Favorite photos of the Summer

Rylie's 9th birthday--we were supposed to camp in the backyard, but 105 degree temps made us sleep inside.

Gem mining near Asheville, NC with Boppa, Aunt Laurann, Uncle Gary and cousins Nicole and Noelle

Day trip to Isle of Palms beach.  Found a live starfish.



Feeding the horses in Fort Mill

I love this photo of their cute little toes

Feeding the fish at Lake Wylie

Beautiful girl

It is so rare to get a photo of all three of them looking at the camera.  Yea!

First day of school with their buddies, Emma, Laine, Kendall and Joey

My precious nephew, Stefan

Emmy and me--ready for Amy's wedding ceremony in Seattle, WA

The happy family--Stefan, Brian and Amy

All smiles after the wedding



Sisters Kim, Amy and Susan.  We missed you, Kari!



Kim and me hiking one of the Mount Rainier trails.  Beautiful wildflowers and snow-capped mountain!!

Funny stuff

Our little boy is growing up and is full of hilarious quotes:

• Wakes me up one morning with "Mommy, the reason why I have this many shirts on is because I was cold."  He had 8 shirts on!
• I say, "Kai, you are being mean."  He says, "No, I'm not.  How can you tell?"
• Dragging his unwilling mother behind, Kai is transitioning away from naptime to, hopefully, quiet time.  After putting him back to bed several times, he whines, "How long is this gonna take?"
• He has developed an obsession with Dunkin' Donuts and often asks, "When are we ever gonna go to Dunkin' Donuts?"
• When out running errands and he's ready to go home, he will say, "See, I told you it wasn't a good idea to... (go to the grocery store, go to Target)"
• When playing pretend with the girls, the girls will often choose to be Taylor Swift or Selena Gomez.  Kai pipes in "I'm Justin Bieber!" with urgency as if someone else is going to pick that character.
• Our main grocery store has free sugar cookies.  Cutting to the chase, he just calls Harris Teeter "the cookie store".
• Can quote movie, commercial and TV lines like a Indiana Hoosier frat boy.  One of our favorites is "Get a free Pepsi at Bojangles.  Bojangles, It's Bo Time!"
• Collectively calls Rylie and Madelyn "the sisters".  Such as, "When are the sisters coming home from school?"

Recent accomplishments:

• This Summer, he learned to float on his back in the pool, write his name, dance the cupid shuffle and stand in line.  These are all paramount to the success of any warm-blooded American four year old!
• He is doing great on number and letter recognition.
• He is so competitive that he turns everything into a competition and throws a fit if he doesn't win.  Among his favorite competitions: Memory, Go Fish and Old Maid games; racing me up and down the sidewalk; racing me to see who can get dressed or do their morning chores first.  I wonder why I am his favorite competitor?  Maybe because I mostly let him win?
• Yesterday, he and the girls biked from our house to our neighborhood park.  Instead of being proud of himself for biking that far for the first time, he cried the whole way b/c Madelyn was ahead of him and he couldn't catch up. "I don't like it when she's ahead of me!  It's not fair!"

He's passionate about:

• Identifying cars and trucks on the road.  90% of our conversations while I'm driving center around this.
• Spiderman and a growing appreciation for other superheros.
• Daniel Tiger on PBS Kids.
• the iPad.

Two funny stories about Rylie: 

• In a pensive tone, she told Eric she thinks Mitt Romney is going to win the election.  When Eric asked why, she said, "Well, Barack Obama says the private sector is doing fine."  I guess those political ads are working on nine year olds!
• When Tim Berners-Lee was honored during the opening ceremony of the Olympics, calling him the inventor of the World Wide Web, I explained what that meant and she said with shock, "Shouldn't he be dead by now?"  Since she's always been around advanced technology, she thought the internet had been around for 100 years.  It is unimaginable to her that he's only in his mid-50s.