I feel like my posts are kind of dull lately. Nothing exciting or deep, just pictures. Life is busy for some reason. Maybe it will slow down after school starts tomorrow. Yes…. TOMORROW!!! Eek! I was not thrilled with the kindergarten orientation on Friday. It was nice to see the classroom and other families, but we learned nothing. NOTHING! I still don’t even know what bus Lex will be coming home on tomorrow. The schedule was in the paper this weekend but none of the busses appear to stop near us on the way home. The people at orientation on Friday didn’t know. I’m going to be planting myself in the main office Monday morning until someone can tell me which bus he will be on and where it will drop him off. You’d think they would know that! And have a little sympathy for us first time parents! We worry. Lex, on the other hand, seems fairly indifferent to the whole thing. Not excited, but not outwardly nervous. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow though.

I was hoping to have a calm, quiet weekend so he would be rested and ready for school, but instead we had a busy few days. I was looking at the pictures on my camera and realized just how busy we’ve been.

Thursday we went to the science museum. The kids are so funny and often gravitate to the computers. Eve doesn’t even know what she’s doing, but she gets all excited when she finds the “back” button :)

Lex loves this... ball machine. I have no idea what it is really called. It's neat to see how his interest in things changes over the years. He has always loved this, but when he was younger it was just cool to watch, but now he works really hard to figure it out. It's neat to watch him.

This is an awesome exhibit! There is a computer nearby that you can change settings, like volcanic activity, or climate changes, and it changes this globe. Hard to explain, but it's awesome!

The highlight of the day... watching an employee reboot the computer. :)

Friday was orientation. I was hoping to learn about their daily schedule, how the lunch process works, which bus he would be one, etc… but in fact I learned next to nothing. Oh well. I guess we’ll learn all that soon enough!

Lex on the bus. We got a bus ride at the end of orientation. This is his nervous smile.

This was probably his favorite part of orientation. Playing on the playground afterwards! :) I think he will enjoy recess.

Upside down Eve

The boy in the middle was in Lex's pre-k class. He is in the other kindergarten, but they'll see each other at lunch and recess.

Friday afternoon…

Aren't they adorable!!! Lex was reading to Eve and after awhile they switched seats and he helped her play the games. I love them!!

On Saturday we went to Pease airport to see the Blue Angels fly. It was hectic and chaotic getting there (early morning, long drive, traffic… and I forgot the tickets!), but once we finally arrived and made it through security (which was a couple of boy scout volunteers!), then we had fun. The kids explored the planes and ran around. We followed close behind.

Lex and Eve holding hands at the airshow while we waited in line to board a refueler plane.

We spent a lot of money to get to this event, so we decided to conserve cash. Here are my poor pathetic kids wishing they too could go on the pricey fair rides. They got mad at me, but I was able to distract them with a PB&J sandwhich :)

The airshow was noisy!!

Sweet Eve. She did a great job, even though she was hot and missed her nap. She ended up falling asleep in the stroller on the way back to the car. We parked miles (2.1 according to Alan's GPS) away and hoofed it to the show and back.

It was neat to see everyone lined up in the shade. Every plane had piles of people under it, trying to get out of the sun. I wonder if they all scooted back or forward every now and again as the sun moved across the sky. That would have been funny to see. :)

Grampy Don brought along some earphones for the kids to try. Lex was hesitant at first, but after hearing a few eardrum bursting planes go by he decided to give them a try :)

The royal family arrives. Wait, that's just my family! Lex decided his favorite part of the day was getting to see the inside of a Delta plane.

I have a few pictures of the planes too, but nothing spectacular and I think this post has enough photos already.

Today we had a nice little visit from Molly and Julie. Jim ran in a half marathon nearby (go Jim!!) so Julie and Molly came to visit us. It was fun. The kids are so cute together.

Big pile on Lex

Hmm… my photo history from the camera tells me that that’s all we’ve done in the past few days. I’m sure I had a few deep thoughts in there and I bet the kids had a cute quote or two, but alas, they have been forgotten. I’m sure you’ll get some fascinating (or not!) kindergarten updates in the next few days.

Oh, also, rumor has it the trees are coming down tomorrow. Stay tuned for some sunny lawn pics!

Seems like we have a lot going on lately. Nothing fun and exciting, just stuff to occupy my mind. We had fun at the beach Friday (ok, that was fun and exciting!) and a quiet day Saturday, then Sunday headed down to visit the Johnson family. While we were there we got a call from our neighbor saying a huge limb from one of our trees had fallen on their garden, smashing their archway and damaging their cars (cosmetic damage only, luckily!) They have a “tree guy” friend who came right over to cut the limb up so they could get their cars out. We asked him to check out the rest of the trees on the property while he was there. Turns out the two pines in front are rotting on the inside and need to be taken down ASAP! We also have a maple in front with branches touching the roof. We had to trim them back when we first bought the house because the insurance company wouldn’t insure us otherwise! Seems the tree is thriving and needs another good trim. Sadly insurance won’t cover any of this. Turns out our “tree removal” coverage only covers trees already fallen. The nice insurance adjuster agreed that a little preventative coverage would make sense, but alas, it’s not offered. She also pointed out that now that the trees are a known liability, we may have trouble filing a claim involving them in the future. Great! So we will be having some serious tree work done around here ASAP.

There used to be a limb there.

