The Motherlode of Summer Activites

Instead of posting a million little posts, here's a giant one with some highlights of our summer so far. The pressure to do fabulously entertaining things everyday has worn me thin and we are only about 10 days in. However, if I keep up this pace, I should be nice and skinny for our trip to San Diego next month. No time to eat. Emma and Ava both still have swim everyday. We have not gotten to sleep in yet, as Emma has to be at swim at 7:45 every morning. BUT, it has paid off! She finally got to swim in a meet on Saturday since they had a weekend off from softball. Because all of her posted times were from last season, she was seeded in slower heats. It was a great ego booster for her to be able to win all 3 of her heats. Beyond that, though, she improved all of her times by a ton. She improved her breaststroke time by more than 7 seconds even with her goggles falling off!

Ava is doing great as a Tadpole and can swim a short distance...just so long as Coach Caitlin makes it to practice. Because if one of the "boy coaches" even dares to speak to her, the hippopotamus rears it's ugly head and that is not good for anyone. We've spent lots of time at our community pool, at the playground, at Rock N' River, at the sprinkler park and Slip N'Slidin in the backyard. Summer is all about water and popsicles!

BASEBALL!!!

Vinny has become completely obsessed about "Bay-Ball". He wants to play catch all.day.long. When he is unable to find someone to play catch, he walks around swinging an imaginary bat, not unlike a pro working on his swing. The topper was the other day when I sat him down to watch TV while I showered and tried to put on Diego, he screamed for BAYBALL. I had to put on ESPN!! We are in for it. He found a boy at the sprinkler park to play catch with him.

SMORES!!

Ever since Shannon broke down the fat and caloric intake of Smores to me and taught me how to make them in the microwave (duh, why didn't I ever think of that?), we've been having them for dessert...like every night :) We heart Shannon 4ever!

AND, if you are wondering why there are so many pics of the littles and so few of Emma, you obviously don't have a 9 year old. She prefaces every picture I take of her with "Is this for your blog?" LOL...I'm going to have to start lying because this is the look I get when I answer "yes".
The girls and I had a girls afternoon and went to see Up. Emma and I loved it, but it was a little deep for Ava. She still enjoyed it, but I think it mostly went over her head.

Softball Fun

Beyond the awesomeness of watching Emma play and spending hours and hours at the ball fields, we have also had a great time getting to know the families of her teammates. A couple weeks ago we went out for Mexican food with a bunch of the families. We had a great time dancing and drinking beer. One of Emma's teammates has a younger sister Ava's age. They were fast friends.

This one is my favorite photo. Except what you don't see is that right after this shot, Vinny slammed my beer so hard with his sippy that I had to guzzle my beer so as to not spill it. That combined with the Mariachi music spun me into a quick TJ flashback :)