A little bit of this and that...

Ben got out his Angry Birds & Piggies the other day and built fun structures to sling shot down. We easily took 20 slow motion videos of the fun. Ben LOVES slow motion. 

He had a play date at our house with his buddy Ben C. I to work a bit with him to remind him Ben was his guest so he should go first on games or in choosing the activity. My Ben did a great job with that after reminding him - kiddo is developing some solid people skills!

Em had her field trip to the Aquarium. Another mama chaperone snapped these pics for me of her having fun!

I hope that's not bird poop on her arm!!!

We celebrated Father's Day on Saturday evening as Daddy and I were headed to Vegas for our convention early Sunday. The kids got him a card and wrote out cute fill in the blanks as to why they love Dad. I'll snap pics of them and post when I get home. 

Field Day 2016

We scored PERFECT weather for Field Day at the school this year - thank goodness because I was there 9-12 for Ben, then 12-3 for Emma! 

Ben usually complains about having to do anything physical, but he did a great job competing this year with zero complaints!

He kicked butt in the qualifying round of the sack race, but fell in the final race. 

He was an absolute champ on the tug of war line - these kids were focused leaving their hands raw after 8 tugging events!! Yikes. 

I scored a cute pic w his sweetheart, giggle giggle. 

Afterwards was the pizza party but Ben was more interested in the bubbles!

Emma was up after lunch. This girl is super focused!

If you can zoom in I caught her patented running with her tongue out in the sprint races!!! Hahaha

It's so fun to see how fast she has gotten in the past year. She is a head taller than most of the girls in her class and man, can she sprint! Yay, Emma!!!!

The Burke Bunch

The cousins came to visit!!! Woohoo!!

We started off the visit by a trip to Em's "Living Museum". Can you guess who she portrayed? 

We had beautiful weather and spent a lot of time down port. Ben got lots of rides...

Ben touched a snake!!!

Ben ate tarter sauce and "liked it!" Hahaha. Dinner at the Steam Room is always a hit. Emma chose to spend the night at her BFF's house this night...

We ate a lot of ice cream! (And by we I don't mean me!) 

We hit up the beach a few times...

And enjoyed lots of live music outside the PJ Brewery. 

We took lots of Selfies... Can't figure out how to turn pic. 

While Em was on a class trip to the Aquarium: 

We took a boat ride to Connecticut and back! It was a great week of fun and family. ❤️

Getting Brave

Knowing it's supposed to rain today, we got our beach on yesterday afternoon christening the paddle board for the first time this season. Also knowing I bought youth kayaks for the kiddos that are arriving this week, I wanted to teach them to row! I'm happy to report they got the hang of it pretty quickly! 

I missed the pics of Emma rowing Ben around - it was super cute. I guess I could just photoshop Ben on the front of the board in the above pic! 😜

Daddy fished for our dinner. He only caught one sea robin that he filleted up and we baked. Not as yummy as the fish sticks but still a decent dinner. Daddy and I are "eating clean" for 21 days. No sugar, no oil, no dairy, no processed foods. I've already lost 9 pounds and Daddy 8. Sweet! Gotta look good for the beach! 😁

The kids busted out the sprinkler when we got home. This $3 Walm*rt purchase has given us 6 solid Summers of backyard fun!

Summer kickoff

We kicked off beach season this past weekend with the perfect weather! It's was hot hot hot on Saturday and the kids took advantage of the heated pool at BBQ #1 and swam their little hearts out while I flitted about meeting all new people. It felt good to know they are such strong swimmers now and I don't have to be within inches of them anymore. 

BBQ #2 took us to our "family play date" group of friends where the kids played volleyball (prisoner ball)  all evening long with a ginormous oversized beach ball. I took no photos this entire day - complete slacker!! But it was a blast of a day and I stuffed myself with all foods bbq like and bad for you! 😜

On Sunday, we chilled out at the house then headed down to the beach in the late afternoon to meet up with our favorite "beach" families. (We are friends with so many families that we have to classify them!) 

The water is still freezing but that didn't stop the kiddos! And, believe it or not, I even dove in for a quick swim!! Daddy fished and caught a few sea robins that he filleted into fish sticks and we fried them up in our outdoor burner (keeping the smell out of my house!) 

On Monday, we went to a BBQ with our "office family" and continued the fun. There was a freezing cold pool that the kids enjoyed once again confirming we have some serious water babies on our hands. 

We are so grateful for our Island life and are excited for school to be out for the Summer!!

Walk / Run 2016

Today was the school's annual walk run "race". It's about one mile around the school grounds and the kids prepare for it for about a month. The parents are welcome to attend and even encouraged to race! I ran it with both kids when they were in Kindergarten getting legitimately smoked by 80% of the class. 

This year Emma asked Daddy if he would run it with her. As daddy has been hitting the gym, he agreed thinking anyone can run a mile!

