Our Summer So Far...

This is our last (partial) summer as a family of four and we have definitely made the most of it!  You all know me, I have tons of pictures from all of our activities, so I wanted to do a recap before our world is turned upside down (in a good way!) in a few days with the addition of child number 3!

We've been signing the girls up for swimming lessons at the Y pretty consistently and they love it!

Addy finished off Soccer Shots for the year and it was hard to tell if she liked it.  She claimed that she did, but she was often pouty during practice.  

Addy and her buddies after soccer 

From left to right: Luke, Emma, Jack, Ben, Addy, Sadie

Emma watching Addy practice

Here are some pics I took with Tina's new camera one day:

Emma with her bunk bed injury

Some action shots of Addy:

Bike time:

Play time in the back yard:

And that's the end of the pics with Tina's camera.  Back to IPhone pics.

Mike and I went to Char's for our anniversary dinner.  It was delicious!

Snapped a pic with Addy when we got home because she wanted to see me with curls "just like hers" one more time :)

Me and Amy at the baby sprinkle that our marriage group threw for us :)  I'm about 30 weeks preggo here.

Our Topsail vacation... of course I already shared a plethora of pics from that trip :)

Visiting my friend Jess and her new baby on the way back from the beach.  Addy is so ready to be a big sister again!

We hit up a local carnival and the girls LOVED it!

Father's Day:

Making Daddy breakfast :)

Fishing!

Our first polo match:

Too bad it got rained out after only about 20 minutes.  The girls had just as much fun running around though :)

Sweet Emmy :)

4th of July:

We went to our friend Derek's cabin at Treasure Lake for the weekend of the 4th.  It was a great time!

Mandy and I with our virgin daiquiris 

Mike, Nico, and Derek

A little lake swimming

4th of July family photo

The kiddos watching Mike and Derek attempt to set off fireworks ;)

Sparklers!

A stroll around Treasure Lake

...picking flowers as we go

Bowling with our buddies:

Love this pic of me and Emma after shower time :)

Turbie Twist Twins!

A Baby Sprinkle thrown for me by Tina.... and Julie was there as a surprise!!!

Mike and I took a little Babymoon to Boalsburg on the weekend of Arts Fest.  It was such an amazing, relaxing, refreshing time spent with my favorite guy :)

We made a spontaneous stop at Indian Caverns on the way there :)

We ("we" meaning Mike) did a wine tasting 

A winery is a totally appropriate place for a pregnant woman right?  Here I am in all of my glory, 36 weeks preggo.

Walked around People's Choice.  It was such a gorgeous weekend!  We even got pedicures together!  Yup, true story.  We stayed in this amazing Bed and Breakfast called the Rock Garden Inn.  I would highly recommend it if you are looking for peace and relaxation.  Just what the doctor ordered :)

Swimming at Mike's friend Brian's pool:

The next day we headed out to our impromptu beach trip:

The girls got lucky and inherited Ben's swing set since he moved to NC:

Dad, Mike, and Jay got it into our yard and Mike got it set up.

Tina and I took the girls to Hershey Park.  Good thing Tina was there to take them on the rides and push the stroller... thanks Bean!

The girls loved this pirate ship... but Emmy to this day tells everyone that the pirate ship made her have to poop ;)

The ride where Emmy slid off the seat and then burst into hysterical tears causing them to stop the ride to let her off ;)

Addy's first ever roller coaster with Aunt Tina!

Emma fell asleep before I even pulled out of the parking space...

... and Addy soon followed suit.  They were exhausted!

Mike took Addy on a date to the Senators baseball game:

She caught a foul ball!!!

This girl was so excited to move up in the world to a booster seat, using a big person seat belt!

My friend Klara moved to NC and this was our last dinner together with her.

Left to right: Jackie, Hanna, Klara, Megan, Jess, and me

And that brings us to this past weekend, where we experienced dirt car races and a flea market for the first time:

Addy's flea market find... a skateboard, which she's been asking for all of the time lately.  Can't beat it for a dollar ;)

Emmy's flea market find... a scooter that's just her size :)

Addy practicing on her board :)

We also spent some time with my grandparents at a cute little ice cream place with a playground that had perhaps the oldest playground equipment that I've ever seen.  But the girls loved it!

Great-grandpa got roped into pushing everyone on the Merry-Go-Round.  See what I mean about OLD playground equipment?!!!

Me and my grandparents :)

And that brings us up to date!  We have had an awesome summer so far, jam packed with fun activities!  I know we're about to slow down a bit once the new baby arrives, which will be a nice reprieve from the go go go we've been on all summer.  But I wouldn't trade it, or the memories for anything :)

Impromptu Beach Trip!

This past weekend I had plans to go to O.C. Maryland with one of my friends, but at the last minute it didn't work out, so Mike said, "The girls and I will go with you!"  And that's what we did.  We made the decision on a Thursday and took off Friday morning.  And we all had so much fun!

We made it!  Our hotel had a gorgeous front porch with loads of rocking chairs that overlooked the ocean.

Daddy found the deck bar STAT!...

