Hunt Club Farm, more fall fun....

Last Saturday we went to Hunt Club Farm and then Sophia had her very first birthday party slumber party!  (More about that in a minute)...

Sophia loves this Candy! NOW! shirt.  The monster is fuzzy.  I think it's a little obnoxious, but she's becoming her own little person with her own sense of style.  I only help a little bit in the mornings before school these days.  She usually picks out her own clothes...or at least has an opinion if I pick out her outfit.





Lilly, on the other hand, wants to wear a "pretty dress" every day and seriously gets mad at me if she has to wear pants!

At Hunt Club Farm the girls got to go in the bounce houses, feed the goats, ride on a hayride, and then
we purchased a few tickets to the carnival rides.

Here's a video of Sophia acting a little crazy before we left.



A GIANT PUMPKIN!!!!

Yes, real men wear pink.

 Here's Lilly on the car ride.  It just goes around and around.  It's definitely her speed.

Brave Sophia wanted to try the Fun Slide.  She absolutely loved it as you can see in the next picture.  I think she went on it 3 times before we were out of tickets.

Sleepovers

Sophia was invited to a sleep over birthday party last weekend.  She was so excited to use her sleeping bag for the very first time.

Her friend, Maggie, turned 7 and invited 7 girls to spend the night and watch movies, eat popcorn and stay up late.  Sophia told me she was up until 11pm.  She also told me she was tied with another girl to be the first to wake up in the am.  Will picked her up at 9 and took the girls out to breakfast while I was at church.

Let me back up for a second....Lilly also had a sleep over on Saturday night.  She stayed at our neighbor's house with their two girls, Taylor (11) and Riley (5).  Sophia, Riley and Lilly are the best of friends and play together on most weekends while the adults get together to watch football. 

We even sent Lilly without a pull up and she stayed dry all night, thankfully!  I didn't even think to pack one and I'm sure Will never checked her bag when he dropped her off.  :-)

Since we had a free night we went out to dinner at my favorite casual place, The Baker's Crust and then we browsed around a fru-fru grocery store for a while.  I couldn't think of a better way to spend a Saturday night.

The best part about it all was that I got to sleep for 1/2 hour extra on Sunday morning.  Lucky me.

Lilly without Sophia

Lilly and Sophia wore matching shirts to school the other day.  I forgot to take their picture together....so here's 1/2 of "the look".

Photos from my phone

Here are some photos I found on my phone.  They were taken over the summer and I'm just now downloading them!  Yikes!!!

 

Taken at the Children's Festival in Norfolk two weekends ago

Another cute picture of Lilly

Here's Lilly in the garage one day after school.  (She's wearing her plastic Princess and the Popstar shoes...which can't be comfortable!)  And, the little doggie in her baby carrier is Riff, the dog from the Princess and the Popstar movie.  Told ya she is obsessed! 

Lilly and her costume

Lilly is absolutely obsessed with The Princess and the Popstar movie!  It's a Barbie movie...and now there are dolls, clothes, and accessories available in the stores!  She's going to be the Popstar for Halloween.  We got her costume a few weeks ago at Target and it's a flimsy purple outfit. We got her a purple and white striped "rocker" wig to go with it and I also found a pair of pink cowboy boots to complete the look.  She will carry a microphone too, but unfortunately I don't think anyone is going to know what she is supposed to be.  It's a completely unrecognizable costume.

She's so obsessed with the outfit that she strips out of her school clothes the minute she walks in the door and decides she must wear her purple Popstar costume.  I hope it lasts until Halloween.

Sophia is going to be Ms. Draculaura...from a tween toy series called Monster High.  Another completely unrecognizable costume if you ask me.  Click here to see the full costume
Yes, she got the socks and the wig and we even bought some makeup so we could paint a few hearts on her cheeks.

Both of them will start off in wigs....I wonder how long they will last. 
 

A fun day....from this summer

In August our church had field trips for the girls on a few Wednesdays.  We went to a farm, the animal shelter, a mini golf course, to eat yogurt, and also went swimming.  The girls had a great time!  I volunteered to be a chaperon so Lilly was allowed to tag along.

We took Elizabeth with us to the animal shelter.

Lilly and Carlie - still best friends

A mom took these at our Girl Scouts ceremony on Wednesday night. 

Carlie and Lilly are still best friends even though we don't see the Wyles as often as we used to....life just interrupts the chance for any fun playdates these days!  They still take dance class together on Thursday nights.  It's so cute to watch them hug until they fall on the floor!

Farmer's Market

We went to the Farmer's Market this past Saturday.  The girls enjoyed playing in the bounce houses and climbing on the giant pumpkins.  Here are some of the better photos from the day.

Lilly, Sophia and Summer

Summer is our neighbor and she and Lilly attend Beach Manor together this year.  It's worked out great that Summer comes over in the morning to our house before school when her mom goes to work and I take them to school.  Then Sue, Summer's mom, picks them up at lunch time and brings them home.  Sue is a morning Kindergarten teacher so she finishes her day at the same time the girls do and it's only a short drive from her school to Beach Manor to pick up the munchkins. 

Lilly and Summer LOVE coming to the Sophia's bus stop every morning...I have a feeling they wish they were allowed to get on the bus with the big kids.

School is in full swing

The girls are thriving at school.  Sophia loves her teacher and she's getting good marks on the papers the she brings home.  Her homework so far has been a review of things she already knows so she's breezing through it.  Either Will or I show up every Friday to have lunch with her.  It's kind of funny that Will knows all the boys in her class because they try to sit with him.  I, on the other hand, know most of the girls in the class.  I was in her classroom last Wednesday and heard Sophia being referred to as an example of good behavior.  I was very proud of her.

Lilly loves school.  I haven't connected with her teacher at all this year and her assistant,  Mrs. Brantley, is barely there because she's going to have a baby soon (not terribly soon. in November), but there seems to be a substitute quite frequently. 

Lilly's school photo: fall

Look how Lilly posed for this picture.  It's so her!

I saw my new motto today.....in Hallmark

First Day of School - 2012

It was a week of firsts for us. 

Sophia started first grade which meant that she rode the bus for the first time.  When the bus arrived she got right on and never looked back (well, ok, everyday she waves out the window at me).  Honestly, I thought she would cry, but she's a big girl now and I don't think the thought ever crossed her mind. 

The first day caused a little confusion for her.  She forgot her lunchbox in the cafeteria.  She got off at the wrong bus stop in the afternoon.....she got off at the one right before hers.  Luckily she saw us waiting and ran for us right away.  She went to the nurse the first day of PE class because she scratched open a mosquito bite and it was bleeding a little bit. Even with all that - she LOVED the first day and so far so good.  Her teacher is really nice.  She's a brand new first grade teacher this year.  She did her student teaching last year and when Mrs. Anglin (the teacher that Sophia was assigned to) retired the week before school started, Mrs. Marks was hired.  She's 35 and has two kids of her own. 

I surprised Sophia today and met her for lunch.  She loved having a lunch buddy.  Two girls, Honesty and Savannah, sat across from us and chatted with us throughout the meal.  It was great to meet some of her classmates and get to be part of her daily routine.  I may just join her every Friday....we'll see.

If you look really close at the third picture you can see her smiling face peering out from behind the window.  Off to first grade, at last!

 

Lilly had a great first day of school too.   One of our neighbors, Summer, is in Lilly's class this year so I'm carpooling with her mom, Sue.  Sue drops Summer off before she heads to work in the morning (she's an AM Kindergarten teacher) and all three girls get to play for a half hour before we all walk to the bus stop together.  Then Lilly and Summer have another 10 minutes to play before I have to take them to school.  I'm done by 8:35.  Sue picks them up in the afternoon and drops Lilly off at home.  It's the perfect scenario if you ask me.

Seek & Reach the Beach

Seek & Reach the Beach is a summer program at our Church for rising 1st-6th graders.  Sophia qualifies this year and since I agreed to help chaperone Lilly is allowed to come too.

The theme is "Animals" and so far we've been to a Bee Farm and a REAL FARM....which had tons of dogs and cats running around, tons of horses, birds, peacocks, countless chickens - but mostly horses!   Get this:  I held a CHICKEN!  Yep.  Here's the proof. Pretty darn disgusting!!!  I may be smiling, but I was freaking out on the inside and quickly let go. 

Sophia was too chicken (pun intended) to ride on the horse, but she was cool on the hay ride.  Lilly was a little leery of the hay ride and loved riding the horse.  In fact, that night at dinner Will asked her if she'd like to take lessons and she quickly said yes.  Hmmmm.....that's my next project:  Lining up our schedule for the school year. 

So far, here's what we're thinking:  Both girls are trying out gymnastics classes tonight.  Separate classes.  This would replace their Thursday evening dance classes.  Sophia talked about taking acting classes for a while, but now she seems to want to try gymnastics.  I'm not going to stop her.  It's a great form of exercise and maybe she will actually enjoy it.  She likes to jump that's for sure.  Lilly said she would prefer gymnastics to dance even though she loves dance and seems to really be doing well with it.  We can always switch back. Lilly will continue to take her music class and Sophia and I will continue on with Girls Scouts:  Year Two Daisies.

Anyway, back to the farm.....here's Lilly riding the giant horse, Noodle.  The kids had a great day.

Daniel and Meg's baby shower

My brother and his wife are expecting twin girls (Juliette and Penelope) in about 6 weeks.

We drove to Aberdeen, MD two weekends ago to attend their bumblebee baby shower.  We had a really good time and the dessert table was simply beautiful.

The girls loved sprawling out on the floor as the gifts were being opened.  They helped out a little by passing presents to Meg a few times. 

Speaking of presents.  I was totally stressed about what to get twins from the girls.  Our Babies-R-Us didn't have any of the SwaddleMe blankets that they registered for.  I was originally going to get them those from Sophia and Lilly because they are AWESOME, LIFE-SAVING, SLEEP INDUCING BLANKETS.  I loved all of mine.

So when we couldn't find those, we went the clothing route.   They each picked two outfits, well...let me rephrase that, Sophia picked and Lilly agreed, but we didn't have many options.  In my brain, there are 4 different ways you can dress twins. 
1)  identical
2)  same outfit, different colors
3)  coordinating outfits (different, but similar, like the Gymboree clothing lines)
4)  totally unmatching

I was going for option 2.  Same outfit in different colors.  It was really hard to find, but we found some pink and blue in two different outfits.

Will and I also went in on the baby monitors...which seem simply awesome because they have video...and since they cost a small fortune I hope they have WiFi too.

They certainly were showered with tons of things they need to have.  It was so fun watching them open their gifts and secretly reliving my own baby showers in my head.  How tiny everything is.  How precious. 

Grancy and Big Daddy

Grancy and Big Daddy came for a visit to help us celebrate our anniversary.  They arrived late afternoon and the four of us went to dinner that evening at the same restaurant, Alexander's on the Bay,  we dined at 8 years prior with many of our family members in honor of our wedding.  We didn't actually have a rehearsal, but we definitely had the dinner!

The following day Grancy and Big Daddy took the girls for the entire day and they went swimming in their hotel pool, went to see the latest Ice Age movie and then closed the day with a trip to Red Robin, a favorite of Sophia and Lilly.  A win/win for all of us.  I had a free day, Will had a quiet house and Grancy and Big Daddy spent time with the girls.

It was the perfect way to spend our 8th anniversary.