our last full day in Hartfield, so after a good night’s sleep, we packed up on Monday morning and headed back home. 

We made it home with plenty on Monday left, so we unpacked out stuff and spent a few hours at our neighborhood pool.  I’d say it was quite a full weekend, but it was a lot of fun, and a it was a great way to celebrate Nina’s birthday and enjoy a holiday weekend with family.

Mothers Day 2015

Mother’s Day was a week ago, but I’m just now getting to our pictures from Mother’s Day.  I feel very blessed to be the mother to these two little girls.  They are both very different, but they are both very sweet and loving girls, and I am so thankful to have them as daughters to celebrate on Mother’s Day. 

The day wasn’t without its mishaps, but it was still a good one. Mark started the day off by getting donuts for breakfast (my favorite), and trying to get them from the brand new Duck Donuts that just opened in Herndon.  He left at 6am, ended up getting lost on the way, and once he got there (still before 7am), there was a line out the donut shop over 100 feet long (not counting the huge line inside Duck Donuts).  So…after waiting in line and not moving for several minutes, he bailed on his Duck Donuts idea and picked up Dunkin’ Donuts and headed home.  I didn’t mind as I love donuts no matter what, but we’ll have to find a way to get those Duck Donuts somehow.  Obviously they must be pretty good!!!  Then after church we set out for a hike.  The girls love hiking and were having fun exploring and trying to catch the maple tree seeds that were fluttering down from the trees every time the wind blew. 

Cayenne was having fun racing through the trees, finding a friend to play swim fetch with, and stalking out all kinds of interesting things. The second mishap of the day came when Cayenne was swimming with her new found buddy and got trapped behind a log in the water that she couldn’t get over. Rather than realizing that she could turn around and swim back around the other side of the downed tree, she just kept trying to get over it to swim back to shore.  That plan wasn’t working for her, and she was starting to really struggle, so since Mark was a ways down the riverbank and not able to see what was going on, I had to take off my shoes, roll up my pants as high as they would go, and wade waist deep in very mucky mud and water to lift our baby dog over the log and let her swim back to shore. So, we all got sufficiently muddy, but we had a fun hike on a beautiful day.

 

After our hike, we got showered and ready to head over to the Williams house for a Mother’s Day dinner with the family.  This was the site of our third mishap of the day.  We were bringing over an appetizer, meat to be cooked for dinner, wine, and a cake.  All except the cake were in an insulated bag.  We all loaded in the car, and upon arriving at the Williams house, we realized that the bag full of all the food wasn’t with us.  Mark remembered setting it down on the counter when he gave Cayenne a treat just before walking out of the house.  So, he let us out at the Williams house and drove all the way back to our house to get the food then returned – still with time to get the meat on the grill, so all ended up well there also. Dinner was great, and this was our opportunity to celebrate our wonderful mother and all that she means to our family.  We had a great evening together, and it was a nice way to round out Mother’s Day. 

So, even though the day had several mishaps, it’s only fitting for Mother’s Day in a way.  A typical day as a mom never has everything going perfectly.  There are countless mishaps that happen all the time, and the best way to make it as a mom is to not get too worked up about the mishaps, and keep on going, hoping it all works itself out in the end.  So, in that way, this day was very appropriate of a true ‘mother’s day’ where there’s normally lots of love, some mishaps, frustration at times, and always times of joy – when at the end of the day, it all just works itself out.

Last First Grade Field Trip

This past Friday was Lyla’s spring first grade field trip which means this is the last time we’ll ever be on a first grade field trip.  Hard to believe!!!  I got to chaperone this trip, and it was all about visiting monuments.  I snapped a few pictures with my camera phone, and even though it was sunny, the weather was much more chilly than we expected.  Thankfully, we were slated to do a lot of walking which helped keep us all relatively warm (since we didn’t dress for the chilly temps).

We got dropped off at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, then we walked over to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.

  

From there we walked to the Washington Monument and stopped for a snack and a class picture at the base of the monument, but it was incredibly windy at the base, so after a quick snack and picture, we set off to walk to the Lincoln Memorial.

