Crystal Beach (part 1)

Finally!  For the first time in 3 weeks I am able to upload pics!  I am so behind that I don't even know where to begin!  I guess I'll start with our week at the beach.  Here are a few of the highlights...

{Poppy decided that she could put her own sunblock on.  Ha!}

{perfect weather.  every day.}

{Poppy loved being in the water, as always.  And Sam surprised us by loving the water as well!}

{of course, there was plenty of ice cream}

 {did I mention the weather was perfect?}

And this is what I found in Poppy's room on our last day.  It was dinner time and she skipped her nap to play at the beach all day...then she told me she was going to listen to an audiobook on her ipod...zzzzzz.

{exhausted!}

We had a perfect week at the cottage.  We always make the best memories while we're at the beach.  Looking forward to going back for another week at the end of the month!  I have a ton more pics, including Sam's beach birthday party.  Stay tuned!

I'm still here!  We came home from the beach this past weekend and we've been super busy ever since we walked in the door.  I ran my first 5k last weekend!  I've been sucked into a ton of really good books lately!  We're going blueberry picking bright and early tomorrow morning!  See?  Busy!

I have tons of pics to share, but we are still in the middle of the biggest hard drive backup in the history of the world.  I'm in the process of burning every picture and video to dvd before Marc backs them all up to our new external hd.  And it's taking forever!  Tons of pics to post soon!

 {calling someone on his "corn phone".}

 {he's been known to have a bit of a temper while on the phone!}

So apparently I needed more than just a day for recovery last week.  It's been so crazy hot and humid around here that we pretty much did absolutely nothing but stay inside with our air conditioning.  Bleh.  But it's finally getting nice out, and just in time because we have lots of fun outdoorsy things coming up! We're packing up for a little camping trip later this week, and then the day after we get back we are packing up for a week at the beach!  Woohoo!  Cannot wait!

Unfortunately, I still can't upload pics.  I guess we've used up all of our space on our computer (and our external hd) with all of the videos Marc has been taking with the flip.  Yeah, we need to come up with some sort of storage system for those.  We're thinking about getting this.  Does anybody else have it?  Sounds like it would be a perfect solution to me!  Hopefully I'll be able to upload once we get back from vacay.  See you then!

recovering

{wearing their camo jammies from Aunt Jeanna}

I'm trying to recover from a whirlwind week we've had.  We had a fun visit from out-of-town friends, we've been having bbq's and family dinners, a Korean picnic in Rochester, a wedding, a little trip to Toronto, going to see Harry Potter (sniffle, sniffle) and a little 24 hour flu bug for me.  Yeah, I'm tired.  Today is my recovery day.  And I do have pics from it all, but we're experiencing technical difficulties, so those will have to wait.

Oh, and did I mention that tomorrow is this chunky monkey's 1st birthday?!  Sniffle, sniffle.

summer days

..................

 {soccer cousins!}

And check out Poppy's new favorite thing...

 {practicing away...}

 {Mom!  I can't practice while you're taking my picture!}

Yup, we bought a piano last week.  Poppy is starting lessons in the fall and she is sooooo excited.  The lessons we are taking are very parent-involved, so I'm looking forward to it too.  And Marc stayed up all night learning how to play the song that the ice cream truck plays.  It was super cute.  So basically it's undecided right now who is the most excited about our new piano - we all really love it.

Tie-dye!

First, let me tell you about the audiobooks.  I picked a few up for Poppy last week at the library.  They're the ones that come with a picture book.  I uploaded the cd's to an old ipod and gave it to Poppy along with an old-school set of headphones.  This girl is hooked.  She absolutely loves being able to follow along with the books that she can't quite read yet.  The first couple of days, we literally had to limit the time she could listen to them because she wanted to listen all day long!  Now it's been a week and the novelty is slowly wearing off, but she still loves them.  I went online and requested a few more books - they definitely come in handy when we are in the car, or when I'm too busy to sit down and read with her myself.  

 And check out the super awesome tie-dye shirt Poppy is wearing.  We made it at our super awesome tie-dye party we had a few weeks ago...

We had the family over and everyone made their own shirts.  The kids had a blast doing it, and the shirts turned out unbelievably cute.  I've been seeing them on all of the cousins lately and I just love them!

 We even had tie-dye cupcakes!

The hardest part was that we had to wait 24 hours until we could unwrap the shirts and see what they look like.  But we'll all wear them to the next big family party and I'll snap a pic of the family cuteness.

4th of July

We had a great holiday spent at our usual waterfront location with family.  Taking pics wasn't too high on the priority list last night, but here are a few we did manage to snap...

 {Poppy has discovered read-along audiobooks and is officially obsessed.  Another post to come on that topic...}

 {Have I mentioned that Sam is officially mobile? At 11 months and 5 days he finally learned how to crawl! A new post to come on that topic too!}

 {activities that weren't documented - friendship bracelet making, boondoggle, frisbee, snacking, chatting, etc.}

I thought it was a miracle that we were able to get him to fall asleep in his stroller by 8:00.  Marc popped those earplugs in and he slept right through the fireworks!

The fireworks were the best we've seen in a long time!  Definitely worth the wait!  And Poppy just loved being able to stay up so late past her bedtime.  Hopefully Sammy will be able to stay awake to see them next year!