Slow down Summer!

We have had the most amazing Summer this year. Maybe Mother Nature is apologetic for forcing me to turn on my heat on May 26th, so APOLOGY ACCEPTED! We have hardly used our AC, have had basically no humidity the entire Summer and still have 3 full weeks before our lives are forever changed and we moved into a new chapter of the Batter Bunch lives (i.e. both kids in school full time...)

We have been swimming daily (and by we, I mean the kids) splitting our time between the beaches and our friend's pools. Last Saturday evening we got together with five of our favorite families for a BBQ / pool party. This is what the pool looked like:

Ben is wearing the green and Em has on her blue snorkle - center of the photo.

We partied hard that night and it was VERY tough for me to crawl out of bed the next morning and set up shop in our village's Farmer's Market to sell Aunt Lisa's pure maple syrup from 9-2. But the sales were good and the people watching was top notch - I took a solid nap when I got home and we enjoyed a fun family evening together that night.

The good stuff.

This week was primo afternoon low tides at our favorite beach to explore marine life. We hit it up twice.

Monday - E&B are the center kiddos.

Tuesday found us invited to my PTA pals new home overlooking the Long Island Sound. It is a dream house complete with a salt water pool and hot tub over looking the beach. Em was so excited to swim there - and as a plus, their golden retriever swam with them the entire time. Both kids got a huge kick out of the fact that the dog loved swimming as much as they do!

You want us to move in? Sure!

We decided to cool off in the "water park" or spraying turtles our village has in the harbor on Wednesday. Again, another beautiful day and I cannot express how grateful I am / how blessed we have been with this amazing weather - I feel like we are back in CA minus the drought and 100 degree temps!

CHEESE!

Back to West Meadow for more low tide fun on Thursday!

Today we were headed back to West Meadow when we decided as we pulled out of our driveway to hit up West beach - the private one for residents five minutes from our house. So glad we did, four of the kids from Ben's preK class that will also be in his K class were there and they got to reconnect. And, Emma got to play on a paddle board again. Oh, Santa Claus!

More blue skies!

We haven't been lounging at the beach all week - we did pit stop by the Village Center Wed pm to watch this band from South Africa perform. It was supposed to be an outdoor concert, but It started pouring out of nowhere so they moved inside. Of course, as soon as they were set up indoors, the sun came back out and it was a beautiful evening!

Love me the LIVE music...

Ben complained the whole time and I broke down and let him play angry bir*s on my cell phone so he would shut the heck up and I could enjoy the music. Emma enjoyed herself until the AC kicked on and froze us out mid-set.

At least she didn't complain!

I hosted a mom party at our place Thurs night. Daddy was planning to take the kids to a movie, but there was nothing good playing and the kids were pretty incensed that I would have a party at the house and they weren't invited. As the bungalow hasn't looked this clean ever, I decided to finally take pics to show you all in internet land!

Our dining room - handy Daddy built the benches for the table, added the chair rail on the walls and painted. YAY, Daddy!

The party started at 8. I'm pretty sure both kids had about 8 brownies each taking advantage of the fact that Mommy was entertaining. I'll give them credit - they asked me EVERY TIME before taking one. :) Daddy came home from work in time to play kitchen servant (he loved it and all the accolades he received) which gave me more time to flit about the guests. By 10pm, Ben was exhausted but refused to go to bed. He decided to "relax for a few minutes" in his bed instead. He promptly fell asleep and woke up this morning very sad because he fell asleep and "missed the party!" Emma was a very overtired girl who finally passed out around 11 with puffy eyes. Most of the mommies left around 11, but a handful hung on until TWO AM. Yes, 2:00am. We had no idea it was so late! Just goes to show you how you can get sucked into good conversation and lose all track of time. (I'm pretty confident the last time I was awake at 2am was when Ben was a newborn nursing every three hours!)

The Bungalow living room before the guests arrived.

The reverse view. Daddy also built the book shelf under the TV and the table between he chairs.