Family visits

We tried to get as many "Summer" things in the past few weeks as possible.  Lyla has learned to climb on top of the monkey bars like the big girls and even hang upside down.  This only freaks me out occassionally because her legs are so short that her feet barely hook under to hold her up.  She is also the lightest kid left in our house so she's the one that gets to try out aqua acrobatics.  I can't imagine trying to hoist Gwyn or even Celee up like that!  The girls also got to go celebrate our neighbor's 3 yr birthday party.  Who would have thunk my girls would enjoy a Spiderman party so much?  They wore those masks for the rest of the day.

     We were all super excited that my parents got to come stay with us for the week!  We took them to the farm and showed them the soon-to-be new house.  The girls enjoy having their grandparents around!

     We wanted to go to the Cheasapeake Bay with my parents, but we didn't want to drive to the places that people usually say are the best places to go, so we ended up at North Point State Park.  This is super close to the harbor, and near an island where they dump the dredgings from the bay, so it's not the most pristine of places.  But we had a good time.  We even found a blue crab only recently deceased.  ;)  This park is really neat because from 1908-1947 it was an amusement park with a trolley that brought people to and from Baltimore to the park.  (History!)  The trolley station is still there as a large pavilion and an old fountain that was used to filter all the drinking water at the park to make it taste better.

     The girls also pulled Pete's arm to help them build a "castle" out of driftwood.  Then of course they had to build another one.  I told Celee she looked like an ox in a yoke carrying that one piece of wood.  The weather was awesome and the girls had a lot of fun looking for treasure and building and playing with Papaw and Mimi.

     My parents had never been to Five Guys before, so we introduced them to that.  I remembered to tell them to only get one order of fries to split, but I forgot to tell them if you want a normal sized burger to order the Little Burger.  Needless to say we were all stuffed afterward.  Except Celee, who still won't eat beef.  I am easing back into it myself.

     Gwyn and Celee started soccer this week.  We were late for our very first practice and I only got this picture the whole time, so I'm not going to get the soccer mom award anytime soon I think.  Oh,well.  At least they had mostly what they were supposed to bring.  (I say mostly b/c when we got there one had forgotten to grab her ball.  One had only found one soccer sock, so she wore a normal mismatched sock on the other foot.  The mismatched sock thing actually looked pretty cute though - right up her alley in the style department.)  They have to pick a name for their team.  I like the Turbo Turtles or Green Lightening.  Celee likes Turbo Crocs.  We'll find out this week what the girls decide.

   
     History club was at our place this week.  So my parents went to walk the NCR trail while the History craziness decended on our apartment.  We are learning about early American cultures like the Olmecs, Anasazi, Moundbuilders, and Pueblos.  So we attemted to create our own Olmec statue heads.  It did not turn out the way I envisioned, but I think the kids learned something from it and gave thought into what artifacts early people left behind.   Bridget also did a nifty health lesson with the kids where they clipped pictures out of sale papers to put on their "balanced plate."

Opposite of a balanced plate, we went out for crab on my parents' last night.  We tried
out Ocean Pride in Lutherville this time. Maybe some Marylanders would know if it's just a better season for crab, or if it really was the restaurant that was better, but the crab we had at OP had more meat than what we had in April.  I did enjoy the flavoring better too.  Lyla just enjoyed whacking things with a mallet.

   



 We were sad to see my parents go on Friday.  It's really easy to slip back into the mindset that they are just around like they were when we lived in Mississippi - even though that was around 8 years ago.  I do wish our family lived closer, but in loo of that I'll take the long visits!