Papa time... best time!

Linnea was Papa's little buddy...

here's one of their trips to the dock

in the early evening!

Welcome to the Pines!

Pilgrim Pines...

It has been around 12 years since I've been at Pilgrim Pines and Swanzey Lake, NH! And this time I visited with my 3.5 year old twins, parents, sister & her baby... and eventually her hubby! We stayed in a beautiful house on the lake... here are the girlies swimming in the lake our FIRST day there. They just couldn't wait until the 'tomorrow'. Go figure!

(Linnea with blue, Signe with purple)

To finish off the first afternoon on Lake Swanzey, the girls had dinner followed by story time with Papa! It's a beautiful start to an amazing time ...

Lake House living...

After a few days at Mormor & Papa's we headed to visit with cousins & second cousins... never sure of the proper terms for all the connections. Basically my aunt & uncle, cousin and her children!

These are my sweet girls after a day of swimming in the lake, Signe's first time water-skiing!! (I'll find a picture from my cousin), good food and fun times with family & friends!

Here are all the second cousins... Linnea, Signe, John and Will!

It's as good as it gets when you have 4 toddlers at the end of a fabulously tiring day!

And here's my brilliant try at getting 6 kids to jump for a picture! Seriously hilarious!

Swimming MA style...

Swimming off Papa's boat sure was a great way to kick off our time in MA!

The girls did NOT want to stop swimming to eat pizza on the boat... which was wonderful! Call in an order, pull up to the dock... PICK UP PIZZA! What could be better?! Nothing. It truly was the best pizza, the company and atmosphere made it just right!

Having Bella swim with us just made the whole thing crazy exciting for Linnea! Bella was Linnea's buddy - best buddy for the whole time at Mormor & Papa's house! She was really sad when Bella went on 'vacation' to a friends house for our time in NH!

We're up, up and away!

To new and amazing places... this was the girls first time on an airplane! To say they were excited doesn't even begin to cover it! And they did super - on the plane! The waiting to get on part was a little rough. The other passengers got a kick out the girls looking at everything with magnifying glasses. Hey, a moms gotta do what a moms gotta do!

Thanks to lots of advice from friends the lollipops did the trick for no ear popping. Coloring, iTouch games, magnifying glasses, sweet flight attendants giving many bags of cookies, and more helped entertain the girls. And as any good mom would tell their 3 yr olds, "Sorry, there is no potty on the plane, we have to use the restroom before we get on!"

About an hour into the flight, Linnea got really worried that they had missed Mormor's house and asked me to tell 'them' (meaning the plane) to stop! No worries, we made it there just fine! As soon as we landed they both said, in unison,

"Let's do that again!!" to which I replied "not for a good long week!" :)

It was really fun and a great start to our trip out east! More posts to come about our time in MA & NH!

Sweet Baby Photo Shoot

Who is this pretty baby? My bestest friends sweetest new baby!

And I had a blast taking her 2 week pictures!

What better than a happy baby, great lighting and a precious big sister?

Not much when taking pictures!

A morning without power

What does your morning look like without power?

We've been without power for about 2.5 hours now... so after playing 'library' a bunch of times (we use sticky notes to mark the books we've checked out - and then we return them... its a game that goes on and on and on....), coloring, playing tea party with animal crackers and fake food at the same time... we sat down to watch MEGAMIND on my laptop!

Thank goodness it had a full charge! So here's what the girls looked like up until a couple minutes ago when I snapped this shot and the movie ended!

Now it's mommy turn at the laptop to update the blog - thanks to some random person who has internet and doesn't have a password on it.

Thank you nameless person! I appreciate your generosity today!

Hail Damage

Here's what happened on June 30th ...

It's a little bit sad... a lot frustrating... but basically this car is gone. Pretty much the whole car looks like this (pictured is the hood). The windshield is broken, all the panels on the car are dimpled too deep to repair and there are areas where paint came off from the force of the hail. SO... Bye bye red car. Insurance has washed their hands of you and so have we. On to investigating new cars and being a one car family until we make up our mind about a lot of factors.

You've been a good car. Bye now.

Gardening: Stage 7

And the results are in....

THE GARDEN HAS SURVIVED AND THRIVED!

Status update: ZINNIAS

After the big big storm in June we lost one of our window boxes of Zinnias to an enormous branch. Daddy recovered one and today we have 1 ZINNIA open. It's still growing, but the girls were SO excited to discover the flower and show it off.

