Got Mud?

A Glimpse of the Beach

Sunburned cheeks and mango ice cream chin. 

Putt putt victory dance.

 Happy 90th Grandpa!

Road Tripping

The kids & I arrived in North Carolina today after an easy, uneventful drive south from NY. Porter napped a bunch, Matilda read a lot and they both enjoyed some road treats.

Dead Perch

Matilda caught her first fish in Keuka Lake yesterday. It was already dead when she got it, but she caught it fair and square scooping it out of the waves with her net.

Captain Porter

Aunt Molly's friend came to visit us all at the lake yesterday with his pontoon boat. The amazing thing about boats is that you can actually let a 3 year old drive it without too much risk!

Crayfish Huntress

Watkins Glen Gorge Hike

Soaking wet and loving it!

Family Fun

Here are some of the decorations we added to our lake house;

Lake house!

Swimming three times a day, smores and fireflies.

Good Morning Pug

Good Night LA, Good Morning Newark

You Are My Sunshine

The stinky squirrels have been stealing all our sunflowers but this nice one has survived a few days.

Tzatziki Moustache

Porter liked his Greek dipping sauce so much that he drank the container dry.

Milestone

First phone call from a boy. Zoinks!

Red, White and Blue Day

We had all gone a few months since out last zoo visit so we headed over for a few hours on the morning of July 4th.

 Patriotic rhino butt.

They have shortened the hours to the Condor Station so it is rare Matilda gets in there to operate on all the plush condors who need bottle caps and bullet shells removed from their bellies. Very serious business!

For the evening fireworks display we headed over to the Culver City football field to run around like crazy and picnic until sundown. Crazy being the operative word!

 Blurry kids run by:

 Continuing the annual kettle corn tradition.

One of Tim's work friends was there and snapped this nice picture of Matilda from across the field.

Summer Book Worm

Matilda spent all morning today walking around with her nose buried in a book!

Wacky 4th of July

Happy 4th from all of us and our goofy girl especially!

Big Bear Camping

Like all the canoeing, our whole first camping trip to Big Bear was great. It was super close (2 hours drive) so despite a crazy, late start Friday night we still managed to get away for the weekend. Our campsite had lots of great boulders which kept the (mountain goat) kids entertained while Tim and I got to relax a bit. 

 On a hike we spotted this great blue tailed lizard who took his
time running off to hide so everyone got a good look. 

"Look a 3, hey, I am three!"

We made breakfast burritos for the first time camping this trip and they were delicious and awesome. I got the idea from this website of how to make them super simple at camp.

 Chomp.

It was quite cold at night (45) and got super hot fast during the day (85ish), so it was a tricky dilemma to get your hot chocolate drank down before the sun was too hot!

More food: mid-afternoon, post-canoe ice cream break.  

I varied our foil dinners this time to try someone's recommendation of ground beef instead of chicken breast. I do not recommend it. 

 Matilda, however, was smiley enough over hers. 

 Pie iron dessert experiment = highly recommended.   

 It seems that while Tim could not get to sleep he experimented with camera settings! 

 The Discovery Center in Big Bear had a lot of good taxidermy specimens to inspect/enjoy.

 We found this crazy swimming place on Sunday so the kids could get another dip in the lake checked off their list. I am very proud to say I passed the swimming test required to allow me access to the huge waterslide. No one else in the family ventured out with me, but they were all very pleased to watch my water adventure. It was way harder to climb up that thing that I imagined.

More Canoeing Fun

We had a lot of other fun camping in Big Bear this weekend, but after the camp cooking, boating might have been my favorite part. We brought our new pie irons with us and it turns out you can cook just about anything in a pie iron and it will be yummy! Especially Nutella with raspberry jam. Also, Camp McMuffins: