Summertime

While we who live in states where the thermometer is still topping 90 daily won't kid ourselves and call this time "fall," school officially starts for everyone except for me on Monday, so technically, we're wrapping up summertime.  Brian starts the school year at Mercer Law, Els begins 3-K, and Muh will be going to the same place one day a week for MMO.  I have gotten so behind in my posting of pictures pretty much everywhere (except instagram), so I decided to deluge the blog with highlights from this summer.  

BFFs on the pier at Lady's Island

This boy LOVES the ocean                                    

The old house, all packed up 

Outside the new house

"Helping" with the move-in 

B excited and optimistic before we missed not one, but three flights to Europe

The awesome treehouse at the Dogfish Head Brewery.  They actually have staff meetings in there!

Rehoboth Beach.  We decided we like the southern end of the Atlantic shore much more than the Northern.  But there were huge waves.

At the Roanoke Star.  That's the city behind us.  

Together again!  I can't believe it's been 11 years since we were roomies.  (And, yes, I may have worn that dress a lot during our trip.)

Home again, home again, eating watermelon on the front porch.

Fun at the most ghetto children's museum in the world.  

Muh with his first ice cream cone.  Needless to say, he was excited.  

Eliana with her favorite celebrity.  She kept hugging him.  

They are obsessed with taking "silly face" pictures.

So, here's to (hopefully) cooler weather, new friends, new schools, (new everything), lots and lots of birthdays, and savoring our last season as a family of four!

Think Pink

We read a lot of Pinkalicious these days.  It's inescapable.  While Els numbers fire ants and roly-polys as her friends, chose a stuffed rat as her toy from IKEA recently, and likes to climb the lower branches of a tree in our back yard to "howl at the moon," she also loves pink.  She can't help it.  What 3 and a half year old girl can?  So, her resin-encased bug collection rests beside her dress-up dresses and her stuffed rat listens to endless repetitions of Pinkalicious.  

That said, she was entirely convinced that baby #3, or baby Rainbow, was a girl.  "But what if baby Rainbow is a boy baby?" I asked her the day before the big ultrasound.  "No mommy, I only want one brother in our house," she insisted.  There was no room in her mind for another boy, another brother.  And, what do you know, she was right.  Baby Rainbow, baby trois, is a girl.  I personally would have been thrilled either way, but Els was not even surprised.  She knew the whole time.  Now her mission is to convince us to actually name baby girl Rainbow.  She "really, REALLY, wants her real name to be Rainbow."  I told her that we're not hippies, but that she can call her sister Rainbow as a nickname.

We're going to call her Eva.

Princess Els with Branches the Rat

She actually really does love her brother

In her "howling tree"