Status update: GARDEN

The garden is amazing! We have enough basil, parsley and cilantro to supply a couple families. I guess I went overboard. Lesson learned. Next year, less basil for sure!

Our GREEN BEANS are growing - we've let the girls pick a couple just to test them out. *Verdict = the girls loved them, we thought they needed more time to ripen. :)

Tomato Plants are HUGE! We've had to cage them, which we'll do from the start next year. Lesson learned - hard to cage growing plants.

*Verdict = 10+ cherry tomatos growing on both plants. 5 Big boy tomatos on that plant and about 3 on our Celebrity tomato plant. Pretty exciting - I just hope they don't ripen while I'm on vacation.

Cucumbers grow like WEEDS. We caged them and are SO glad we did. They've climbed the cage and are keeping out of our other plants. So next year we'll do the same thing! Glad we looked into that and listened to our neighbors on the advice to cage them.

*Verdict = we're going to have a BUNCH of cucumbers. Who wants a couple when they are available in, August I'm guessing??

We have 3 red peppers growing, 2 green peppers, 1 anaheim pepper as well!

Here's the pictures of everything!

The garden, the green beans and the cucumbers are shown in pictures...

And finally...

SUNFLOWERS update:

The sunflowers some how survived being crushed by an enormous branch in the June storm... and about a week later when I was ready to rip them up, we came out one morning and all of them were standing up again! Talk about resilient!!

They are at least 2 feet tall - we didn't measure. We'll do that the next time!

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of JULY!

Des Plaines 4th of July parade is where its at...

Linnea & Signe LOVED the parade.

Linnea figured out the way to get candy was to wave and yell 'hi' - so she never stopped waving. She would turn and look at me for a picture with her arm still up in the arm, hand waving the whole time. Each piece of candy was lined up in front of her so she knew were it all was... and there was no sharing on her part. Nor did she eat much of it or ask to eat it.

Signe wanted to eat EVERY candy that came her way. She was all about putting the candy into her bag of loot. Loved most was probably the pencils and pen, along with a coloring book. She waved while holding on to the pencil. Signe was all about sharing her candy with me... we tried tootsie rolls and sweet tarts candy. She loved them both!

We were there with our good friends, their oldest daughter is a friend of L & S and they're sweet 1 week old baby was there too and what a trooper she was! Slept the whole time!

So happy 4th of July to all of our family and friends.

Hope that you too had a beautiful day.

Next year... fireworks! :)

First beach trip of the summer!

(Signe Silly faces)

(Linnea & Summer enjoying the floatie)

(Mommy & Linnea)

We are so blessed to have amazing family and friends to visit and enjoy the beach with! Today we spent a fun filled day in Bethany - Church at the Tabernacle, Lunch at the cottage, and then off to the beach!

L & S loved their Auntie Summer, Drew, Grandma Julie/GJ, and Steve! They played in the FREEZING water (so did I - sympathy please!) until and past the time their lips were blue and shaking... built castles, dug holes and made drizzle castles with Summer & Drew, made sand cookies with Grandma Julie, and 'learned' paddle ball with Steve! Linnea LOVED laying on the floatie and being pulled 'super faster'... and Signe loved finding ROCKS! She's turning into her Auntie Mimi - a fellow rock searcher @ the beach.

We saw many friends and enjoyed a beautiful 4 hours on the beach! It was partly cloudy and a bit chilly if you'd been in the frigid water - but still an AWESOME first trip to the beach!

(Grandma Julie & the girls playing in the sand)

(Signe finding us ROCKS)

(Probably a picture of mommy trying and failing at convincing Signe to get out of the water!)

(Such a classy mommy face - I was probably telling them to smile and look at Summer!)

On the 3rd of July...

We went to our little slice of heaven, Bethany Beach....

Visited with fabulous family (Myself & Summer picture above, Aunt Julie/ Grandma GJ, Uncle Steve, and Drew not pictured)...

And had such a wonderful time we were too tired for a good picture!

More to come once we upload the beach pics.!

Little Bear Gardens

We LOVE Little Bear Gardens in Glenview. It is a beautiful park with hanging flowers and bench swings, sand area, play park, and WATER Slash pad area!

This is a favorite of the girls. And it is one of those times when it is so special to be a twin at age 3 - Hello playmate! L & S chase each other, screaming and giggling, teasing each other and having a crazy good time! Next time I'll have to come prepared to get wet too... it was a perfect 90+ day to enjoy the splash pad!