Old Friends

Over Memorial day weekend, we were able to see our dear friends Griff and Tracy from college who were up in the area visiting family. It was so fun to hang out and feel like we just picked up from where we left off in college...of course slightly different with the addition of 4 kids!

The kids played together fantastically - and the girls have asked when Emily and Gavin are going to come back to play. So sweet!

Computer Issues

The reason for the giant void of blog postings is my computer. It is super old and is about on its last leg. One issue is the memory is full - so full, in fact, that I have not been able to download my pictures from my camera. And I basically rely on pictures to tell our life story. So no pictures = no posts. And my email will not open on the computer so I can't even email myself some pictures from my phone.

I have temporarily solved this issue by deleting all the pictures on my computer from 2006 and earlier. We have an external hard drive, so I feel like these are saved somewhere and with some knowledge I could recover them if so needed.

Last Day of Preschool

Hooray!! I am now caught up - more or less.

Today was the last day of preschool, but on Tuesday they had outdoor day and we were invited to come at the end and see the kids playing. A couple of us even packed a lunch and had a picnic after school.

Walking into school at Kiss and Ride. The girls think that it is hilarious that they can put their bags around their necks.

Here are the girls with their teacher Mrs. Barnard

Here are the girls with their teacher Mrs. Hogan

Here is the class playing in the water area. Audrey is next to her crush Mason. She tells us all the time how much she LOVES Mason.

Getting our picnic set up with Abby and Delaney

We let the three girls play with our cameras as we were finishing up the picnic. Here are a couple of shots. So funny that they were taking pictures of each other taking pictures.

Half-Birthday Cupcakes

Here are the pictures of the girls experiencing their first time licking the beaters and the bowl. We had made cupcakes for the girls half birthday at school and I made some homemade icing (that seriously was delicious!)

Running Running

As previously mentioned, I did the couch to 5K program. On May 1st I did my first 5k. I was absurdly proud of myself. I managed to run the entire thing (a first) and I beat my goal of 40 minutes (my actual time was 37 min 16 sec). I have a picture of the girls that I did it with, but it is currently trapped on my phone. The girls and Darren came to cheer me on in my "Big Race." Super adorable.

A few weeks later, D had his Big Race - a half marathon down in Fredericksburg. It is part of the Marine Corps Marathon training series. So the girls and I loaded up and went with him to cheer him on (and swim in the indoor pool at the hotel). He was super fast and averaged a 7:19 pace for a total time of around 1 hour 36 minutes.

Loving on their Dad at packet pick-up and outside our hotel

A picture of D running - he is in the middle of the shot in a red shirt. This was around 12 miles.

And no road trip of ours would be complete without a meal at cracker barrel.

Water Fun

We have our dance/gym class on Monday afternoons. Since the beginning of May, our routine has been to go to class, then to Ben and Jerry's for ice cream cones, and then out to the fountains to play. The girls have thus far not actually gotten into the fountains, but prefer to walk around them and occasionally put in a toe or a booty.

We have also been playing in our front yard with various sprinkler toys. Though the girls seem to prefer just the plain ole hose to anything else. How adorable is Audrey's tushie!!


This activity started out as just playing in the sandbox. The next thing I knew, pants were off and they were playing with the hose.

Luray Caverns

Mother's Day weekend, we decided to head out west a little to see Luray Caverns. I am a huge fan of caves and was super excited about going. We convinced two other families to go with us and we had a great day in the caves and then picnicing for lunch.


Brooke was super cute listening to the guided tour.

Audrey was also super cute listening to the audio tour.

Family shots in the caves

Getting ready to picnic. One of the dads brews his own beer and D was in heaven!