Here comes the leaves...

New Salem Preserves! What a view! Funny that Rebecca and I worked here 7 years ago.

It really is amazing how the cool weather can push that thought of the summer heat right out of your mind and get you thinking about what is to come.... 
We do love the fall.
The leaves have been slow to change around here. The ground has been so wet.  The trees have just been holding onto those leaves a bit longer.

This summer has been so fast. I look back and wonder where it went.
Lots of beach time, traveling with family, and fun in and around town. These kids are growing up so fast!
I think the girls had tons of fun! Between the Birthdays, town beach visits, Fleura Meadows playground, Boston Museums,Cape Cod, and Cincinnati, and much more I feel they had some good times.

Fifers Day

Town Beach, Lake Boone

Town Beach

Adie is showing more and more independence. Wanting to do more things on her own and being more adventurous. She has grown up so much this summer. Earlier this summer she picked up on riding the tricycle, just by watching her cousins visiting from Florida, but she soon stepped up into riding the bicycle, with training wheels so far. At her pre-school she gets to ride tricycles, bikes, and scooters. Next spring we may look to get a bike that attaches to my bike so we can go for longer rides.


















One fun day trip we took this summer was to the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Living a bit away from Boston keeps the commuting by train and underground exciting for the kids so we like to make a big day out of trips like that. The museum was fantastic; the stuffed animals, actual animals, were from all over the world. Plus some were of extinct animals. There were dinosaur fossils of both large and small dinos. Adie by the way, is set on being a paleontologist. But that is bound to change.... Who knows what interest will follow!

On the T

This summer we had some great family times. One trip took us to Cape Cod. We have gone to the past three summers now and have enjoyed it more and more. Much different this year with Junie being one year old instead of a few weeks old!  Both girls loved the pool! And, having the beach a little walk away was fantastic.
Robert, Kim, and the twins, Ryan and Kailey came up from Tampa.  The kids have so much fun together, only one year apart, they are hilarious.

Beach Time!!!!

Duck boat ride in the rain

Adie had taken swimming lessons at our town beach earlier this summer, but still did not fully know how to put it all together. While on the Cape though, with the pool in the backyard, she swam every day and did learn how to swim all by herself.  Then when we went to Cincinnati to see my brothers family and Adie was a little fish.  It was so fun to see her swimming with Ella Jo and John William.
While there we went to the Cincinnati Zoo and unlike the Harvard Museum of Natural History we got to see lots of live animals.  All the kids loved it.

Awwwww

 Adie had her big 4th birthday in September.  She requested a dinosaur themed party..  We had a t-rex pinata. The cake had a volcano sticking out of it as well.  The weather could have been a bit better, but we still pulled off the dinosaur egg hunt outside.
She started her first soccer team practice and games a few weeks ago and is enjoying it.  She and her friend  are on the same team.  It is so fun watching the swarm of kids around the ball.

Birthday Girl!

Dinosaur Cake... Check out the Volcano

 Little Junie has been walking for about 2 months now. She is 15 Months and moving fast!  I forgot how fast they pick things up once they actually figure it out. Now she is practically running through the house.  She can bend over and pick things up and also stand up all by herself from sitting.

She's Cruisin now!

She loved her birthday balloons!

The other thing that is pretty cool is how much she can say.  She has heard us read books to Adie and now she walks over to the book shelves and picks up books and brings them to us saying, "mommy ree, or daddy ree."  She has words for pumpkin and broccoli.  It is actually the same word though, for her, gopilgi.  She loves a book that Adie got for her birthday called  "Pout Pout Fish."  Junie will pick it up and bring it to us saying, "Pow pow fee," She loves it...


The two girls are so funny. now that Junie is getting more and more mobile they are able to chase each other around.  It will be so fun to see them playing in the leaves jumping in the piles of leaves.

 Too Cute!!!


Last weekend we took a great trip into Boston to the Museum of Science.  I really feel Adie is just on the edge of being super interested in all the curiosities of nature and life.  She is so inquisitive... The other day she asked, "how did the first tree grow if there were no seeds for it to grow from?" What's next?!

Full scale T-Rex!

Worlds largest Van De Graaff machine.  Adie is Almost ready for this.. We had to leave during the show..  It was Quite loud!

Loves turtles!

Our garden has been pretty good this season.  It is fun figuring out what works well in the garden, and what we really like to eat from it.  We did a bit more flowers this season, which was fun since Adie liked to gather flowers and bring them into our house and to friends houses. We got a decent batch of pumpkins from our garden this year and I know Adie and June have had fun seeing them grow.

