Florida time!

We enjoyed our annual Summer trip to Florida to visit Abuelita and Grandpop in July.  Abuelita picked us up at the airport and we stopped at a new restaurant for lunch before heading to her home.

The restaurant was called Fresh Fusion and had a very interesting menu. Sadly the meals were fairly tasteless - it's a great idea but needs some tweaking. Here is a picture of Emma dabbing. *sigh*

Ben will talk nonstop about his games if you let him. Poor Grandpop can't escape and was a captive audience. Ben stood there forever explain to him how to play a transformers game! Hahaha

Daddy & I stole out for a date night our first evening there. We went charter fishing in the Atlantic.

Here was our bait! Yummy.

Look! A picture of me kinda sorta! I was enjoying getting ideas for our dream home by scoping out the houses along the canals out to the ocean.

We didn't catch anything but hey, when was the last time we got to hang out for 4 hours and just be!

We came home to two sleeping children all snuggled up. Giggle.

It was a bazillion degrees with 100% humidity so we spent every morning here! This is the first year we hung out in the deep end the entire time. My babies are growing up!

A trip to FL is never complete without a yummy seafood paella dinner. Emma probably would have eaten this entire pan if we let her... Ben, not so much. *sigh* again.

We celebrated Em's birthday again - any excuse to eat cake!

The kids fed the ducks every morning but they were too fast for me. I couldn't get outside in time for my usual picture. It was a very relaxing trip. I read an entire book! (That never happens at home!!!)

KoolAid hair dye

Emma received an iPad mini for her birthday. The entire immediate family pitched in to purchase it for her and she was sooooo happy! Ben squealed even louder because now he gets our old iPad all to himself. Ha! She has been obsessed with watching a YouTube reality show with two young sisters about her age and the other day she stumbled across a show where they dyed their hair with KoolAid.  She caught me in a moment of unclear distracted thinking and asked if we could dye her hair with the KoolAid, too. I said yes and was like, "Wait. What?"

Three stores later... We finally found some of that crazy powder with the power to dye your hair. It was an easy process and, "Wow!" it is certainly powerful. It's been a week and it is still vibrant red. 

A week later:

Madness, I tell ya. Hoping it's gone by the 1st day of school. 6 more weeks!

Yankee Game w our BFFs

It was HOT HOT HOT, but we had a blast at the Yankee game with our best buds! 

I dropped the kids off at camp at 9am, picked them up early at 10 and raced to the M's house. All the girls hopped in our car and the boys in the M car. We drove to the office to pick up daddy then made our way to the city. The traffic moved fine for the most part but it was an adventure after exiting the expressway to find our parking garage. It was right next to the stadium, but the traffic police had so many roads closed we had to go all the way around it getting an eye opening tour of the surrounding Bronx neighborhood. We finally found the garage we had prepaid for and got into the line. Too bad we entered the wrong section for prepaid!! The crazy sweet attendant redirected the traffic so both our cars could back out and go around to the prepaid entrance. There were surely a few cars cursing us as we went back out the in door! But we made it! Picture time at gate 4!

 

The boys were adorable holding hands as we made our way thru the metal detectors and ticket line. 

Our seats were in home run territory in left field. No home runs were hit but we forgot our gloves to catch the ball anyways!

Ben was a sweaty mess by the end of the first inning and ready to go home, "Why can't we just watch it together at our home?" Hahaha. Mama M whipped out her miracle machine that kept him occupied for the next five innings - a fan with a mister!!

How cute are we in Yankee hats? I didn't want to get beat up in the stands so I wore one...

The sun made it's way across the sky giving us a bit of shade for the last few innings. The kids lost interest in the game and enjoyed people watching. 

The Yankees wished Anna & Emma Happy Birthday!! It was so funny - Emma kept asking, "How did they know???"

Thank goodness for giant buckets of popcorn - kept the kids entertained. :)

It is impossible to get a good photo of Em these days... Big sigh. 

Our BFFs:

The Yankees lost to the Orioles, but we had a blast. The new stadium is beautiful and even though we were rocking rush hour traffic on the drive home, the kids entertained themselves and the day will go down in the books as another BEST DAY EVER. :)

Tired little man fell asleep w a book on his brain. 

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!!