Lunch Date with Baby Cooper

Lara and Cooper, who's grown up so much!

Hugs!

Hey, little cuz, I can't wait til you're older and we can play together!

couldn't resist the ornery looking Leo and unsuspecting older sis!

Lara and Cooper came over last week for a long overdue play date! I love play dates with babies b/c it's just an excuse for the moms to get together and gab! Okay, well who am I kidding, a large portion of my playdates now are still for that very reason, but who's keeping tabs! Sophia was thrilled to see Cooper and sing him songs, play with him, kiss him, and hug him. She does love babies! Leo was not so interested, but I know that some day those two will be crazies running around the house together!

4th of July Fun!

at least they are standing together, looking at the camera and smiling, that's asking too much!

Leo was on Leo duty!

Little Leo was still not too sure about this lake stuff!

madness!

as long as Papa's there, I guess I can do it!

Sophia was very excited to have her Papa Leo there to play with

That's the face of one happy fish-girl!

Nothing like being a week behind in posting, right?! For the 4th we headed out to our friend Neil's at Lake Lottowana for his annual pig roast party. Leo also lives out there and (finally!!) he decided to join us for the fun. The kids were really excited to have him there and so were we! My friend Beth also joined us but somehow she managed to avoid all picture taking! We got there late afternoon and Sophia wore herself out by jumping off the dock and swimming around, and then going back for more! She was so happy! Leo was a little more trepidatious and wasn't too sure about his life jacket but after a little bit he warmed up to the water and had fun too! We didn't stay for fireworks, because honestly, I'm just not ready to ruin bedtime for fireworks. I know this may seem like an odd personality flaw for me, but really at this point I value sleep more than tradition! ;) I feel like although they would probably think fireworks are really, really cool, I'm not ready to completely ruin bedtime, especially for Leo. If it were just Sophia, I think I'd probably be fine with letting her stay up later, but I'm not quite there for Leo, so we just didn't go. Sophia has never seen them before so she doesn't know what she's missing! Anyway, we had a great day and we thank Neil and his family for inviting us each year!

The Big Time

Sophia had a very important moment at the pool last week...she went down the slide!! YAY, Sophia! The thing about the slide is that you have to be able to swim from the bottom of the slide to the rope and although Sophia did try a few times last year, the lifeguards always told her she wasn't ready. Well after her swimming has made major strides of late, she tried the slide again and was successful! She was beyond excited and went down the slide for about 30 minutes straight! Tonight we were at the pool again with her friends and she was so proud to show them that she could do it too!

A Day on the Plaza

The kids enjoyed some upscale mac and cheese and fries for lunch. I was more than happy to eat the leftovers that included Gruyere and brie! Yummy!

Mmmmm, sprinkle cupcake for Sophia!

nothing but chocolate for The Dude

Sophia loves to take pictures (wonder where she got that from?!) and decided to take a picture of my "new hair" (which looks mostly like my old hair but whatever). I thought this pic was actually pretty good, but then she took this one too.............................

Really, Sophia?!

I decided it might be fun to have a fancy day last week. I had to get my hair cut so I recruited mom and the kids to come along and enjoy a day on the Country Club Plaza, a rather poshy sort of stores of eateries. Sophia enjoyed looking around the salon pre-haircut and picking out some nail polishes, etc. Then mom took them to a fabulous local toy store, they put pennies in various fountains and ended up picking out essentials for their dream bedrooms with all the goodies at Pottery Barn Kids. Then we stopped for lunch at one of my favorite Plaza places, The Classic Cup, and finished off our afternoon with a cupcake from a shop that just moved into the neighborhood. The cupcakes were okay, the frosting was the best part, the cake is only so-so. We were all hot and exhausted by the time to go home, but it was a fun change of pace to our regular routine...next time though, I'm thinking it should be cooler weather!

Blueberry Picking

The usuals included Jodie, Emma, Isabelle, Julie, Massimo, and Luca and newcomers to our bunch were Carrie and her son, Anthony, as well as Jane and her boys, Alex and Eli. Lisa, not pictured, joined us late, after she dropped off Isaac at school so she could pick in peace! Love it!


Sophia already looks pained here, Alex may have a long road ahead of him! ;) She and Alex have quite a relationship going. We are friends with their family from church and they usually sit very near us. We have found Alex and Sophia smooching away over the pew during the middle of service! LOL!

Emma and Sophia get right down to it!

Leo picked more green ones than blue ones, but he was all into it!

here he gets serious with the bucket!

look, Mom, I found one!

Sophia and Isabelle gave up on picking and just skipped through the bushes instead.

Somebody else got tired of picking too

Time for the train ride! Why walk through the fields when you can be pulled by a tractor!

Even though I got some cute pics, this was certainly our worst year for blueberry picking to date. There were no berries. Literally. The patch we pick has many different patches that they open and close each day according to ripeness, etc. They sent us to the furthest possible patch and there were no ripe berries. I'm sure there were some at 7 in the morning b/c we sure did some die hards walking past us with buckets and buckets, but by the time we got there everything was green. Leo managed to find quite a few ripe ones on the ground. I got probably 50 berries or so on my own, Sophia probably got between 20-30 but managed to eat all of them before we even left the picking aisle. Pathetic. I figured it was fine and I'd just go ahead and purchase some of the "we-pick" berries (as opposed to the "u-pick" variety you get yourself) but they were completely out of those as well. Jodie happily dumped her bag into mine and I ended up with about a cup and half. MUCH less than the 2 cups I needed to make the cookies I desired or the 4 cups I wanted to try making a pie this year. Boooo! It was really too bad, but at least the kids had fun. I suppose I can buy store bought berries to make my pie, I mean they are in season, but there's just something about making a pie from berries you picked yourself. And this would have been my inaugural pie so should I slum it with grocery store berries, I think not.

Driveway Derby

go, Speed Racer!
vroom, vroom!

Look, Ma...no feet!!

Trevor just hanging out!

Sophia rockin' the pedal power!

Our neighbor, Trevor, has a motorized 4-Wheeler that he loves to share with Leo and Sophia, and they can't be happier about it! At least once a week or so Jason and Trevor stop by to lay tracks in the driveway. All of the kids have crazy fast (or slow, depending on which vehicle you're riding!) fun. Leo is such a boy...he is absolutely crazy about anything that goes Vroom, Vroom! The other day as we were crossing the street he had to go and investigate a motorcycle that was stopped at the red light. The next day we were going to the park and there was a delivery truck pulled up the pool that was adjacent to the park and we had to trek all the way over there and look at that too! His favorite books right now are his car and truck books...he's "all boy" as they say!

Picnic Dinner

We decided to have a dinner play date last week with our friends. We love Franklin Park so we all met there and played and ate and played some more!