First Day of School!

Today is Sophie's first day of school! She was totally excited to go. I drove her today, and she was too shy to go in by herself so Sam and I tagged along for a bit, but I'm hoping she did better after I left (I'll find out in an hour).


Her new car seat arrived this week (this one that I talked about here), so the ride to school was her first time using it, and Sam's first time in his big boy chair. Boy was he happy to be out of that infant seat. It was just too reclined for his taste, and he enjoyed this seat much more. And Sophie loved her chair "that looks like Ellie's". She liked how it was lower than her other one and I like that it's still nice and padded for her.


Also, it being the first time in 3 months I've been without 2 kids, poor Sammy Boy had to endure a chain of errands with me. I have a list of places I've been putting off going to until school started up again.

He didn't quite make it home conscious.

Yay for Monsoons!

Here in Arizona, we tolerate the ridiculous summer weather for a couple months anticipating the relief that monsoon storms bring in. They're a nice half-way point to our summer.

This week, we were even lucky enough to have some daytime showers. Here's hoping we get more this weekend!

The Boy is Turning One Soon

Sometimes we pretend that our neighbor's front lawn is our yard. Thanks Mimi!

Sam will be one this month (!), which puts me on the hunt for a car seat (Happy Birthday Son! Here's your new car seat!). Actually, we're giving him Sophie's convertible seat and we're planning on switching her to a 5-point booster. I think I'm going to go with CSN stores again since they were so good to me before (remember, they have baby stuff, dining room sets, shipping supplies, you name it). Also, a lot of their more expensive items come with free shipping.

I'll let you know how it goes.

New England Part VII: Boston

And finally, our last full day in New England was spent in Boston. We drove to a train station about 20 miles from where we were staying, took the train in to town and then the subway into downtown.

When we emerged, we found ourselves right near Boston Common and a downtown art fair. It was lunch time, so we started looking around for lunch. I knew I had found my meal when I spotted a street cart with a line of about 10 people waiting. It turned out to be an Armenian chicken kebab place and it was DELICIOUS. As in Jake-regretted-his-meal-choice-and-also-wanted-to-go-there-for-dinner delicious.


We ate our lunch in the park and then headed to the playground to let the kids run around. Unfortunately, it was sprinkling on us, so we didn't change them into their suits to play on the splash pad or in the frog pond. The rain was a nice relief from the humidity though, so we were glad to have it.

After the playground, we walked over to the Public Garden and rode the swan boats.

Sophie and me making silly faces at Jake

Well, two of us rode the swan boats. The boys stayed ashore because of this:

Afterward, we tried to follow the Freedom Trail for a bit, but then changed our minds and walked over to the historic Beacon Hill neighborhood. It's full of beautiful brick and brownstone homes and brick sidewalks. This is Acorn Street. It's a working cobblestone street and it was quite lovely.


Our vacation was just awesome. Every day we did something new and exiting. We're so lucky to have been able to go on this trip. Thank you Mom & Dad for being so generous and for letting our whole family have this experience. We'll never forget it!

New England Part VI: The Beach

We decided to spend one afternoon at the beach. Sam was sleeping as we were getting ready, so we didn't get a chance to change him into his swimming suit before we arrived. He woke up just as we set everything down on the sand, so I stripped him down to get him ready. Before I could stop him, he was in the sand testing it out. Apparently it's delicious because the next several minutes had him doing this:

Hand over hand sand eating. Crawl a little, grab a handful of sand to eat, crawl some more, eat some more. There was no stopping the kid.

Eventually Jake took him down to the water to get rinsed off and we were able to get a suit on him.

Some exciting local news took place the day we played in the ocean. 150 people were simultaneously stung by a gigantic jellyfish just down the street from where we were.

Luckily we were all safe and didn't even hear about the incident until we were safely back home. After we had been at the beach for a while, Sam decided to get some alone time. He crawled away from me all on his own, and then just sat watching the water for a while. He frequently likes to be by himself, so I just let him enjoy it.

New England Part V: Canobie Lake Park

Our funnest day of the trip was our day at Canobie Lake Park. It's an amusement/water park in New Hampshire, and it was just FILLED with things that Sophie loved to do. There's an entire Kiddieland section with rides only for kids 48" and under. She loved going on those, telling us that we were too big for her rides.

Kiddie Cars

Dune Buggy









Flying Rooster (Sophie yelled out
"This ride is TOO FAST!" the whole time)

Spinning Cars

Caterpillar
(Sophie & Jake appear at about 14 seconds)

We spent several hours in the early afternoon riding all the rides, and then changed into our swimming suits to go on all the wet rides and into the water park area.

Can you spot Sophie in this picture?

We were so glad we decided to go. Both kids were fast asleep the second we got on the road home (one may or may not be asleep in this family picture). It was a great day!

New England Part IV: Candlepin Bowling

On Monday, all of my siblings and their kids went candlepin bowling. It's different from regular bowling in that the pins are thinner, the balls are smaller, and you get 3 chances to knock down your pins instead of 2. Oh, and it's awesomer in that with my high score of 82, I beat everyone else there.

We Interrupt this Vacation Recap . . .

. . . to give you a hair cut.

Sam Before:
Sam Now:

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging.

New England Part III: Reunions

While in New Hampshire, we got to attend family reunions from both sides of my dad's family. We met new people, got reacquainted with our cousins, and just enjoyed socializing.

And these girls couldn't have been happier together.

This was Sophie's favorite part of the reunion:

She somehow convinced Granddad to come into our cottage, sat him down, and read an entire book to him. Luckily, I think Granddad enjoyed it too.

New England Part II: The Cottages

After visiting family in Massachusetts, we jumped onto the Seacoast highway and headed north to New Hampshire. My whole family stayed in separate cottages with views of the ocean.



Our closest access to the water was at a rocky beach, but it was still fun to explore. We walked over there several times on our trip to get wet, play in the waves, and for some of us, pop salty shells in our mouth.

New England Part I: Granddad's House

We just returned from an incredible trip to New England. (if you're really interested, you can see more pictures here, here, and here) We started the trip with a red eye flight to Boston. For some reason, we thought it would go really well.

Instead, we all experienced our first Whole-Family All-Nighter! Luckily it didn't phase the kids for several hours, and at 7am (4am Arizona time) my kids were happy and playing and running around Granddad's back yard.

Right before Cathy took this picture, she said "Sophie, show me your stick!" and so here we have Sophie proudly displaying her stick for Cathy. (click to zoom)

Makeup Artist

Sophie has been interested in my makeup recently. Today, she decided to practice with some gel-like eyeshadow that I have.

The key, she found, was to REALLY dig it into her eyebrows.

Swimming Lessons

Sophie, lover of all things swimming, just finished up a month of swimming lessons. They were at the local pool and she was in a class that ranged from 2-5 kids every day with 2 teachers, so it was really nice.

Perfecting her kicks

Pushing off

Kicking back to the wall

She learned how to hold her breath under water, retrieve objects on the bottom of the pool, float on her back for several seconds without any help, and can kick and glide across the pool with assistance. It was a great experience for her and gave her a lot of confidence to be in the pool without her floaty.

And now, despite our best sunscreening efforts, the girl is DARK.