Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to yoooooou.... Let's visit the zoooooo....

You look like a monkey.....

And.........

Okay, maybe we should just stop there. Happy Birthday, Scott!

Ready to Cast Off

We finished our High Seas Expedition VBS decorations a week early this year. Scott traditionally goes to Eagles Training Camp on his birthday, but the Eagles seem to be running late this year - the veterans are only just showing up on his birthday. Since he doesn't have any other days off, that means that in order to get to training camp, he'll have to go the Saturday before VBS. That day is usually reserved for frantic last minute VBS work - so we had to not procrastinate this year! The picture above shows our finished main stage.

Here's a close-up of the dock area:

Our snack area:

The entranceway leading to the main stage:

Our craft room:

A close-up of the boat:

More craft room:

Chadder's Sail Away Cinema:

A close-up of that area - we really like the little portholes we made:

Our Bible Voyage room, set up for the first day:

And our games table. Yup, we need all this stuff:

Not bad for a decorating crew of four! I thank God for my dedicated family - and for the fact that we'll have a lot more helpers when VBS actually starts!

They're Ba-ack!

The kids came back from Grandma and Grandpa's house with their grandparents in tow. We enjoyed their company for a few days before they had to head back to New York. Here's some pictures of the kids having fun at the park with Grandpa.

Zoo with Aunt Jenn

What do you do when your own children are on vacation? Borrow someone else's, of course! I took my three nieces to the Philadelphia Zoo for a day trip. We started out stuck in traffic. There was construction on both the Schuylkill and the Turnpike. So when we got to the zoo, what did we do first? Got up in the zoo balloon for a bird's eye traffic view, naturally. Actually, it looked like traffic had gotten much better from up there.
Faith hated the balloon and spent her time looking at her feet and holding on with both hands for dear life. Juli had her eyes glued to the toddler-height holes in the basket. Hannah loved it, although this picture doesn't really show it - she looks slightly ill, but she wasn't. In fact, she wanted to stay up there all day.
We started through the zoo in search of actual animals. That lasted for a little while. We saw this turtle looking at us.

But then everyone was DYING of hunger and thirst so we stopped for lunch. After lunch, we headed to Big Cat Falls. This puma looks like he's waving hello, doesn't he?

But animals alone couldn't hold the girls' interest for long. We had to seek out rides. So we rode the carousel.

And the draft horses.

And the train.

And I suggested we look at animals. But we rode the ponies.

And petted the goats.

And rode the camel.

By then everyone was tired. So we took an ice cream break. Which took forever. Because "Make it REALLY small" doesn't seem to mean much to ice cream swirling zoo employees. I appreciate that they wanted to give me my $4 worth, I really do. But when a 3 and 5 year old get ice creams bigger than their heads, nothing good can possibly happen.

Anyway, then we saw a few animals. What's kind of cool is that I didn't even know the giraffe on the right was pregnant - but she gave birth the very next day!

We had to stop to see the polar bear, too.

At this point, we were going to be late to get Scott, and I was starting to worry about the traffic on the way home. But I had kept saying "later" when we passed face painting stands. And this was as "later" as it was going to get. So we stopped to acquire one tiger...

One princess...

And one butterfly on the way out.

I'm told that they didn't wash them off for days. But that's Mom and Dad's problem - the best thing about being Aunt Jenn is dropping them off at home when you're tired!

Now Even Kairi Beats Me

I have never won a game of mini-golf when Scott was with us. That's a given. But when I took Kai and Nick to Putt U just before Grandma kidnapped them for their annual visit, I kinda thought I had a slight advantage. I mean, I'm playing against two kids, right?

They may be kids, but they are good. Or maybe I'm just telling myself that so I don't feel bad. But this was Kai's first shot on one of the holes:
So it's no big surprise she trounced me. Get to Grandma's, ya punks!

The Average American Vacation

What is the average American vacation? Maybe a trip to the nation's capital. Museums, monuments, zoos - and of course, Fourth of July fireworks!

But don't more people go to the beach? Maybe that vacation is more average, if less American...

Then again, when you win the Superbowl, you don't say "I'm going to the beach!" So maybe Disney World is the average American vacation.

Well, we couldn't decide either. So we did it all. Twelve crazy "vacation" days - which left us feeling like we needed a vacation. You can read all about it at our DISboards trip report here. (It's still in progress - we took 1500 pictures!)

Not a bad start to the summer!

Next Stop: High School

Last night, Kai went to the 8th grade farewell dinner dance. Doesn't she look pretty?

Today, we watched her promotion ceremony at the middle school.

She got an envelope containing many awards, including the President's Award for Academic Excellence, which is really quite cool. She also got her PSSA results and report card, along with the last high honor roll ribbon we needed to complete our collection. ;) And also in the envelope? Her high school schedule. *sigh* Woudja give the girl a break??

Set Sail!

We set up our recruiting station for High Seas Expedition VBS last week. Our goal is 40 kids. As of today, we have 18 signed up! We're putting the names of kids who sign up on these cute little foam ships I got on clearance last year, and we set up the sail display with a boat from Crocodile Dock to make an eye-catching display. Hope we meet our goal!!

Kairi's Piano Recital

Kairi's recital was yesterday. She got a bit nervous, and didn't do her best job on her piece. We're still proud of her, though!

They Love Me. They Really, Really Do.

My drama kids left this tribute on my whiteboard after our performance tonight. They're so cute!

Patriotic Pageant

Nick represented Michigan in a fourth grade patriotic pageant. Sorry the pics are so small - Scott took them with his phone.

The coolest part was that he got to play "Grand Old Flag" on his trombone at the beginning of the show. The one problem was that Daddy got there a few minutes AFTER the beginning of the show. Oh well! At least he got to hear him show the state symbols of Michigan. And of course, they sang "Fifty Nifty United States". Cause it just wouldn't be elementary school otherwise!