Puddle Jumping

Sometimes, it is the simplest things in life :)

Maggie joined in, but she was holding her dress up over her head to keep it from getting dirty. I will save that shot for her first date :)

Mother's Day 2013

After sleeping in until 7:15 AM! We spent our afternoon at a UVa Baseball game. The weather was absolutely perfect! As with every Mother's Day, I tried to get a decent family picture. Unfortunately, Beau decided to photo bomb this one :)

Mark made my new favorite cake for me, which is a pistachio cake with white chocolate meringue frosting. I hope it was easy to make because I will be requesting this one for my Birthday, too :)

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day!

Sick day

This time of the year is a little difficult for my little allergy sufferers! They are known to get an occasional mild fever in the afternoon, which causes us to have to miss a day of school if the "temperature" is noted by the teachers. I had wanted to take a day off to spend some free time with the kids, so this "sick" day (with temperatures in the low 80's) seemed like a perfect opportunity for all of us.

We walked down the street to the library to get some new books to read at night and stopped to check out the river along the way.



I am so thankful that Jack and Maggie love reading books.


After a quick visit to see their Granddaddy at work, we made our way to the park.






Of course, we had to check out the same river we saw earlier :)


After our long day, we made it back home, but I don't think anyone was interested in napping.


You have to love dirty little feet on the furniture!


We ended our day waiting in the back yard for Mark to get home.




It was a nice "sick" day for all of us :) It is hard to find time like this on the weekends when we are rushing to clean the house, mow the yard, get groceries, t-ball practice, tennis practice, church......you get the point!

T-ball

This year we signed Jack up for t-ball. After a chilly start to the season, we have been enjoying these sun-filled afternoons on the ball field :)



We have a great coach. He is so positive and supportive of all of the kids. Whenever I watch the coaches of these young kids, I am reminded how terrible I would be in their position! He really wants the kids to understand and love the game.


T-ball has a bit of a bad wrap with the parents in attendance at the games, but so far, we haven't seen anything disturbing.


Maggie has enjoyed running around in the field while Jack is playing or practicing!


We may have had to have more than one conversation with Jack about playing in the dirt during the game. You would think he has never seen dirt before!


And here is a glamour shot for my mom :)

Jack's 5th Birthday

We celebrated (and celebrated and celebrated) Jack's 5th Birthday over the last 3-4 days. Seriously, I don't know what I am going to do when he turns 16!

I "shot" his Birthday invitation in our kitchen in January. He had so much fun making a mess all over my kitchen floor!


I happened to capture some other shots that I ended up using for the back of his invitation.


Several weeks ago, I asked Jack if he wanted a "friend" party with his classmates from school or if he wanted to go to the aquarium in Virginia Beach. He decided on a trip to the aquarium and then asked if I would bring in cupcakes and a "craft"to his class. The cupcakes were a given, but a craft?! How do you say no?! Since the aquarium was set in stone, I decided we would play up the aquarium theme and I brought in supplies to make this with the kids.

My mom (and sister) came along as back-up and my mom read a book to the class.


Friday, we headed to Virginia Beach to visit the aquarium.

It did not disappoint!






I can't believe he is 5 years old now! I even registered him for Kindergarten last week!




To finish off the celebration, we had a family dinner on Saturday evening.






At 7:15 that evening, we popped in Hotel Transylvania (Thank you, Lauren!) and this is how I found them 10 minutes later!

A small snowstorm

After all of my complaining about needing some snow this Winter. We finally got a little bit....20 inches to be exact....and on my Birthday. Thankfully, I was able to enjoy 2 cups of coffee and watch the snow fall before our power went out!









This was a little more than we all needed, but the kids enjoyed it :)