Beach Prep and Outside Play

This girl gets inside her flamingo and pushes it all over the house.  She has gotten so fast!

Look at these cute beach journals that Grandma made the girls.  It has been our tradition each year to have them write in their journals before going to bed.  It is so funny to reread them each year!

This is Finley's "I'm trying to poop" stance.  She sits with one leg up and tries to go.  We've been doing better with the milk of magnesia, 4 ml each day, and that has helped her. 

Walking as the sun rises, one of our favorite things to do!

Jack will be 13 in October.  He is still so pretty, although the floors are not.  Poor boy is having trouble getting up and down the stairs now, but he wants to go for a walk every morning. 

Our two new favorites - getting out of the swing to get in the chair and going to the garage to get into one of the vehicles to play.  

We played in Dada's truck while he was changing the oil for quite some time today!  Finn is very entertained with all of the buttons and new things to look at.  Now if she wouldn't scream every time we go into the garage because she wants to play in one of the vehicles we would be good.  

Reading time with Hay Hay. 

Love, love, love these expressions!  She still steals the remotes daily and changes the channels or asks for music. 

Swiss chard, zucchini, squash, celery, tomatoes and green beans have been planted.  After going without a fence for a couple of days, it was clear that the dogs still get into the garden so we had to put something else up. 

Our favorite afternoon activities, pool time and reading on the deck (especially during nap time).  Finley is on a great schedule of morning naps at 9:00 for an hour or so and afternoon naps at 1:00-1:30 until 3:00.  I know some people start to go to one nap at this age, but she clearly isn't ready for that. 

I bought some clothes from another family at Nana's daycare and this robe came with them...Finn shocked us when she kept it on for quite a while after bath time.   

We cut some of our hydrangeas out front to put in a vase.  They are so pretty!

These two always have so much fun.  You've got to watch out for the smacking of the face these days though!

As part of our beach prep, I made three batches of pancakes to freeze and take with us (blueberry, chocolate chip and plain).  We also go ingredients together to make two cobblers and two types of crusts for cooking fish.  This will make it so much easier when we are trying to get dinners together at the beach.  We have recipes that we pulled so there isn't a bunch of searching for ingredients when we get there. 

My kitchen helper ate a bunch of the cheese off of our barbecue chicken pizza. She is definitely going to need one of those mommy helper kitchen stools sometime soon.