The Batter Babies no more Bunch: 4 weeks

Repeat after me, "Copyright infringement." (photo stolen from Henry's mom's FB)

All of my friends in CA are posting their first day of school pics and I'm thinking, geez, those CA kids really got robbed! Summer is SUPPOSED to go through labor day! Billy Joel even sings a song about it! These island kids are blessed - we still have FOUR MORE WEEKS of lazy fun in the sun.

And fun we are having! The penthouse community has gotten a family makeover. The grad students have moved out and families with young children have moved in - woohoo! There are three vacent penthouse suites available and we are hoping (praying?) at least one of them gets snatched up by a nice family with a high school aged daughter who LOVES to kidsit! Add this to your prayers for me faithful readers! (Oh, yeah, and while you are prayin' don't forget to mention that the sitter must love dogs...Oi!)

The above pic was taken today. I was not witness to the events, but I heard afterwards that our new awesome neighbor, Viv, and Emma were playing "party planners" and threw Henry an impromptu birthday party (his bday was Mon) complete with home made drawn games - pin the nose on the clown! etc. It seemed as though everyone had a blast and Em did not shut up about it our entire dinner. (Possibly because we interrupted the party to drag her away to eat dinner... which she did in record time, then proceeded to walk around the sidewalk in front of our building saying quite audibly, "Party starting in 2 minutes!" over and over again until the other kids shoved their dinner down their throats and ran back outside to resume the fun...)

The kids have been coming to the office with us more often these days. Emma sits at the desk and plays pbskids games on the desktop while Ben happily spends time on the iBen, er, I mean iPad. The other day I forgot to bring snacks so Emma asked me if she could "get a snack from the thing down there." I had no idea what she was talking about so she walked me to our lounge and pointed to the vending machine. As I needed to buy myself another 45 minutes of work time, I relinquished and gave her a dollar to get a kit kat. The funniest thing ever happened next! She has obviously never ever purchased anything from a vending machine before (not too shabby, right??? Six years!!!!) as she took the dollar bill and tried to stuff it into the coin slot. I was amused by this so of course I snapped a picture and offered NO advice to her wondering if she would figure it out. She folded the bill all different ways to no avail until she FINALLY discovered the bill slot at the top. Of course the bill then kept getting rejected because it was all wrinkly! I then stepped in to offer motherly advice, the bill was accepted, she pressed the appropriate buttons and out came her kit kat. EXCEPT, she had no clue how to retrieve it from the bottom. I showed her how to push in the lower panel and grab it and she was all, "That's so cool!" Needless to say, I may be in trouble from here on out. Vending machines are addictive - please remind me never to forget snacks again!!

Kit kats are good for me, right?

We took the kiddos to PA this past weekend for the speediest ever overnight getaway. The Denver contingent was making a rare PA visit and we needed to get our Aunt Miki and Uncle Sean fix. Saturday evening we partied away at Aunt Lisa's, left there around 9:30 figuring the kids would fall asleep in the car on the ride to Gramma's house. NOPE! They were wide awake and Ben requested a "dance party" so dance we did! It is not very often we are rockin' the dance floor into the night - gotta take advantage of the fun while we can! It was so much fun I forgot to take pictures or video so you will just have to believe me when I say our kids can cut a rug. :)