Fair Fun

The girls have been asking for months when the fair was coming back to town.  They remember going last year and having fun, so they wanted to go again.  Unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating.  It was pouring down rain every day which simply makes the fair not fun.  However, one Tuesday afternoon, it had stopped raining so even though I knew it would be incredibly muddy, I decided we would go.  Ryan was in Africa that week, so I after picking the girls up from school, I told them the plan to go; they were so excited!

We got there right as it opened and headed to the ferris wheel.  You can see in the picture that it was still overcast, but we were thankful there was no rain.

 After that we decided to ride the sky buckets.  It would take us all the way across the park, so we could start over there and walk our way back.

 The animals are all on the far side of the park.  The girls made a beeline for the horses.  They always enjoy riding them even if they do just go in a circle.

 The petting zoo was up next.  Mia and I fed some of the goats and sheep; Lily wasn't too sure about that.  They both liked petting the sweet little bunnies though.

 Mia wanted to try a couple of the rides that Lily wasn't interested in.  Since it was unlimited ticket day, I told her to go ahead.  She jumped for almost 10 minutes on the trampoline; there was no line because there was so little crowd.  She tried so hard to get a back flip in but never quite made it.  She also rode the swings which is lots of fun.

We took a little break to eat dinner, and then enjoyed a couple of animal shows.  We caught the end of the American Wolf show which was interesting, then we saw the entire seal show.  It was lots of fun to see them dance, spin, bark and slide around.

 Of course, they would probably say the "make your own slushy" was one of their favorite parts.

 They went on several rides together including the mini ferris wheel and teacups.

 They rode the little roller coaster a couple of times and went through the fun house four times.  They really loved it, especially the moving stairs and tumbling exit.

 We also got caught up watching a human cannonball.  They had never seen anything like that before and were fascinated by him!  After that, a lady climbed 100 feet in the air to perform some aerial tricks; that made us all a little nervous so we had to watch and cheer her on.

Finally, it was time to head out but the girls caught sight of the big sack slide near the exit, and they wanted to try it.  I remember this being one of my very favorite parts of the fair growing up (Mama Lottie and Pawpaw took me every year as a child), so of course I let them give it a try.  They loved it and wrote it three more times.  It was a great way to end our evening.

This was such a fun afternoon and evening together; I'm so glad we were able to do this.  We're all looking forward to next year!

Mia's Softball

Mia is having so much fun playing softball!  The pictures above are all from her first game a few weeks ago.  She has picked up batting pretty quickly and rarely needs to use the tee.  She can throw well; she keeps it in a pretty straight line as long as she remembers to keep her eyes on her target.  She's doing well at fielding.  If it comes right to her, she gets it and throws easily.  She is working on learning how to keep the ball in front of her if it goes to the side.  Each time she runs, she goes as hard as she can, but she acknowledges she isn't the fastest.  As she says "You can't be the best at it all."  No matter what she's doing though, she has a great attitude about it, and she's encouraging to her teammates.  She absolutely loves it.  We are having a blast watching her too!

August Fun

As few things as we've wrapped up summer:

This girl loves her Legos. She spent hours one morning building this zoo. It wasn't a particular set, but she created spaces for lots of her Lego animals. After creating it, she and Mia have shared hours of playing with it. 

They absolutely love the new whiteboard between their rooms. Mia greeted Lily one morning (or rather "mornen") with this message. 

Lily returned a sweet message the next day. 

Mia has started piano lessons with Mrs Pinto which we are excited about. She has already learned a few basic songs which is fun. 

I found subscriptions to these really neat adventure packs for the girls. Lily's is a mystery to a different country around the world. So far she's had China and Egypt. She has to figure out what was stolen, by whom and where it's hidden by doing various puzzles, riddles, games and such. While completing them, she learns a lot about the country. Mia's pack takes her on a race around the states. She has worked on CA, FL, NY and TX. She also completes fun activities to help her team win. They both love these packs and anxiously wait for them to come in the mail!

Mia was so excited to go softball gear shopping!  She doesn't want to take her helmet off!

