Memorial Day Weekend

We went back to the beach on Sunday - only this time we found the beach we wanted to go to last weekend: North Hampton Beach in NH. It really was quite perfect, although maybe 3 degrees - no more, no less - too chilly. We played on the beach, ate lunch on the beach (thanks to the seafood shack across the street) and then went for a naptime drive up the coast and took backroads to look at all of the old houses while Sebastien slept. Genevieve was too busy reading and singing to be bothered with napping, apparently. We ended up at a park in Portsmouth (well, New Castle to be exact) then we were on our way to another side-of-the-road seafood shack before heading home. It was a spectacular day.

 Monday morning we went to our town's parade. The kids seemed to enjoy it, but boy do I miss parades from when I was a kid in South Bend. I remember that the parades lasted for at least an hour and I'd come home with a baseball hat full of candy. Why does no one throw candy here? Do they still throw candy in South Bend? Who knows. There's probably some childhood obesity reason behind it...sigh. Anyway, I digress. After seeing the boy scouts, girl scouts, and middle school bands, we headed home for another lazy day of lounging in our backyard until heading to Dracut for dinner. If only every weekend could be 3 days long and this great!

Lovin the Lawn

On Saturday of our Memorial Day weekend, we spent most of the day outside in beautiful weather. We busted out the good old sprinkler and baby pool and I was pleasantly surprised that Sebastien loved to play in the water. I guess I always knew that this day would come (hooray!) but after 3 summers of him hating water, I was beginning to get discouraged. I can't wait now to take them to the splash pads in our area.

 Long after Genevieve had had enough and I brought her inside, Sebastien was still out there playing in the water. This picture was taken from inside.

 Dan had the ever-pleasant job of cutting the lawn on Saturday. You may remember that after last year we had no lawn left from the summer drought of 2010. Dan replanted our front lawn with a drought-hardy mix of clover, special grass, and some other stuff. This year, the clover is blooming, so our entire yard has pretty white flowers....not to mention a zillion honey bees and bumble bees.

 This was the lawn after only ONE WEEK! It grows so fast.

 A honeybee doing his thing.

First Beach Day

Sunday was our first beach day of the season.

80 degrees and sunny and a Sunday. We couldn't pass it up. Not surprisingly, the kids loved it and I can't wait to begin the beach season.

At some point this weekend, we saw this wildflower on our walk. It's a pink ladyslipper. They are rare flowers
 and I like them a lot. Too bad it's illegal to transplant them, or it would be in my flower bed right now.

Sunday evening we went to Dracut for dinner and to celebrate (a week late) Mother's Day. Here's Grandma showing off a picture the kids made for her.

Family Playtime

We had a lot of family playtime this weekend. Friday night we went to the park with Becca. She is going to England and Spain today actually and she spent some time with the us before she left. (She'll be gone for 20 days . To say that I'm jealous is a severe understatement.)

Anyway, since she had her awesome camera with her, we came away with some great shots.

 Next year's Christmas card below?

 Saturday, Dan found a kid baseball mitt for Sebastien at a garage sale. We already had a pink one from my neighbor so now all 4 of us have one! Mine is a little on the small side since it's from 5th grade but I can manage ok...especially with the soft baseball we were using.

Gwynnie, you could play too if you would just stay in the yard.

A Baptism, Soccer, and A Masterpiece

This weekend we went to our godson, Joshua's, baptism. He was a perfect angel. As far as the other 4 kids, well we (barely) made it through without any of them getting burned by candles, breaking the glass jars of oil, or knocking over ceramic angels, so in that sense, it was a success. We had a nice time at the O'Donnell's house afterwards too.

This morning Sebastien attended his first of four "mini-sports" classes at the park. Today's sport was soccer. Here he is (in yellow) stretching.

After soccer, they played with a tarp. Genevieve was whining the whole half hour to go play with the kids. I felt so bad. Look at her (in pink) in the picture below.

Sebastien only napped one day last week. Sigh. I think at 3.5, his naps might be over. I keep trying though. Today while he was supposed to be napping, he went into the guest bedroom, got the highlighters out of my desk and created this masterpiece. It was really hard to be mad at him. I didn't realize he could write his name (well, minus the forgotten "T") by himself without me telling him what letter comes next. I admit that I'm unabashedly proud. :) 

Sunday Hike

Yesterday (Saturday), we had 10 yards of bark mulch delivered to our house to spread around our flower beds, gardens, etc. Dan worked from basically sun up to sun down with some help from me and the munchkins (in my defense, I had a baby shower to attend in the middle of the day). Shockingly it was all done before the kid's bedtime. We rewarded ourselves this morning by going on a hike. There are so many conservation areas, town forests, parks with trails, etc around here that I think we could hike a different place each day for a month and never drive more than 15 minutes to get there. Today we went to a conservation area in Pelham that had a small enough loop for the kiddos to do. 

Sebastien was very excited. He's been watching a lot of Dora the Explorer lately and she does a lot of trail hiking and map consulting. Sebastien insisted on holding the map and telling us where we were going. Genevieve (surprise, surprise) did a lot of singing as she walked. 

 This was a little stream flowing under a big boulder (named Phoebe Rock, according to the map, and delighting Sebastien) that I thought was pretty.  

 Shortly after seeing this rock and depsite my preventative measures, I discovered a tick on Sebastien neck. Dan, prepared as always, got it out with tweezers.  Sebastien is not a fan of the tick removal process and he was pretty upset. Luckily getting to then ride in the kid backpack consoled him. (Side note, Genevieve had a tick in her thigh and thought it rather amusing to watch Dan pull it out.) (Second side note, I HATE TICKS!)

Here is Dan carrying Sebastien.

 And here's me carrying Genevieve. We eventually put her in the backpack for our own sanity. There's only so many times she could stop and do the hokey-pokey before we realized we were never going to finish the trail at that pace.

 Some pretty scenery as we finished up the hike.

Happy Sunday Everyone!

(Hiking = Long naps, and now I have plenty of time to post these things!)

A Couple Little Diddies

Here's a couple musical numbers from my singing little queen.

From "The Sound of Music"

This one is a Genevieve original. She sings it all around the house, and as far as I can tell, she didn't hear it from any TV shows. It definitely sounds like her.

Sworn In

I never thought I'd be associated with local politics - especially in New England where it's all very involved and unique compared to the rest of the country. Despite my former persuasions, I found myself being sworn in last week to my position of Moeckel Pond Village District Clerk. Dan was sworn in as Commissioner. This is all in an attempt to get the pond back behind our house. (It was drained last year because the old dam was judged unsafe.)  Things are going well in that regard, but it's taken a lot of paperwork, town meetings and jumping through silly hoops to get there. We have a long way to go, but we're thinking 2 more years until we have water in the pond again and a new dam. Until then, our political careers carry on.