There is a hole between the other two big limbs, behind this gaping hole, that is quite deep and has almost a foot of water pooling in it. Crazy. And scary!

The two pines on the left and the limb the furthest to the right in the picture all will be coming down. Our lawn will have a sunny new lease on life!

Here are a few more pictures from playing outside yesterday. The forecast called for rain all day, but it ended up being warm an sunny, which was a pleasant surprise.

The kids had fun playing with a ladybug they found. Not sure how much fun the bug had. Eve had it crawling all over her.

We finally got a sunflower blooming!

The sunflower house has grown so tall! I'm excited to finally get a bloom. I have to go out in the morning soon and get a picture of the morning glories. There are lots of them.

A quick chat while riding bikes.

Some of you may also have heard the saga of our washing machine lately. Something is wrong with it and it’s been making black, greasy streaks on the clothes. It started awhile ago and I thought maybe we left a crayon in a pocket or something, but it has progressively gotten worse and worse and now we are getting giant black smears across our clothes. I’ve tried everything I can think of (and Google for), but to no avail. Today we paid the Sears repair man to come out and take a look. Turns out there are parts behind the tub that are breaking and release grease into the machine. Good news is that it’s fixable, and one of the parts is even still under manufacture warranty… bad news is that it still costs a ton and won’t be fixed for two more weeks. I’ve been taking the clothes to the laundry mat for the past week or so and it looks like we have a few more weeks of that. Sigh. The kids think it’s a great novelty, but I suspect even they will be tired of it by the time we’re done!

Eve was fascinated and very much wanted to help the guy do his work. She even offered him a piece of pretend cake. We had friends over at the time and I think she thought he was just another playmate :)

Hmm… what else. Grocery shopping the the rain today. My kids used to be a joy to shop with but now they are just obnoxious. I’m not sure what went wrong. Instead of walking along nicely or riding quietly in the cart, they run around like crazy people, play with everything they can get their hands on, beg for stuff, etc. Last week’s trip ended with Lex pinching and hitting me while I was paying and then I had to carry him out, screaming and crying, while a nice store employee pushed the cart with Eve and the groceries. That was annoying. We had no fights at the store today, but I came home exhausted. I think I’ll be doing my grocery shopping while they are in school from now on!

This weekend we are going to a Blue Angels air show. That should be interesting. Then Monday is Lex’s first day of school. Oh, and this Friday is his kindergarten open house where we’ll get to meet his teacher and classmates, see the classroom, explore a school bus, etc. I’m hoping to get a school calendar and lunch menu as well. I was talking to Lex last night about buying lunch at school and he gave me this amazingly awesome look. A combination of disbelief and skepticism and amusement.. I don’t even know. Alan and I almost fell over laughing. I’m not sure Lex fully comprehends the duration of his school day. I suspect around lunch time he’ll be asking to come home. I hope it goes well!

While I’ve been writing this book blog post, I have also been up and down the stairs a dozen times dealing with Eve, who is giving me a fight like never before. Kicking, screaming, hitting, flailing, etc. She got no stories, no bath, no dinner… ugh. Maybe grocery shopping is just suddenly too stimulating for them or something. It was a fight on par with what Lex used to give us, but new for her. I hope this phase passes quickly!

Ok, this has gone on long enough. To end on a good note, here is a (somewhat blurry) picture from our rasslin’ match this morning. The kids were antsy so we had a good half hour of rolling around on the floor. At one point Lex noticed his reflection in the TV and said “this would make a cute picture.” Then he got up and go the camera!!! He giggled himself back into a similar pose and let me take a picture. Cool, huh?! Cute anyway :)

We had a super fun Friday this week!  The sun was shining and we piled into the car and headed to the ocean!  We met Julie and Molly at the beach and everyone had a blast.  The weather was warm and sunny, the water was cold and salty, and it was great.  The kids powered right through nap time and we stayed until 3:30 before deciding to move the party back to Julie’s house.  Eve and I took a little snooze in the car and were ready to party more when we got there.  Pizza and playing rounded out our lovely day.  Then back in the car for a long, tired, sandy drive home!

Lex loves the waves!

Stylish Eve

It was fun seeing sail boats on the horizon.

Can't have a day at the beach without lots of snacks. I didn't even pack lunch, just tons of snacks :)

Eve joined another family for awhile. She heard a baby crying and got very concerned. She went over to check on the baby and decided to stay awhile. The ladies loved her. It reminded me of family trips with Joyce :)

Isn't she adorable?!

He really loves the waves!

I thought it would be fun to get a nice family picture. I envisioned four of us smiling, sunny day, beautiful ocean in the background... well, not quite. Lex wanted nothing to do with it, Molly wanted everything to do with it, the wind was blowing, we were laughing... so this is what we got.

Not quite what I envisioned, but beautiful nonetheless! (PS. I'd take Molly in my family any day!)

See how we spend our afternoons?

It's hard to get them to stop together for a photo, so I did my best at an action shot :)

Rosy came to visit us for her birthday. Aren’t we lucky?!?!? I think we are! She stole me away for a Zumba class and a big sale at King Arthur. Then we had a little party with the grandparents. A good weekend!

I made a Hershey chocolate bundt cake with milk chocolate ganache on top and coconut shavings. Eve helped me decorate the cake.

Some for the cake...

... and some for Eve.

After dinner she opened presents, again with help from Eve.

Present time!

The birthday girl!