NY Day Four: Tee Pee Sleepout

We decided to use the super moon tonight as our excuse to sleep out. The kids were totally freaking out about scary wild animals at first as we drove out in the little tractor. After a few minutes settling in they relaxed. I asked them both to be totally silent for 30 seconds to record the noisy pond frogs and Porter fell asleep. I guess all that pond swimming wore him out. 

NY Day 3: Swim Milestone

What turned out to be our biggest event today was a visit to Aunt Gia's family pool.  Porter finally had that "ah-ha! moment" and can be counted as a swimmer! He was so excited and proud of himself, as were all of us! He wasted no more time in the shallow end and fearlessly threw himself off the diving board repeatedly. 

We also continued in our vacation eating habits with a fabulous meal at a downtown restaurant that Brian recommended. We discovered that Gio likes calamari as he pounded through the platter. 

We also had a few oysters.

I sampled Poutine for the first time; it was deliciously bad for you. 

As if that were not enough saturated fat for the day, we squeezed in a visit to inventory the fleet of ice cream trucks and sample their wares. 

NY Day Two: Maid of the Mist

In all our NY travel, we had never managed to take the kids Niagara Falls until today.

We met some dear old friends there for a touristy ride on the Maid of the Mist. All suited up and ready in their souvenir ponchos:

Lucky kids got to eat some Kinder-contraband while we waited for the boat to get going.

The soaking was quite thorough, so most of my pictures during the ride are on the water camera still, but here's one quicky iPhone shot of a happy soaked Porter. 

He was super excited to get wet and even took his poncho off for a while in an effort to get extra soaked. Once the water was coming in sheets, he relented and asked for the flimsy cover back!

On the walk back to the car we found another bit of water play and they declared it as good as the boat ride. Any water play is good enough it seems.

NY Day One: Cousin Fun

Content plane reader.

Water table fun in the rain = double the sogginess.

Perfect seat for watching World Cup.

Matilda as "The Statute of Ice Cream"

Today's main event: ice cream with family.

Random Model T

These won't last long in the backyard now that we've discovered them!

Only Slightly Excited

These kids were off the wall bonkers all day as we packed up for our big family camping trip! Watch out, big fun ahead.

Preschool Graduate

First Day:

Last Day:

 Oh my heart, these years are going too fast.

Hello, Summer Break!

Yesterday was Matilda's last day of second grade. She was justifiably off the walls. She also would like you to please refer to her as a third grader now. 

Her plans for the summer include reading too much, hopefully to the point of developing bedsores. To get a head start on that goal, she woke up at 5:45 this morning. To further exacerbate the excitement, any moment now her teacher is scheduled to stop by with some homemade biscuits as a thank you present for our family's volunteer help in the class! Lucky all around I think.

Happy tired kids

Sun fried and pooped from a day at Disneyland! 

Caution: Super Hero Training In Progress

For Porter's big 5th birthday party this year, he choose a super hero theme and we ran with the idea. After lots of fun creative work, a bit of stressful list making and a fair amount of last minute scrambling, it all came together quite nicely for a fun time in the park today.

The trainees all arrived full of good spirit and energy to undertake their super hero studies.

We had a menu of yummy snacks, carefully chosen by Porter.

Porter's tongue cannot stay in his mouth if he is concentrating.

The first task at hand was batarang practice. We made these cardboard batarangs and then mounted some villainous characters on the balloons for target practice. 

It turns out cardboard batarangs can work well enough to pop a balloon, as one skillful trainee discovered. Thankfully the only attendee that was whacked in the face by an errant batarang was an adult who suffered no injury. Yikes!

Next up after the batarang toss, was a Kryptonite find. We did our best to protect Superman from the dangerous Kryptonite (aka gravel painted bright green). I am sure many parents still have some rocks in their purse, as most kids asked the take their find home.  

An obstacle course was the real centerpiece of our training today. First a dash through the tire obstacle, followed by a crawl through the blue tunnel. A light breeze kept blowing the tunnel away down the lawn, which made for a greater challenge as kids were trying to crawl into a moving target often!

Then, the kids got to hone their skills with a walk across the balance beam.

The final obstacle was crawling under this dangerous field of lasers!

As a totally unplanned bonus, some random family at the park had this giant inflatable ball they were rolling down the hill in. They were amazingly tolerant of our intrigued crowd and graciously hosted dozens of trips down the hill. 

For cake fun this year, I practiced my skills with fondant again and made a Captain America shield to "crack" the cake. Rather than wrestle with a large cake, I decided to just make a regular sized one and add on cupcakes to have enough treats to feed the hoards. 

My 5 year old boy! He had a super day. 

Matilda loves to smother her brother with attention and love anytime that he is in the spotlight. In those moments she can be so super sweet and proud of him. (Having the cupcakes also turned out to be a stroke of genius, because it allowed the kids to help themselves quicker and took the pressure off for cake cutting time. I think I have had nightmares about that moment after you finish singing Happy Birthday, when every kid at the party starts yelling about how much they want cake and I am the person standing there trying to dish cake out as fast as possible. Talk about high pressure.)

For days now Porter has been keeping tabs on this fondant shield as it dried in the kitchen. He was very excited to finally sample it.

After a few bites he started sharing it around with everyone. 

It seemed like some sort of super hero communion as the kids each took a bit off to partake. 

Another big party done. 

Phew. Super fun, but I feel bad for poor Tim who has his birthday next week. I totally love pulling these parties together, but I think all my birthday steam is gone for a moment. 

5

Day 1

Five!

 Happy Birthday Big Boy!

Hoppy Easter

Our stay at a farm ranch near Zion coincided perfectly with this rabbit-centric holiday. As we checked in, Matilda asked whether we could pet the bunny in a pen. The clerk told us that most of the bunnies get out and that they would be happy for the help of capturing them. Any bunny we could catch we were welcome to hold and put back in the pen! This was basically a dream come true for the kids. All four of us had a blast capturing the super soft little rabbits. 

Matilda has now officially added pet bunny to her wish list. 

Vegas Baby!

We stopped over in Vegas for a night on our way to Zion National Park. The kids are appropriately awed by the craziness of this town.

Matilda just observed, "Our house is nothing like this place!" 

I Object.

13.1?

A 6am start time is officially too early. The plus side is it's so dark still that they can pull off the whole Hollywood spotlights in the sky effect!