The Dinosaur Place

Our last full day together, we took the kids to the Dinosaur Place in New London. I had never been and made it clear that I wasn't making any promises. But the kids had a fantastic time.

A walk through the woods where we encountered some dinosaurs:

An old mine shaft where you can dig for gems:(in keeping with the theme, you can also dig for fossils but the kids didn't meet the age requirement...so polished rocks it was!)

Not really keeping with the theme, but definitely the hit of the afternoon...The SplashPad!



After tiring the kids out, we headed to Mystic for some boutique shopping and a scrumptious farewell dinner! I'm sad to see the week come to an end but we truly enjoyed every second of it. If only they lived closer!

Boating, swimming, lobsters and s'mores

And the Gross family fun continues....

We are rapidly multiplying

The boys go tubing

Always accessorizing

The kids enjoyed the lobsters

But not as much as the adults

A typical day in CT

Day #2: Beach, lobster rolls and fireworks

Little Surfers

Lunch always tastes better with sand in it

Ultimate frisbee

Sand castle crushing


Oysters

Lobster rolls and dancing, oh my!

Ooohhh

Ahhhh

Apicking we will go

After a crazy busy work week (hence no new blogs,) I am finally able to relax and enjoy my kids again.My best friend from college and her family have invaded for the week! We only get to see each other once a year, so I'm ecstatic they are here! I'm not working, nothing is getting done on the house, we are basically on vacation! Since they are from Ohio, they want to have a taste of New England.

Day#1: Guilford - my hometown
What could be more New England then Pick Your Own at the local orchard! We headed to the berry patch and picked/ate our little hearts out!

The kids loved finding the perfect strawberries hiding amongst the leaves

One for the basket more for me....
The loot

I was born and raised in Guilford and the best way to give them a feel for the town was to take them to the Green. We had a picnic lunch, got candy at the Chocolatier and let the kids run around in the grass.

Boys on one side, girl on the other

Camryn proves she can hang with the boys

First day of their stay was a success and now I think they know why I love my hometown so much! Next on their list, the beach, a lobster roll and some fireworks. Stay tuned for more of the adventures with the Gross family!

Undies

Now that it is summer and Camryn is wearing dresses, she also thinks she is wearing undies. She thinks the little bloomers that match her dress are big girl underwear. Boy is she going to be disappointed when she grows up and realizes every outfits is not accompanied by a watching pair of underwear!

My husband of course thinks this is just adorable and she must want real undies, so he goes out and buys her some. Which now she is excited to wear and in no way ready for potty training. Again, my husband thinks it's cute and she wants to wear them, so low and behold, she wears undies. My husband goes to work and it's like a having a puppy in the house. She just squats and pees wherever and whenever she has to.

So as you can guess, I'm reluctant to put her in undies in the morning but if her father is dressing her, she wins every time. So today when she called to me from the bathroom: "Mommy, me do peepees on potty!" I was shocked. Could it be that easy? Everyone says girls are easier to potty train, did mine figure it out on her own?

No...she did in fact do peepees on the potty, however, she was standing on it and the lid was closed!!!

Wilderness Woman

I am not!!!

Dylan is having my nephew sleepover tonight and all he wanted to do with him was make smore's in our fire pit. So I grabbed all the ingredients from the kitchen and the kids went on a marshmallow stick hunt. I couldn't find our grill lighter anywhere but I managed to scrounge up a few matches. I took some sheets of newspaper out of the recycling bin and headed to the patio.

The first match, I lit some paper on fire and threw it into the pit. It quickly burned to nothing and the was no more fire. The second match I lit two pieces of newspaper and strategically placed them amongst the logs and again no fire. The third match I broke and the last one ended in pretty much the same fashion.

The kids were getting restless and I could feel the pressure. I had watched Survivor enough to know all you needed was a flint, some straw and sticks, so why couldn't a produce a fire when I had all the necessary elements???

Feeling defeated, I went over to the neighbor's to borrow a grill lighter. Armed with constant fire, I couldn't fail. But all I could ignite was the newspaper. By now the kids could sense that smore's were not in their future. I quickly lit a pile of paper and told them to hurry up and toast the marshmallow before it burned out. Here are the responses I got:

"It's just gonna go out again!"
"Mine has all that black stuff stuck to it!"
"This isn't working....my marshmallow is cold."
"Mine too...how is the chocolate going to melt?"

Camryn was the only happy one who had broke into the chocolate stash while I was busy tending to the fire and had practically consumed it all.

That's when I yelled:

"Popcorn and movies on the couch!!!"

Simultaneously, the boys dropped their sticks and ran towards the house!

Pinkalicious

I bought the kids new soap the other day and marketing to kids definitely pays off. Camryn had to have the pink bottle with all the princesses on it, who she does it even know. Dylan didn't want a girl soap and it wouldn't be fair if Camryn got to pick the soap so we had to purchase the "boy" bottle as well.

Later in the bathtub, I washed each the kids with their new respective soaps. Camryn loved the pink soap so much she wanted to do it herself. After lathering half the bottle on her little body, she didn't want me to wash it off. She liked being pink.

In an effort to calm her down, Dylan said: "But Camryn after mommy washes it off, you'll smell like PINK!!"

Sold...she bought it and I was able to rinse her off. Big brother to the rescue!

Family Day

Dylan had family day at his pre-school. It's an end of the year picnic for the parents and siblings to come be a part of the school. They are reluctant to call it graduation ( I think for the sake of the emotional mothers) but in essence that is what it is.

Here are some pictures of the event:

The cardboard box castle was a hit

I don't know how the kids made it out alive it was so hot in there!!!

Camryn ate her way through the picnic

And made a new friend

Games and activities

The kids sang to us

Now on to kindergarten....I don't know if I'm ready....