story time

we went to story time last week with the aina girls and had a fun time.

story time is always fun and the librarians do such a good job!

after story time our little pretenders decided to pretend they were miss jill and miss alana.

it was so cute. :)

and then little miss so-and-so had to get in on the action.

poor little franks is usually the odd man out.

thankfully she doesn't seem to notice.

or care.

then we thought up an even better photo op and put the babies in front of them to be their pupils.

at first they were rapt with attention.

then laney leaned over to ellie and was all like

"let's blow this joint!"

 

 

but ellie was having too much fun so laney turned to me to save her.

and yes, the silly little things, like making goofy picture captions, do make me ridiculously happy.

so there.

 

grandpa ray update

grandpa seems to be doing great in ghana.

*i spy a grandpa ray, smack dab in the middle

he bought a bike and after a few snafu's, got it running great.

he taught some locals how to ride.

he's got a pesky rooster that he'd like to have over for dinner.

i mean, have for dinner. ;)

 apparently they don't do that in africa but grandpa would like to teach them.

sounds like he's making lots of friends, including kwame, who is practicing twi with him every evening.

 

 

he's busy, busy, busy teaching junior high math and science. he teaches in english so there's always a question of how much comprehension is going on.

and apparently he's been cutting a rug too.

 

we are so proud of all he's doing and love reading all of his adventures!

(you can check out his blog too if you'd like)

lighthouse cruise

laura and i have been riding high on our lighthouse trip for a few months now.

 a few months ago i had found a lighthouse cruise that the calvert marine museum offers, but there weren't any more being offered this season, so i put our names on a waiting list.

then they called and said they had room, but on a sunday cruise, bummer!

then they called and said that because they'd had so much interest, they were adding another saturday cruise, hooray!

*cool workshop at the cmm

we signed up months ago and have been so excited!

*more of the cool workshop.

 i totally want to get christian a job in a workshop like this, wouldn't that be the coolest?

we rode on a charter boat called never e-nuff.

there's laura to the right of the boat.

 

i looooove asking people to take pictures, it's so funny.

trying to get us with the lighthouse.

take 2.

and take 3.

drum point lighthouse behind us.

soooo fun!

we all hung out on the open end of the boat until we got going too fast and the water was soooo rough that we were getting soaked. we were trying to get a picture of the waves coming up and over the boat as we powered through them, but it was kinda difficult.

the first off land lighthouse i've seen, point no point.

and all the water splashing us.

it was so amazing!

there's just something about this lighthouse that i have loved since i first learned about it.

and it was fabulous to see it out there in the water by itself.

so.cool.

from there we kept powering south to point lookout.

planning on climbing her on oct 6. :)

fyi.

the water was so rough that we had to skip smith point. :( super bummed! but by that point i was starting to feel sea sick, so even though i would have pushed through the pain to be able to see that lh, i was kind of okay with skipping it.

 

our next stop was smith island for lunch. we had some extra time before lunch, so laura and i meandered the island.

they had a cute little school.

and a cute little motel
($65 a night in case you were wondering)

and a cute little cemetery.

smith island is famous for their smith island 10-layer-cake.

in 2008 it even became the maryland state dessert, so it's pretty big time. ;)

the funny thing about smith island, it runs totally on island time and nothing was open.

 like, it's saturday afternoon, a tour boat shows up on an island that 300 people live on, accessible only by boat, and nothing is open. not the gift shop, bakery, tiny grocery store, post office, not even the restaurant we were to eat lunch at. they didn't open for us until 11:30.

very odd little place.

anyways, we ate the famous cream of crab soup (delish!), crab cakes, and of course a big old piece of smith island cake, and were on our way!

next up was the solomons lump lighthouse.

then the holland island bar lighthouse.

that's not really a lighthouse anymore, but it had the coolest story.

a keeper was found dead in a pool of blood, and after an autopsy was performed it was said determined that he died of natural causes.

 weird.

then it was destroyed by friendly fire, while the keepers were there!

the military accidentally shot at it during target practice instead of shooting at their actual target a couple miles away.

talk about a bad day at work.

then we went into the cabin and i took a nap (i was full and slightly seasick, don't judge) until we got to the hooper island lighthouse.

then they y took us by the site of the old cedar point lighthouse right off of the coast of the base.

the lighthouse basically sank because of underwater excavating.

so sad.

 

and then the smith island cake i saved to share with the family.

 

that was the longest i have left delaney and matt said she did great. she drank the bottles i left and napped and played, so yay!

it was a fabulous day spent with a fabulous friend viewing some fabulous lighthouses.

absolutely fabulous!

groundhog day in september

now that the trips are all blogged and the kid updates are done i can get back to my regularly scheduled blogging.