 

By the time we got to the Lincoln Memorial, the wind had died down, and the sun was shining on the steps of the memorial.  It was warm and comfortable, so we hung out there for awhile, ate our lunch, and watched a dance performance being filmed at the base of the steps.  The kids got a chance to run around and play in the grounds near the memorial, then the bus picked us up there, and we headed back to school.  We had a good time, but we were exhausted when we got home!

 

Nina’s class had a short field trip the same day to the local high school to watch the first act of a play they were putting on.  It’s hard to believe the school year is winding down and planning for the end of the year is in full swing.  This school year has gone by so fast.  I can’t believe we’ll have a 2nd and a 4th grader in the fall. These girls are growing up fast.

Wax Museum and More Soccer

Last week, Nina’s class was one of three third grade classes to participate in a “wax museum” presentation.  Each kid was assigned a famous American, and he/she had to create a speech talking in the first person perspective of whoever was assigned. They had to wear a costume of their famous American, and they also had to make a poster presentation.  Once the museum was open, people could “press the button” on the students hand and they would begin their speech.  It was really cute.  Parents were invited, then students from different classes in the school came through the wax museum as well.  It was a lot of talking and presenting for the kids, but they all did a great job!  At least one little kid fainted and another threw up (maybe from the hot costumes, the nervous energy, etc.), but Harriet Tubman stood strong!   

 

Lyla had her second game of the season and the Blazing Badgers are doing great!  They played another great game, winning easily, but it started out a little disappointing for Lyla.  We had gotten all the way to the field, and the referee was checking over the kids before the game when it was discovered that Lyla didn’t have on her shin guards under her socks.  I had to hop in the car and drive back home, get shin guards and drive back, so she missed the chance to play in the first two quarters and most of the third.  However, when she got in the game she played so hard, scoring two goals and had a great assist.  While we weren’t proud of her for forgetting her shin guards (after being told to go up to her room and put them on), we were proud of her for not letting the setback keep her from having fun and having a great game!

   

A Fun “Fail”

Sometimes I like to do things just for the chance to have some spontaneous fun.  I think through a general plan,  but I don’t spend a lot of time looking into the little details.  Case and point, this past Monday.  The cherry blossoms are in bloom down in DC, and all the big festivities were this past weekend.  I wouldn’t have gone near downtown over the weekend for anything – too many crowds, tourists, etc.  However, I heard that Monday was going to be a beautiful day, and since I teach in the morning on Monday, I thought it would be a great day to surprise the girls with taking them out of school after I finish teaching and we’d all go downtown to hang out and check out the cherry blossoms.  I did this one year, and they had so much fun.  I guess the biggest difference was that the cherry blossoms were technically past their peak when we did this before.

Anyway, I got the girls out of school and off we drove to DC.  I will spare you the details, but we were in so so much traffic once we crossed over the bridge into DC, completely locked in between a million frustrated drivers, road closures, and tour buses.  Clearly, I was wrong about all the cherry blossom mania happening over the weekend only.  I knew it would be somewhat crowded, but I had NO IDEA that we would sit in the car for two hours and not find a single place to park anywhere within the conceivable vicinity of the Tidal Basin.

We literally had to abandon our idea of getting out of the car.  Even though we were so close that the cherry blossoms were literally drifting in our car windows as the breeze blew, there was not a single area open in which to park.  Tow trucks and police officers were having a field day!  Anyway, we stopped at Roosevelt Island on our way back – trying to make a little fun of the disaster, but it wasn’t really that exciting for the girls after the let down of the cherry blossom ordeal.  Oh well, we tried!

 

First Game of the Season

Today was the start of Lyla’s spring soccer season.  I had mentioned in a blog post last season that it seemed like Lyla had lost a bit of her spark for soccer.  Well, this season she is back to her old self.  She was having a blast, playing hard, and scoring goals.  Mark wasn’t planning to coach the team again this season, but the parents from last season requested that he come back and that the team stay together, so he decided to volunteer to coach again.  The girls had a great first game – picking up where they left off last season. 

We were happy to see Lyla’s enthusiasm again for soccer, and bonus for her, she convinced her team to take on The Badgers as their team name!