VACATION!!

We planned our vacation for late September to avoid the busy season.  It was tough listening to everyone else going off to fun places and we just had to wait.  But...it was worth it.  We had a great time with great weather.  We stayed in one, big happy beach house with my parents, Grandma Cipollone and my sister and her whole family.  We had to walk a short distance to the beach, but we had our own private pool.

I took about 170 pictures and ended up with 49 "keepers".  These are a few of my favorites.  I plan on doing a slideshow like I did last year.  But I have less time than I did last year so it will be done, oh, maybe by Christmas.  

Some highlights of the trip:

 - Madeline actually let the ocean water touch her feet this time

 - Grandma and Fia becoming besties

 - Madeline and Alexis sleeping together.  The first night was horrible....both were up at their own times crying from nightmares.  Then they were up for the day at 5am swinging like monkeys from the top bunk bed.  Thankfully, they slept like angels the rest of the time.

 - The pool was our afternoon hang out.

 - The guys going fishing and bringing home dinner.  Man, it was good.  

While I captured some good pictures of Fia, she maybe didn't have the best time.  I think she wasn't sleeping well and therefore she was cranky most of the time.  She didn't like the beach pretty much every time we took her.  Although, I think it was mostly due to her being tired and the bright, hot sun.  I didn't figure out she would have more fun in the cooler evenings until the last night.  Oh well, there is always next year.

Best Buds!

Ah, life with kids

So Andy was in charge of the kids one morning (I can't remember where I went).  He left them in the house for a minute while he went outside to pick up the newspaper.  Little did he know that trip would prove costly.  When he came back inside, Madeline was standing in a pool of pee and Fia was sitting right there next to her playing in it!  I can only imagine the look on his face and I can't help but laugh.

He'd probably kill me if he knew I was telling the world this story, but it's too funny not to share.

First Day of PREschool

Madeline's first day of preschool was today and she did great!  She is in the Sunshine room. (Don't dare call it school or she gets mad and corrects you immediately.  It is PREschool!)

I snapped this last picture before I took off and said goodbye.  She could have cared less.  I think she wanted me gone.

She was super excited to see me when I picked her up!  She told me she had lots of fun.  I think her favorite part was a tie between playing outside and eating ice cream.

Kings Island

I'm always kinda bummed out that we live so far away from the zoo.  In Columbus, I took the girls there all the time.  But here, it's just far enough away where it's kind of a pain to go.  Fia inevitably falls asleep in the van and then refuses to continue her nap once we're home.  But one thing we have that Columbus doesn't is an amusement park in our backyard.  Seriously, it's like 10 minutes from our house.  We took the girls there a few weekends ago and had a blast.  We had no idea the kids area had so much to do for little ones.  We were there for a total of 3 hours and made the most of it.  I foresee a season pass in the years to come.

The cars and the swings were Madeline's favorite rides.

Can you tell it was 95 degrees that day?

Madeline just recently started recognizing numbers and had to sit in seat # 3.  

 What trip to Kings Island doesn't involve ice cream by the fountains?  And not just any ice cream.  Graeters!

More Madeline quotes

While sitting in the grass playing Duck, Duck, Goose, there were a lot of bugs flying around

Madeline: "Ugh, these bugs are killing me!"

Where did she even get that?!

___________________________________________________________

First thing in the morning sitting down for breakfast....

Madeline: "And now, I'm not gonna be a pain today!"

Overheard

I can't even tell you how often I hear this everyday.

Fia: (starts crying)

Madeline: "Sorry Fia."

Fia: (crying harder)

Madeline: "SORRY FIA! ~Twinkle~Twinkle~Little Star~How~I~Wonder~What~You~Are~"

Fia: "~tinkle~tinkle~wittle~staa~"

---Argument Over---

And no, I didn't abbreviate the singing to save my typing. That's exactly what I hear.

Fia's First Haircut

Fia's hair had been getting long and unruly lately so I decided it was time to get it trimmed. I had trimmed it once before myself, basically just her bangs so they weren't in face. But this time she needed a professional cut, so I took her to Cookie Cutters. She did fantastic and didn't mind the experience at all!

Here is her messy mop before:

And here she is after. How adorable are those curls?

Super Cuteness

I've heard of the super cuteness that comes with a 3 year old, but so far, most of it has been the bad parts of a 3 year old.....not listening, straight up defiance, endless potty training, the list goes on. Madeline has said a few cute things but this one takes the cake by far.

She was in our backyard picking "flowers", basically buds off our bushes. She was going along and came across a section that had dried up so it was brown in color. She stops and exclaims in delight, "Look! A chocolate one!"

Trip to Indy

The kids and I took an impromptu trip to Indianapolis last week and had a blast! My sister had a business trip booked so we decided to tag along for a mini-vacation. We talked Nonna into coming too and turned it into a great girls trip. So much so, we want to do it again next year. Since it was a business trip and all, Jackie didn't really get to partake in the all fun, so hopefully next year for her.

We got there Tuesday afternoon and went shopping immediately. Madeline found the cutest hat so we had to get it. She was having too much fun showing it off to everyone.

On Wednesday, Nonna and I took the kids to the Children's Museum and I took entirely too many photos. But it was hard not to! This place is too cool. The first exhibit we checked out was the dinosaurs. They had a really neat room with large skeleton replicas of T-Rex's and others, but Madeline was scared of it so we had to skip that part. Instead she checked out the fossil research area.

And went digging for her own fossils.

Fia was in on the fun too! And this photo of her cracks me up every time I see it.

We couldn't possibly have gotten any luckier to have the Dora & Diego exhibit still there. This was hands-down their favorite area.

Fia was enamored with the Dora statue and kept going back to see her.

Meanwhile, Dr. Madeline was checking out injured animals in the Diego Rescue Station.

Next up was Isa's Flower Garden and the Purple Planet.

Another photo of Fia that gets me chuckling. She is such a ham!

Then we headed over to the Barbie exhibit where they were put to work answering phones.

Walking the Barbie catwalk. Future model on my hands?

Photographer?

Fia was backstage doing hair.

Lastly, we couldn't visit Indy without meeting up with Papaw for some ice cream. It was a super relaxing, super fun trip and I can't wait to do this again next year!

Little Chef

Blueberry Picking

Madeline and I went blueberry picking last weekend. If you've never had fresh blueberries, you MUST do this. This was my first time and wow, they are amazing!

The bushes had all shades of ripeness so we had to be careful to only pick the blue ones.

She did a great job at this.

Very serious blueberry picker.

Helping Mommy do the grocery shopping

We live smack dab in the middle of two grocery store locations. One is much nicer and bigger than the other so I frequent that location all the time. However, we stopped in the other location this week and Madeline couldn't have been happier. I didn't know they had kiddie sized carts and she LOVED it. She took it as her job to be the shopper and everything had to go in her cart. I wish our normal store had these. I guess we'll be visiting the "other" store more often now.

Fia is walking!

Fia took her first unassisted steps back at the beginning of July and hasn't looked back. Her favorite activity the last few weeks has been to do circles around the house with the doll stroller. It was like her exercise to build up her legs. Then as each week passed, she could take an extra step or two by herself, but couldn't get past 4 or 5 steps. Then this week she took off! She is now walking across the room and it's so fun to see. She is so proud of herself when she does it.

I have some great video of her to share but my computer is having issues at the moment. I'm anxious for you all to see her so I'll try to get it up soon.

Happy 4th!

Happy Birthday Andy