Cute faces

We were walking out the door to go to our neighbor's birthday party on Saturday and the girls stopped me to take their pictures. They are such hams these days.

Getting ready to go to the pool

A Trip to the Botanical Gardens

On Friday we went to the Botanical Gardens with Haley and Carlie.  We ended up getting rained out, but we had already spent about 4 hours there.  The girls loved playing on the huge sand mound, playing in the little cabin, playing in the new art station, and rolling down the tall grassy hill.  They are not so much interested in the sprinklers anymore.  Funny....because that's why we go.  They go into the sprinkers and then a few minutes later they want to move on to something else.

These water pumps are an old favorite.  There's a bunch of plastic food and cool containers and they love washing the fake veggies/fruits over and over again.

Church Photos

A couple of weeks ago we had our family portrait taken for our church directory.  Here's the photos.  Not the best, but OK.
 
We purchased the 11 x13 photo of the picture of both girls and purchased a 3.5 x 5 copy of the rest.

 

Zoo Trip

We went to the zoo today with a group from our church.  The education director organizes activities for the rising first graders - rising fifth graders on most Wednesdays throughout the summer.  Lilly is allowed to tag along if I agree to be a chaperone, which I always agree to do. 

Today was the perfect day to go to the zoo.  For the most part it was cloudy and in the 80s.  Alot of the animals were roaming around and not trying to find shelter from the hot sun.

The girls had a super time.

Silly Headbands

Dance Recital Night

Last Thursday night we had to go to Lilly's dress rehearsal for her dance recital which took place on Friday night at the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk.  We'll be getting the recital video soon and I will post Lilly's dance performances for all to enjoy.  Of course, I think she nailed it!

Sophia was bored to death sitting through the entire first act...we got to leave at intermission because Lilly was done.  We picked her up backstage and Will took us all out for a celebration dessert. 

She says she wants to take dance lessons again the fall except she's interested in jazz and hip hop. 

Underwater Fun

Have I ever mentioned that two of our nice digital cameras were stolen?  Yup. So we rely on the point and shoot digital camera that my mom re-gifted to us and it's actually an underwater camera.

It's come in handy a few times lately when we've been in the pool.  Here's a few shots of Lilly underwater for only her second time!  Not only does she put her head under, but she swims and does twirls underwater too.  I'm soooo proud of her.  She either keeps her eyes open or wears goggles, but we need to get a pair that doesn't fog up and that is a better fit for her. 

Yay for Lilly

It's the end of her four-yr old program at Beach Manor and she's finally in a phonics book which means she can identify both upper and lower case letters.  It's been tough, but we've been working very hard with her. Her teacher was especially working with her because that would give her a perfect record of getting every kid in the class into a phonics book.

Then....one day....Lilly knew all the letterd.  It somehow clicked.  Now she's been coming home daily and telling me what different letters sound like. It's really cool! 

We're still reinforcing her memory of all the letters at home. Yesterday I gave her some word puzzles that Sophia had (I think they were a b'day present from Uncle Mike a few years ago).

She wouldn't leave the room until all the mini puzzles were finished. Each puzzle has a word written on it and a image of the word so she might start to recognize a few words one of these days. You can see the fox in the upper right corner...she called it a wolf.  Hahaha

She did them most of the puzzles all by herself and there must have been twenty of them. Sophia came in at one point and insisted that she help so Lilly allowed her to do two. Then Sophia moved on to other puzzles. Note to self.  Get some more puzzles. That kept them busy and quite for quite some time.

Just FYI: Lilly has been in a math book at school for a while so we're proud of her for that too.

Next year she will be attending Beach Day School which is an even better school than Beach Manor in my opinion. I tried to get Lilly in at the beginning of this year after she has spent a month or two at Beach Manor and I couldn't.  

Beach Day School happens to be located in our church and it happens to be full day compared to public school which is three hours and Beach Manor which is 3 hours of Kindergarten and then three hours of extended play & activities. Sophia had a great experience at Beach Manor, so I can't knock it, but they don't have the same teachers and I don't think they are as good. So, I think the extra individual attention that Lilly will receive at Beach Day will be fantastic.  Her schedule will be 9:30 - 2:15 (Monday - Thurs) and 9:30 - Noon (Friday).

The only thing is that Lilly absolutely hates going to church. She didn't like being in the choir and I don't think she enjoys sitting quietly waiting for the children's moment when she can leave the service. She honestly clings to me often when we're in the building...especially when I'm her teacher for Sunday school for the day. Sophia, on the other hand, absolutely loves choir and church.

I'm not certain the first couple of days are going to go so smoothly at Beach Day School, but I'm hoping Lilly will really enjoy herself soon enough. She has a friend in the class already. It's Norah.

The school projects are incredibly creative and clever. I see them every week because I teach Sunday school in the Kindergarten classroom.  They also have a Kindermusik class each week and an Abrakadoole Art class built into their weekly schedule too. Both have always been extra-curricular activities for us and now it's built in! Very nice.

Church Directory Photo

Yesterday we went in for our church directory family portrait session. 

We ended up ordering a really nice one of the girls together and we'll get small pictures of the all the poses we liked, but we left it at that. They asked if wanted Christmas cards, they explained their whole frame collection, etc... Will was not having any of it.  Thank goodness he was there because I thought the individual shots of the girls looked good awesome enough to purchase too.  We'll get a free family 8x10 for showing up. 

Here are a few of the pictures that I took at our house before we left for our photo session.  They both looked so pretty in their white dresses, although Sophia has the clear plastic "hanger helper" still attached to the should of her dress and it's showing in the picture.  Maybe it looks like a necklace, maybe?   

Bridging From Girl Scout Dasies To Girl Scout BROWNIES

Can you excited?  That's what 12 girls were today at our bridging ceremony. Can you see Sophia's happy face? She was like this for an hour leading up to the ceremony and all throughout. Her excitement even convinced Lilly to become a Girl Scout too. 

Two girls in the troop couldn't make it.  We'll have them bridge over to Brownies at the beginning of next year. 

They ceremony was one of three being held today at Little Island Park at Sandbridge beach - which is one of our favorite beaches. 

The ceremony began with each girl wearing her blue Daisy uniform and walking across "the bridge"that the girls are all trying to stand on in this picture below.  Notice the uniform change to brown.  Well, after tchey walked aross the bridge Carolyn, the troop co-leader, took off their Daisy tunic and replaced it with their Brownie vest. Once they formed a circle I called each girl up and turned her around a few times while I said: Twist her and turn her and show her the elf.  She looked in the mirror and saw.  And the girls said: HERSELF!!!!  Yes, some of them yelled it so it deserved exclamation points.  (smile). Then they each said the Girl Scout Promise while I pinned on their Brownie pin.  It was a Kodak moment for sure. Will didn't come with us so I don't have a picture of Sophia getting pinned. 

He did join us at the beach after the ceremony so he had a free pass to skip. Not every dad was there, but a lot of them were.  Anyway, I digress....after the ceremony we went to the beach and had a fun time playing in the sand. 

These are a couple of super, excited, girls.  All hyped up after eating cupcakes with globs of icing.  

This is a picture of the cupcake cake.

Here's our troop flag.