Here she is at tryouts last week. She was very proud when one of the coaches called her a "power hitter."  She did a great job and really gave it her all!  She cannot wait for the season to begin!

Zoo Day

Most county schools started the week before us this year so we decided to try and take a little advantage of this even though it's been so incredibly hot. One morning the girls and I got up and headed to Zoo Atlanta. I love spending time with them. We had a blast exploring the new reptile house, seeing the pandas, visiting the petting zoo, feeding peanut butter to the birds and playing on the playground though I admit I was a little sad to see they are outgrowing it. Time slow down!

First Day of School!

I can't believe another school year has begun!  It's been a fun filled but brief summer. We recently bought the girls their new uniforms; since the school changed names and colors, new uniforms were needed. We went supply shopping and ordered backpacks. The excitement was building!  Finally the big day arrived and the girls were ready. 

We greeted them with this message on their new whiteboard. 

When everyone was ready, we headed outside for our annual pictures. Interestingly both girls said the same thing as last year for their desired professions. Mia did throw in that if she's not an inventor, she will consider being "a builder like Mr Rob, a miner or a Cirque du Soleil performer."  Glad to know she has options!  Mrs Barbulescu is going to have a fun year with this one!

Lily is very excited to see her friends and be in Mrs Grote's class!  Mrs Grote is known for the awesome voices she does while reading which Lily will love. She's also known to charge by the chocolate piece when unnecessary assistance is asked for in the classroom. We gave her a bag of Dove that morning to apply towards our account!

I love these two!

Ryan and I both took them to school so we could walk them in. They had set up this sweet little picture spot where Elizabeth was taking pictures. 

They had a great first day, and their year is already progressing nicely. Mia passed her math test and has moved on up to second grade math which she was very excited about. They are already learning so much!  I can't wait to see how they continue to grow throughout the year!

Let's Go Falcons!

We took the girls down to the Dome tonight to cheer on the Falcons in their first preseason game. This was the first time the girls have been to a professional game. We had a blast!  Both of the girls enjoyed yelling and cheering for the birds. 

Ready for the game to start. 

Having fun with Daddy!

I think part of the fun was hearing the girls' comments. They have never paid attention to games on TV before so this was all new to them.  Lily said she should have made a sign that said "This is my first football game. I hope it goes well." I sat next to Mia and here are a few of her thoughts and quotes. 

- "What is girl's football called?  You know, like girl's baseball is softball?"  When I told her there isn't a professional girl's football team, she responded "well that's odd."

- "Why did the umpire throw a banana on the field?"  I explained the referee threw a yellow flag when one of the players didn't play fairly. 

- "Have you ever seen a game this exciting?!"  She loved that we were up by 17 points. 

- "So they just have to get the ball to that big white line?  Hmmm, that looks easy."

- "What just happened?!"  This was said after almost every play. 

- "How do they score a run?"  She's been learning about baseball/softball recently so we had to go over the difference in sports' terminology. 

- "Best game ever!"  It was great to see her having so much fun. 

Mable House summer camps

The girls had so much fun attending the Mable House summer art day camps in two different weeks this summer.  Each week had a unique theme, and we knew they would love both.  The first week was all about animals.  They couldn't get enough.  The second week was all about travel which they loved.  Each day they looked forward to telling us about what they had created and how.  The instructors were great.  They are all Cobb County public school art teachers, so they are not only very talented artists, but they are great with kids.  The girls adored them and told us all about them.  They couldn't wait for camp each day!

Not surprising, we had an awful lot of artwork after two weeks.  I asked the girls to go through and save what they felt was their favorite and best work; we'll put it in a special folder where I keep this kind of stuff.  I also offered to take pictures so we can see it as often as they like.  Here are their selections of their favorite and best art projects.

Mia's kangaroo was my favorite piece that she made; loved it!  Her favorite piece was this African tribal mask.

She really liked her jellyfish coloring and cardboard totem pole.

Mia was pretty excited about her jaguar bank too.

Lily made this drawing of a bear, and I love the elephant handprints.  She knows I can't resist anything with handprints on it.