The 3rd graders went first. Em vowed to me this morning she was going to come in in the top 5 girls. She's got serious competition in her class - a lot of speedy girls. She has come in around 10th the past two years. We encouraged her to give it her best shot and off she went. 

I was at the finish line collecting the top 5 bibs and was pleasantly surprised when I saw her come out of the woods portion and towards the finish in the 3rd spot! But she had two girls hot on her tail and I was totally THAT MOM, "They are right behind you! Step it up! Step it up!" When she finished 3rd, my heart swelled with pride!! She really pushed herself hard!

Daddy came in a minute later, getting hosed by tons of 8 year old girls! 😂

But I was VERY proud of him as he hasn't run any significant distance in 15 years!!!

Ben and I were up next. At the starting line:

He started off strong but I noticed he was running with his hand on his back. About a quarter of the way in he grabbed my hand and said his back was hurting bad. We then remembered he slipped on the wet steps Sunday and bruised his tailbone. I had no idea he hurt himself that bad as this kid is not a complainer. But with TONS of encouragement he finished the race and we actually had a decent time! (80% of the kids still beat us but who is counting!)

The kids had ice pops afterwards and we got a bag of ice for Ben's lower back. That seemed to make him "feel better". 

Emma & Ben, you kiddos are true Champions. You pushed through some adversity but both finished strong. We are so proud of your efforts!!

Day trippin'

It's Spring Break - minus two days that we needed to make up for snow days... Not enough time to "go" anywhere knowing we also need to run an office (!), but we did sneak into the city today for some fun. Normally I would drive - non-rush hour it takes about an hour, but with traffic - you just never know. The kids have been BEGGING me to take the train into the city. We are the LAST stop and it's a LOCAL train taking two hours so I have avoided it until today. Here we are at 9am!

We were about 2 and a half seconds into the trip and they wanted their snacks! Ut-oh, it's going to be a long day! They looked out the window for a bit, then played on their kindles. About 1/2 way there Emma admitted driving was SO MUCH better because they could watch a dvd in the car. HAHA! Ben LOVED the train - surprise surprise. A) trains B) he played on his kindle the entire time.

We made it to the big island on the railroad and now had to stare at this map for ten minutes and decide how to get to the Central Park Zoo. Funny thing is, before kiddos, I backpacked the world! Europe! Asia! No English anywhere and yet I always figured out how to get to where I needed to go!

Let's just say, my magical GPS touch is a bit rusty but...

...we made it to Central Park!!! The children immediately wanted to be local city folk and Emma had a hot dog from a dirty water dog vendor and Ben chose a giant Pretzel. (Look closely at Em's shirt - she dripped mustard on her sweatshirt with her first bite!)

Within 15 minutes of walking, Emma's "legs hurt" and Ben was "tired" - no children, we are not horse and carriage riding to the zoo. Suck it up and WALK! They did and we made it. As Madagascar is our favorite TRILOGY, we were excited to visit the place where Alex, Marty, Melmin & Gloria all met. Woohoo - the CENTRAL PARK ZOO!

It's actually a really tiny zoo, but they do a great job on the displays and the children's zoo is very interactive. This SEAL was happy to pose. I'm not sure what Ben is doing... Breakdancing?

The peacock put on a good show, thank you very much.

And the 4D "Ice Age" movie was FUN - look at these gangsters...

I'm a cute little bunny!

There are hundreds of giant glacial rock formations in the park just waiting to be climbed - I've got about 10 different pics of the kids climbing, but I'll only tease you with ONE:

We made our obligatory stop to visit BALTO, our favorite Sled Dog EVER (please see the animated movie)...

Ben purposely brought his BALTO book so he could "read Balto on Balto!"

We rode the carousel for the first time... I waited on the side and Ben blew me kisses with each revolution - such a good son. :)

We were getting tired so we made our way back to the railroad station on the subway - always a treat for the suburban kiddos... A great way to spend the day, trippin' in the city so nice they named it twice - New York, New York.

April showers and baths

The PTA science fair was last week. This was the 1st year the kids didn't do a project. I think mommy is still burned out from the Talent Show! We walked into the gym and Ben spotted a "dig". He spent the entire night here and didn't look at any of the projects. Emma, on the other hand, ditched me immediately and wandered the tables with her pals. It was a fun night but when it was done Ben was sad, "But I didn't even get a chance to see the projects!!" (We were there for 90 minutes!!!!) 

It was cold and rainy and windy on Sunday so Em's 1st lacrosse game was canceled. We did a lot of snuggling and reading and movie watching...

When we reminded the kids it was bath night, they asked for the first time in forever to bathe together. I was all, "Ummm, NO."  This was the compromise: bathing suits! Hahaha. 

We love the game 5 second rule but we made up our own "kid edition" to keep it easier. Questions like, "Name three kinds of dinosaurs" or "name three things you can buy at Walmart" or "name three things you may find in the ocean." We were laughing so hard! We love our Sundays, indeed.