Grandma Di

The day after our family beach trip ended, Darren's mom passed away suddenly and totally unexpectedly. While it has been shocking, it is also comforting to know that we had just spent a week together making wonderful memories and having a blast. As D said, if he knew that his mom only had a week left, he knows that she would want to spend it at the beach with her family - especially her 4 grandkids!

Death is always hard, but it has been really tough to explain it to the girls. It is just so hard to know what they understand. I can't imagine dealing with this if you couldn't end the conversation with the fact that you will see her again in heaven one day - though needless to say this brings up bunches of questions from the girls as well.

So here are some pictures of Grandma Di from our last week together.

Hilton Head

Every year we go to Hilton Head with D's family for our annual beach vacation. Here are some pictures from that trip (the last week of July).

Here are some pics from our photo shoot on the beach. Unfortunately we were a little too early taking the pics so there are lots of squints and shadows.Here are some non-posed pictures from the week as well. There is no doubt that the girls love the beach-just like their mom and dad:

Big Jump

Today at the pool the girls were feeling more adventurous than usual. They were both jumping into the baby pool - which is not that big of a deal as the water only comes up to their tushie! But then they were jumping in without hands from the side of the big pool - which means they were going under water (quite a big deal around here). So D asked them if they wanted to go jump off the diving board and they were on board. Audrey jumped twice and then preferred to just play around the ladder and the side of the pool. Brooke was really enjoying it, so much so that she really did not need me to help her out to the end of the board. So I hurried back to the baby pool to get my camera. So here is Brooke jumping into the pool!

This and That

In the interest of fairness, I have a cute saying of Brooke's to share. The other day my stomach was just not feeling well at all. Brooke "what wrong Mama?" Me "my tummy is upset." she looks at me a minute and then says "is your tummy crying?" How cute??
My little Angel Brookie - though I am pretty sure that in this picture she was actually running around saying that she was a Moff (moth). As an update, the moff did pass away. The girls keep asking when we are going to get a new one. We shall see if we can capture another pet for them. They briefly had a caterpillar, but on day 2 he made a break for it out of his glad-ware house. However, the girls were fascinated by how much poop the little guy (who they named Bobby) was able to leave behind. We had to save his empty house to show D when he got home. D was not as thrilled as they were.
Here is a picture of the girls doing a train down our little slide indoors - and yes the slide is too small for that and yes they are not wearing clothes, again! They love to run around yelling No Clothes Baby at pretty much any opportunity that they can find - and since we have been working on practicing taking off their clothes themselves, it seems like these opportunities keep getting more and more frequent.

Here recently the girls have really enjoyed singing - especially anything with hand motions. And they will randomly bust out with (very quick) performances. Today at lunch they started singing Deep and Wide and I was able to grab my camera and get a video. For those of you not familiar the words are "deep and wide" repeated 3 times followed by "there's a fountain flowing deep and wide" There may be more words/verses but that is all I remember and therefore all they have heard.

Fourth of July

For the Fourth of July, we decided to spontaneously go on a mini-vacation. By spontaneously, I mean on approximately the first of July we decided to go. So I googled trips within 3 hours drive of our home and we got a ton of options. Since it has been ridiculously hot up here so far this summer (June set all kinds of heat records) I decided that we would try out the mountains.
I found a "resort" in the mountains off the Blue Ridge Parkway near the Shenandoah Valley National Park. It is really a ski resort, but they have activities to make it more of a year round thing.

We drove out on Saturday and made it there before lunch. And more exciting was that our condo was ready to check in to (actual check in time was 4pm). We had lunch, took a ride on the chair lift-which was huge as you could easily seat 6 adults, had naps, went to the pool, walked around, and had dinner. It was a very full day.

On Sunday we went into the valley to the lake where we did paddle boating and swam- I am not a big fan of lake swimming, but this was actually nice. There was a big floating trampoline which Brooke and D went on. There was also a floating rock climb/slide that D did. Unfortunately just as we were getting out to get some food, I managed to step on and get stung by a bee. Holey Moley did that hurt like heck! Fortunately D was able to remove the bee's butt and stinger using some tweezers the life guards had and even better they had some numbing cream to put on it.

After naps, we walked around the resort's festival - kid activities, music, arts and crafts - and rode the chair lift several more times. The girls really liked yelling to the people we would pass. The resort did a fireworks show that night. We walked up from our condo to a near-by overlook (where we had parked our car on Saturday to reserve at least some kind of spot. It was very neat cause you could still hear the music from below and the fireworks were pretty close to eye level. Audrey was not a fan of the fireworks so she and I went to the van and watched them from the safety of inside with the doors shut. Brooke took a little convincing, but eventually decided that she did enjoy them - shouting Whoo-hoo when they would go off.

On Monday, we checked out and went to the pool again. Then we took a scenic drive home on the Blue Ridge Parkway and part of Skyline Drive in the national park. We were back home by 6. All in all it was a super way to spend the fourth.

Audrey's cute sayings

Everyday the girls are just adorable with their language and conversation. Anytime D and I are talking, they pipe up with "what you talking about?" and if we mention one of their names they immediately ask "you talking about me?" And I LOVE listening to them have little conversations with each other. I need to start keeping a note pad with me (clearly I am way behind in technology) to write down things that they say. The girls LOVE to watch TV and so basically every day they watch Dora, Diego, and/or Team Umizoomi. Which makes listening to them even funnier as they incorporate stuff from TV into conversation - lots of spotting scopes, umi-goggles, sticky tape.

So with that said, here are two little snippets from Audrey that we thought were very funny.

Audrey was telling D that they had played in the sprinkler today and she said that "she got very sopping wet."

Last night, Audrey dropped her teddy bear and could not find it in the dark. So she was calling for one of us to come help her. D answered the call. As he was tucking her back in this is the conversation:
Audrey "I smell something."
D "Did you pass gas?"
A "No. What you drink daddy? I smell you drink."
D had been drinking a glass of red wine and apparently she could smell it on his breath!

Family Picnic

A few weeks ago, one of my mommy's groups had their annual family picnic. We had lots of fun - though it was certainly blazing outside that day. The kids played in the playground, then we had a cookout, and then the kids played some little field-day-like games.


This picture has all of the kids (except the non-walkers) in it. Audrey is in the green shirt with pig-tails and Brooke is in the purple shirt with the pink hat on.