Nonna's Birthday

A week ago today we celebrated Nonna's birthday. The girls were very excited to celebrate with her.

 

 

 

After cake and ice cream we made many attempts at snapping a picture of Nonna with all of her granddaughters. Here are a few outtakes and some cute ones.

Busy Week

Last week was a busy one for the Kapaldo girls. Abigail had her second year of Vacation Bible School, which had all of us pretty busy and exhausted by the end of the week. We also celebrated Nonna's birthday and spent all day Saturday at a family reunion. I'll post a little more about each later this week.

I was trying to explain "knock knock" jokes to Abigail by giving her one of the only examples I could remember (you know, the banana one that ends up with "orange you glad I didn't say banana?"). She tried it herself and ended up with strawberries and "Aren't you glad I didn't say orange?" Then she decided to tell me a joke of her own:

Abigail: Why did the tree go in the hole?

Mom: I don't know, why?

Abigail: Because it was shellfish! (followed by laughter from her and Sarah)

I think she was mixing a few jokes up.

Lily is starting to climb things now. Jonathan will be on his iPad sitting cross-legged on the floor and she will manage to climb up into his lap. I brought her into the girls' room this morning so I could put their laundry away. I sat her next to the basket. She pulled herself up onto her knees and proceeded to "help" me empty the basket.

Sarah is doing well too. We're working on transitioning her to official "big girl" status (in other words, potty training). Let's just say I would never make it as a professional potty trainer.

We're having a great summer and are looking forward to what August brings!

I'll leave you with what would have been my Photo Friday's picture for last week.

Six Flags

Our main outing while visiting Uncle James and Auntie Dawn was heading to Six Flags Great Adventure. This was the girls' first amusement park experience. All of the adults were pretty excited for the girls.

Abigail spotted the carousel first. Nonna went with Abigail and I excitedly headed to the carousel with Sarah. Papa and Daddy had cameras at the ready. I lifted Sarah up onto her horse and she suddenly had a change of heart. She did NOT want to ride the carousel. It turned out that she didn't want to ride much of anything.

She did ride the teacups with Nonna, James, Mommy, and Abigail. What an experience. I had a giggly Abigail on my left and a terrified, kicking and screaming Sarah on my right.

Abigail got her fill of rides during the day. She had a blast! She even rode the log flume ride with Daddy, Mommy, and Papa. Papa was in the front, with the rest of us in the back (I think it worked out well that she couldn't see what was ahead of her).

 

Sarah did a lot of watching. She was happy to beat the heat by running through some water while waiting for Abigail to finish her rides. She also ended up riding a mild stagecoach ride with Abigail and also drove a car with Daddy and Auntie Dawn. 

As the day went on the girls succumbed to exhaustion and the heat. We left the park with two whiny kiddos and a baby who benefited from a nice afternoon nap in her stroller. All in all though it was a great day. We're looking forward to maybe doing it again someday.

Eight Months!

Lily hit the eight month mark over the weekend. She is scooting around like crazy and now sits unassisted like a champ. For a time we would sit her up to keep her in one place, but then she quickly figured out how to get back on her tummy to make her escape. Her favorite forbidden area is the bathroom. She'll sneak her way to the hallway and make a bee-line for the restroom. She will stop briefly when we call out to her, give us a smile, and then go on her merry way.

Lily is still all gums. I think her bottom front teeth may be on the way out, but I've been thinking that for a few weeks now, so who knows!

We still see Lily once or twice during the night. I figure it's teething, so I let her get away with it. Plus, it's just easier to feed her then try to get her back to sleep any other way.

Oh, and can I say it was not easy getting her onesie picture this month!

Visiting The Garden State

This past weekend we joined Nonna and Papa for a road trip to New Jersey to visit Uncle James and Auntie Dawn. This was Lily's first road trip. She didn't fair too well on the way down since we were on the road for around eight hours (I've never seen so many fender benders). The way back was much more bearable.

 

 

We headed straight to the hotel to regroup and then headed over to James and Dawn's apartment for dinner. The girls were very excited to be there, mainly because Baby was there (James and Dawn's cat). We headed back to the hotel past the girls' bedtime, which was delayed even more because the girls were so excited to be sleeping in a hotel.

Sarah was the only one to really sleep in on Saturday. Lily and Abigail were up before 7:00.

 

Saturday brought firsts for all three girls. We went to Six Flags Great Adventure. I'll do a separate post on that because we took loads of pictures. After a long day at the amusement park we headed back to James and Dawn's. The girls got a nice bath while James grilled our dinner. I figured since it was such a long day that all three girls would crash on the way back to the hotel but not one of them fell asleep. Thankfully though, they were all down and out shortly after we got back to our room.

All three girls slept in on Sunday! It was nice to get an almost full-nights' sleep. We met James and Dawn for a huge and yummy breakfast before going on the road again. The trip home was SO much better than the trip down. We made good time and the girls were pretty pleasant most of the way down.

Thank you so much James and Dawn for hosting us! We had a great time seeing you both again. And thank you Nonna and Papa for letting us join in on the fun!

July 4th

It was strange celebrating the Fourth on a Wednesday, but it's nice that it makes for two mini-work weeks.

We had a pretty laid back holiday. It started off with a nice breakfast followed by play time for the girls and chore time for Jonathan. Earlier this week I had the bright idea to try making hasselback potatoes. This involves slicing a potato almost all the way through and stuffing each slice with a bit of butter. It sounded really yummy (and still does) but I made a foolish choice for cookware and melted butter made its way all over the bottom of our oven. This led to smoke and the detector going off. So, Jonathan made the most of it and did a thorough cleaning of our oven and stove top. Thanks honey!

After lunch and Lily's brief afternoon nap we headed to our apartment's pool. We were there for a good hour and I took maybe 50 or so pictures of Lily in her tube. I'll leave you with only a few:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For dinner we headed down the street where our good friends live and we had a nice cook out. The girls enjoyed running around, spotting ants, and attempting to kill the ants they saw.

After a much-needed bath and after baking cookies in our good-as-new oven we sat down and watched the National Fireworks on TV. I'm really hoping sometime soon we'll be headed back down to Virginia to watch the fireworks live on the National Mall like we've done so many times before.

Thankfully the girls fell asleep quickly. Lily though paid us back for not keeping her up for the fireworks. She woke up three times last night and took a good hour to get back to sleep for her last wake-up around 3:30.