Hot Fun in the Summertime

Not too long after I rejoiced over having "the whole summer off" for the first time in my teaching career, I realized the harsh truth: that on my school's modified traditional schedule, "the whole summer" really only means about 9 weeks.  Granted, that's 9 weeks longer than most adults' summer vacations (Keira asked when Bear gets his summer break, and I had to regretfully inform her that he gets no such thing), but in terms of packing in rest and fun, and to-do's, and kindergarten prep for Kiwi, and new school year prep for me, and visiting with family and friends from out of state...well, it's really not that long at all.  We're a little over halfway through now, and although I have tons of things I blog about mentally, taking the time to actually type them out just isn't happening.  I guess there are worse things than having too much fun to blog about the fun, right?

So, here's some of what we've been up to...

At my brother's birthday party, his soon-to-be-stepson busted out his ATV and Ellie begged for a ride.  I put Ells on the back, told her to hang onto Sebastian, and told Sebastian to take it slow (plus jogged alongside them just in case), but it was only a few seconds before Ellie started making a whining noise. 

"Are you scared?" I asked her.

She answered, "No, I want to drive!"

That's our girl!  And drive she did.  These pictures crack me up.  Hold on, Sebastian!!

We recently went to our first-ever minor league baseball game, thanks to free tickets from a reading incentive program at my school, and it was WAY fun.  We ate dinner at a little restaurant just above left field before the game started, made sure we had seats in the shade, and settled in for the game.  Here are the girls in their baseball caps before the stadium opened:

Ellie was in rare form and had a great time sitting on my lap and kissing my face, "shooby-ing" my cheeks (the girls invented that term for putting your palms flat against someone's cheeks and then moving them up and down...yeah, my kids are weird), and giggling like a crazy person.

Possibly one of the reasons she preferred my lap was because she is such a Small Human that, much like at the movies, she doesn't weigh enough to hold her seat down and ends up folded up like a little quesadilla (much to the amusement of the ladies behind us, who cracked up at the girls all night and stopped me to say how entertaining they are).

Bear got some peanuts and the girls had quite a tough time cracking them open...

...and once Ellie finally got one open, she'd just throw the pieces on the ground and start over again.  I told her, "You're supposed to eat the peanuts and just throw down the shells!" and she said, "No way!  I don't like peanuts" before proceeding to work on the next one.

It turned out to be a good game, which our team tied up in the 9th inning and won just after we left in the 14th innning (which was a bummer, but it was late and Ellie was exhausted from all of her antics and enthusiastic cheering).

Let's see, what else?  Oh, we saw Brave, which is a cute enough movie (you gotta love Merida's hair--is there an Oscar for Computer-Generated Hair??  If so, they deserve one.) but not one of my favorites from Disney/Pixar.  Even though it's no Toy Story or Monsters, Inc., we still enjoyed it, although Ellie sat in my lap almost the whole time there, too, and turned around tearfully during a few of the scarier scenes to squeak out, "They're gonna kill her mom!"  I was glad to have her right there so I could wrap her up and whisper reassuring lies things into her ear such as, "Remember, Disney movies are always happy.  Her mom is going to be okay!"  (The girls have never seen Bambi and, thankfully, Ellie didn't have the capacity at the time to retort, "Oh, yeah?  What about Simba's dad?  Or Cinderella's mom?  Or the wife from Up?  Or Nemo's mom??!  Your pants are on fire, Mom!!" so woohoo for that.)

In the lobby, the girls sat down in this photo op chair that was part of a Dark Shadows display and made their scariest faces:

We spent 4th of July at my grandparents' house, where I took very few pictures, but my mom got a ton of great ones...most of these are hers!

Coy Keira.  Sigh.  Also, this child is suddenly all legs!

Ellie and Pap-Pap:

So, funny story.  Apparently Ellie hasn't known my dad long enough to realize that when the hose shuts off, and he suggests you look inside of it to see what's wrong, there is at least a 99% likelihood that you're about to be squirted in the face.  So, poor Ells fell for it:

And, because she hates water on her face, she cried:

But then I wrapped her up in a towel like a burrito, and....well, I probably shouldn't divulge what I whispered in her ear, but I think the look on her scheming little face says it all:

She may or may not have leapt from my lap and formed an army of children, one by one, to assault Grampy with water guns.  All I know is, he was ambushed, and revenge is reportedly sweet.

Later, while her cousins and uncles played baseball out front, Ellie demonstrated what she learned from all that time she spent picking grass   playing with other kids' hair   staring off into space   taking snack breaks in the grass with Mommy   practicing t-ball a couple of months ago: baseball stance!

Kiwi followed suit, once again affirming the fact that she is suddenly all legs...and a beauty!

Bittle's here from Michigan for a month (of which only a week is left!), so we got a rare pic of the two of us that isn't taken by one of us holding the camera at arm's length.  Thanks, Mom!

And Bittle wins the prize for getting a family photo of Bear, the girls, and me where every last one of us is looking at the camera (and no one is eating string cheese, or making weirdo faces *cough cough Keira*).  Hooray!

My parents stayed with us for a few days after 4th of July, so Bear and I took them to our new favorite day-tripping place: Coronado Island.  The beach is gorgeous, the waves are small to nonexistent, and there happens to be an incredibly yummy barbecue place that I may have yammered on about several times here already...but seriously, it bears repeating.  As my mom--a notoriously bird-like eater--said whilst practically licking her plate clean, "This might be the best thing I've ever eaten that wasn't chocolate!"  We pigged right out, the girls played on the beach, and once again, my mom got some awesome pics:

This one makes me sing my ode to Ellie's tiny bum:

"My friend Ellie is a cutie patootie,

With a tiny little hiney and a cutie little bootie!"

What? Other people don't make up songs about their kids' tiny hineys?? Oh. Sorry.

Whew!  I think it takes almost as long to upload and narrate all this stuff as it does to actually do it, but I'm trying my best to post as much as I can, so that when this summer has officially zoomed by, I'll have an answer to, "Where did all the time go?  What did we DO all summer??"  Still on the agenda: school clothes shopping for Keira, lots of work to be done in my classroom (part of Operation: Remember, Self, You Have One of Those Job Thingys), and hopefully at least a few days of sitting around in the house doing a whole lot of nothing!