 

but it kinda feels like i've done all this before...

it's all good, i will take a good regular day over a bad day any day.

 

so our lives lately...

(based pretty much solely on the pics i had in my phone)

 

we've been spending a lot of time at the baseball field.

christian has games wednesday and friday nights, so about 4 hours of each of those days are spent there. and it's getting chilly at night, love, love, love this time of year! i know i say this every season, but autumn might just be my favorite... at least until the next one comes around. ;)

addie is settling into school.

i don't think she'd say she loves it, but she doesn't cry when i drop her off anymore and she always tells me she had a good day. she does still pout a little when i drop her off and she sometimes tells me her teacher yells, but at 4 years old there is kind of a grey, blurry line between truth and make believe, so take that as you will.

frankie's been doing homework too.

gotta stay up with big sissy, you know.

i saw this pic on fb and thought it was the cutest.

you know what a sucker i am for anything personalized.

i hope someday i can be this cool.

laney's still been burning the midnight oil. her regular bedtime is anywhere from 10:30-12:30 and i like to get up with the big kids and matt at 5:30 to make either smoothies (even though i've been told that i really need to find a good recipe soon) or breakfast burritos (even though one person refuses to eat them, although i won't tell who she is;). long story short, i (just like everyone else, i know) have been sleepy tired. so matt and the little girls let me sleep in till 9:30 and brought me breakfast in bed on saturday. then they spent 5 minutes telling me how i was the best mommy ever.

 it was super sweet. :)

frankie finally figured out how to lay down in the water to rinse her hair and she loves it.

hallelujah!

not that this has ended the bathtime crying, but it has severely lessened.

matt and christian went to the solomons boat races on saturday.

the actual race was sunday, but they were able to see the pit and some warm-ups and they both enjoyed it.

(chris also taking a pic of the boat in the bottom left)

we went to abby's fun birthday party and it was like a baby girl fest.

super cute.

the girls have loved playing together lately and they've grown up so much that they play so nicely.

i woke up on sunday with a full blown cold and matt, who also had a full blown cold (as well as laney and frankie) called it a day to stay home and rest (and keep our germs to ourselves), so we missed church. it was a nice family day of naps and family movies. noses are still running, but i think we're on the up and up.

 

things have been pretty busy since i got back home (from texas). matt's 3rd class is wrapping up next week, and between homework projects, scout events, and navy weekends/tests he's been swamped. which means not a lot of help with littles. but everybody's healthy and happy and it's all good.

busy, but good.

 

and that's it... i think.

same ol', same ol'.

all good.

 

lu-lu

pictures in this post brought to you by leonardtown high school.

(go raider nation!) 

seriously, i had zero pictures of lex that weren't cheer pics, so we're going with it.

alexis is a varsity cheerleader again. she's a flier now and she's having fun with the new responsibilities and skills needed for the job. she's working on tumbling, flier duties, (flyer? not sure about my cheer jargon) and increasing her mad cheer skills.

 i mean, there are cheer scholarships, right?

along with franks, alexis does a really good job of showing me my faults. i'm (unfortunately) not always great at how i react to those challenges, but she just keeps on showing me. and it's good to have things to work on, right?

she is fiercly determined that things be fair (even with adults and kids) and equal.

always.

the good news is that i am a better person for being her mom. and i know that out of the most difficult relationships, not that ours is so difficult, but out of the most difficult can come the most joy.

and she does bring a lot of joy.

she's starting to seriously think about her future. she's taking good, challenging classes this year and setting herself up to be able to get college credits for next year. she's worked with her counselor at school and they've come up with a good plan. so responsible, that one. :)

this chic is a total people person. she's fun and funny and social. and she's really confidant and persuasive with people. i'm leaning towards her being a lawyer or a politician, she's that good. ;)

she loves music and sings along to the radio all the time. she loves movies and going out to eat and recently has taken to loving talking on the phone, a girl after my own heart!

and she's usually pretty good at being able to laugh at herself.

like tonight for example, when she was making frosting. i came downstairs to help and she asked me if spreadable swiss cheese was the same as cream cheese. for the frosting. that would have been some delicious frosting, right?

 

she's a great big sister. even though it can be a difficult situation, she loves her sisters so much and they really love and look up to her. she's really patient with them and gets excited for them. she couldn't wait to ask addie how her first day of school went. love that. 

my lu is loud, stubborn, sweet, outgoing, friendly, fun, smart, and loving. she drives me crazy, mostly because we are so much alike. and i know that when we come out of this stage we're gonna be besties again. (cause everyone knows it's just not good practice to be besties with your teenager, right?)

love this crazy girl.