The girls really loved the garden. She loved seeing the green beans, pumpkins, and  flowers.

  We'll have to do more gourds next year, they are fun!












The flowers were a hit this year. 

What a fun summer. I still think that the fall is the best time of year.  This year it will be a time to build a deck on our house, and enjoy the cool weather....
Keep following.

Summer is almost here!

Although it is still spring here it sure feels like summer.  The last two days here had temps in the 90's!   It felt like being back in the south.  We are so excited that summer is really just around the corner.  For us, summer means trips to the town beach, playing in the yard with the sprinkler, taking after dinner trips to the local ice cream store, Ericksons, getting the garden planted and maintained, sandals, and one of Adie's favorite thing, fresh berries and fruits!

 

They just love to swing!!!

The family.

It has been pretty eventful since my last posting in April.  Adie's cousins, Ryan and Kailey came from Tampa for a long weekend.  It was really great to see them interact together.  That was when Adie decided, by herself, to ride the tricycle.  She was trying to keep up with her cousins Ryan and Kailey zooming around the picnic table at Tony and Pauline's new home.  With that being said, Tony and Pauline moved down the street from their former house to a "Deck Home" with a totally different feel. Great choice!

We had such a great weekend when
Rebecca's brother and family came into town.





 
I know I say it every time, but it is so great watching these two girls of ours grow up together.  Junie is now pulling herself up and walking along anything she can grab.  She has started to walk solo with the walk behind toys that allow her to push them along.  Junie is so funny at imitating whatever Adie does.  Adie can get her to do all her tricks like reaching out and touching specific body parts, head, toes, nose, ears, etc.  One hilarious thing they do is the amazingly loud back and forth chorus of screeches, wobble wobble noises, and some very interesting guttural sounds.

Peek.....

Aboo!

Partners in crime.

They are so cute when they play the crawl around the house chasing game.  One thing I know that is in the near future is going to be Adie dressing up Junie.  Adie has plunged head first into this overwhelming phase of dress up, fairy/ princess world.  I had no clue a three-and-a-half year old could be so into clothes, jewelry, and makeup.  She even has her first pair of sparkly, jewel laden shoes.  AHHHHH, where is this going??? Makes me wonder what the teen years are going to be like.

Toothy Roothy.

Adie had her first dance recital last weekend.  She was the youngest performer in the whole show.  I have to say, she was awesome!!!  She was so expressive, moving her arms, watching them wave back and forth, wiggling her little hips, and prancing around the stage.  Just like a real performer, she wasn't overly aware of or distracted by the crowd.  Just like Angelina Ballerina gets flowers after a performance, she got lovely flowers too.  Now she wanders around the house mimicking the older girls dances that they did for other scenes.

Hammin' it up.

True star form!

Adie has moved into the next age group class of Pre-school, Pre-school 2. Now she is one of the young kids in her class.  She really loves the lessons they learn about.  One time it was dinosaurs.  When we would go to the library to get books she would want books on dinosaurs.  But these weren't the usual cartoon or silly dinosaur books.  She would want books that were very technical, dealing with different periods of geologic history and millions of years, very abstract for a 3 1/2 year old.   The funny thing though is that she really wanted to hear about it and she would sit with us listening carefully while we read these books.  She loves her books!  At pre-school they had an art open house to show off the different projects that the kids made at pre-school.  Adie and her best pre-school friend Kelly play so well together.  I think they are both going through the great dress up phase together.  They even have the same shoes!

Adie and Kelly.

Showing off her art.

Check out Adie's caption on where the dinosaurs went.

Our garden is really looking good now.  The weeds are pretty tame, being so early in the season definitely helps.  This year we added 4-5" of compost/soil mix  to our beds to help out and see how the plants do.  Adie has really been such a fun helper in the garden. Unless she is set on swinging, then there is no changing her mind.  Thank goodness for the swingset.  We planted a lot more flowers this year than last.  One of our beds we have made into a wildflower bed; we'll see how that goes.  I have an fake owl perched on a post in the garden now because the chipmunks and red squirrels were being very brave.  I have to say, I have not seen one back in there.  I simply move the owl every week or so.   The next step would be a  fake coyote with an owl on its back!

Well, check back in again.  Soon Junie will crest the 1 year mark.  Time sure goes fast.
Until next time, enjoy the sun!