And the girls and I found the ice cream truck STAT!

Heading down to the beach (that's our hotel, Dunes Manor, in the background).

The girls loved the ocean... although it was a lot colder than the NC ocean water that we've become accustomed to.

On the first night we ate at a restaurant called Fish Tales and it was the BEST place for kids!  We didn't arrive there until 7PM (very uncharacteristic of us), and they told us the wait was an hour and a half.  Mike immediately wanted to book it out of there, but I convinced him to let the girls play and see how it went.  There was a huge pirate ship playground for the kids to play on while you wait and a bunch of Adirondack chairs for the parents to sit on the surrounded the park.  It was awesome and the girls loved it!  Not one complaint about the wait!

Mommy got a virgin strawberry daiquiri while we waited... but somehow my daiquiri turned into their daiquiri ;)

We got a table!  No lie, we were eating dinner at almost 9PM (something we have never, ever done with the girls) and they were such troopers!

On our walk back to the hotel we discovered a movie being played on the beach, so naturally the girls were dying to do that!  It was really cool actually.  Even though it was already 9:30 by that point, we threw caution to the wind and trekked out onto the beach for some "Planes: Fire and Rescue".

 Then we finished it up by watching the rest from the ledge of the boardwalk.

We didn't get back to our hotel until about 10:30 and we all crashed, which was all part of Mommy and Daddy's master plan.  Considering that this trip was not originally intended to include children, we only had one hotel room with 2 double beds.  Mike and I were not about to share a double bed (especially in my current VERY pregnant state), so I shared a bed with Addy and Mike shared with Emma.  We also decided that we weren't going to bed at 8PM like the girls usually do, so we just did fun things at night and all went to bed late.  And it worked out swimmingly... until the second afternoon.  Addy didn't nap Friday, stayed up until 10:30 and then didn't nap Saturday either.  By 3PM on Saturday she was a DISASTER.  Proving to us once again that our 4 1/2 year old still needs naps.

Our view from the hotel room :)

Saturday morning started off with the girls begging to go to the pool.  To which I promptly told them I did not drive all of this way to hang out at a pool.  So Mike took them to the pool and I headed to the beach for some quiet alone time...

My alone time lasted precisely 14 minutes before I saw this running my way... Ah well, it was peaceful while it lasted ;)

Emmy got to play with her favorite beach toy, the watering can :)

We attempted to have both girls take a nap on the beach.  Addy pretty much laughed in our faces....

...but Emma and Daddy passed out.

A little Mommy Addy time while the other two napped :)

At 3PM every day at our hotel they have tea time on the porch, which was awesome.  All kinds of cookies and hot and cold tea free for the taking.  So of course, we indulged :)

It was after this that the epic Addy meltdown occurred.  She fell asleep for about 15 minutes in the hotel room before it was time to wake her up to get showered for dinner.  And all hell broke loose.  She was a complete mess and there was no calming her down.  She screamed through her entire shower (during which Mike and I thought surely the other hotel guests thought we were killing her) and wouldn't calm down afterward either.  Mike said I should just go to dinner with Emmy and leave him and Addy back at the hotel.  To which I stubbornly refused.  I went off about how she wasn't going to dictate how the vacation went.  So we hung out for a few minutes until she was at least calm enough to take out in public, and off we went.  We went to Phillips for dinner, and she was OK, just moody.  But after Phillips came Candy Kitchen and the boardwalk rides... so our happy Addy came out of hiding ;)

View of O.C. from the Ferris Wheel

Emmy with her candy necklace.  By this time it was after 9PM.  Look how tired she looks.  But Emmy was honestly such a trooper!

The girls with their first ever candy necklaces :)

On the tram back up the boardwalk to our hotel... all involved are exhausted by this point ;) And again, we didn't go to bed until almost 11PM!

The next morning we woke up with every intention of spending some time at the beach before driving home.  But we opened our balcony door at 8AM and were already blasted with an insane amount of heat and humidity, so we changed our plans.  In retrospect I can't say it was for the better, but it definitely leaves us with a funny story.

We went to the Bayside Skillet for crepes for breakfast, which was delicious (although our girls, in their current exasperating state of pickiness, barely even touched theirs).  And Mike got the idea to take the Cape May/Lewes ferry home.  The girls were so excited to go on a boat and we thought it would be a fun experience.  We knew it would take "a little bit" longer to get home that way... but we had NO IDEA how much time it would add to our trip.  OMG!  We left the Bayside Skillet at 10:15AM and didn't get to Harrisburg until almost 6PM!  Yup, almost 8 hours!  I still can't help but giggle when I think about it, because the kicker was that we did it for the girls.  Because they were so excited to go on a boat...

...but then they spent the majority of the ferry ride doing this...watching cartoons from Mikes phone inside the boat.  Ahh live and learn ;)

Although there were some minor hiccups in our trip and everyone was 100% exhausted by the end, all four of us really had a great time!  We never really went on a vacation just the four of us, and I'm so glad that we were able to do it this year.  It was a trip packed full of fun memories, that (thanks in part to my blog) we will never forget :)