This is her painting of herself watching tv, with Atticus (our old cat) on the sofa and a bird cheeping in the corner.

She made the painting on the left of the new playground at Maggie Daly park in Chicago, and she painted a beautiful bird on the right.

It was a lot of fun to see their excitement and admire the artwork!

In the second week of camp, Lily elected to do an acting class in the afternoon instead of an art class; she still dreams of being a Broadway actress so this was right up her alley.  The class of ten kids comes up with their own characters and general storyline; the teacher then helps them write a script.  Lily wanted to be a cat.  The play was quite interesting.  The US was being invaded by bad guys, but then they found out they only wanted to be the dj's at a dance party, so everyone ends up happy and dancing.  Lily had a few speaking lines, and she did a great job; she remembered them all, and she spoke clearly and loudly.  We were proud.

These camps were tons of fun for the girls and kept their creativity going this summer!

Other Summer Fun

With just over a week to go until school starts, we officially see summer break winding down.  Here are few snapshots from the fun we've had this break.

Both girls learned to ride two wheel bikes this June!  It was a very exciting day in our house!  They have struggled with finding their balance in the past.  I think it has helped tremendously that they've been practicing on scooters for months (Mia got one for Christmas and Mr. Mayo gave his son's old one to Lily).  They asked to try the bikes one day, so we brought them out, and they both picked it up almost immediately.  There was much rejoicing!  They absolutely love it now and ride all the time.  It's wonderful!

The girls were so excited that they were going to ride on their school's float in the July 4th Marietta parade.  They were so disappointed when it got rained out!  We still had a great day and evening though because the Wilkinson family came over for bbq, sparklers and firework-watching.  We were excited to share Yabsera's first July 4th with her; her eyes grew quite large at the first fireworks but she ended up loving it.  It turned out to be a great way to celebrate America's birthday!

At Target one day, I saw these little blue gloves on sale, and it hit me that my kids have never actually played baseball.  I bought them and decided to teach them (easier said than done).  They had fun with it though and caught on fairly quickly.  Lily isn't too interested, but Mia can't wait to play softball!

The girls were very excited to have Macey over to spend the night one evening.  Here they are performing a musical number...wow is all I can say about that.

Ryan and I had such a fun time on our double date with Jeff and Elizabeth Smith.  We have absolutely loved becoming better friends with them over the last few months.  We met them for bowling one evening where Jeff and his lucky towel took us to task.  From there we went to play whirleyball which is where this picture was taken; it was boys against girls after all.  None of us had played before, but it was awesome.  I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard!  After the girls won, we decided some ice cream was in order to celebrate, so we enjoyed just hanging out and talking.  It was a great evening!

The girls came across their old play kitchen food recently, and they've been having a ball with it.  They made Lily's room into a cafe, set up signs, kitchen, register and even a behind-the-scenes tour.  Who can resist?

Mia and I had a fantastic Mommy-Daughter date to Stone Summit one morning.  We spent 2 hours there!  We had a great time trying all the different auto-belay walls.  Mia is really quite good at this.  Me...not so much.  I tried it but man, that used muscles I have completely forgotten about.  I had a great time watching her though.  I love her face in this bottom left picture; she had just realized the name of this course was "Amazing Amelia."  She was stoked!  After our bodies simply couldn't go any more, we headed over to The Varsity for lunch.  Mia was pretty excited to try a Frosted Orange!  I love my time with this fantastic girl!

Mia and I went rock climbing on the day Lily went to White Water to celebrate Rachael's 8th birthday.  She had a great time that day!  Here she is with Rachael and Raegan, both sweet girls from school.

She was very excited that the party turned in to a sleepover.  The girls painted dolphin pictures that evening as a craft; isn't Lily's cute?

Our whole family is pretty excited about the new remote control helicopter Mia received!  We've been having lots of fun with it!

We had a lot of fun today going to see Varekai at the Gwinnett Arena.  We all love Cirque du Soleil, so this was fun for all four of us.  Their acts are pretty amazing.