My little fish

Charlie and Izzy had a great year on the neighborhood swim team. They practiced every morning for over a month and had 2 swim meets a week for 3 weeks, plus one championship meet. Izzy swam 5 events in every meet and got her personal best time on 3 strokes this year. She improved greatly and was a competitive swimmer. This was Charlie's first year swimming, but he learned so much. He also got the coaches' award at our swim team banquet. Lila is ready to swim next year!

The last week of school Izzy had an economic fair. Each child in her class came up with a product, made the product and marketed it with a commercial. Then they invited the parents to school to purchase their products. She has some very talented children in her class! There were photographs, bookmarks, stationary and many other items for sale. Izzy's product was fudge. Yum!!

Lila "graduated" from preschool at the end of May. In reality, she only graduated with her class because most of them are going to K next year. She still has another year of preschool left because of the way her birthday falls. She still had a great time learning the songs and poems for the ceremony.

Indiana

The first week of summer vacation, we packed up the car and drove 10 hours to Indiana to see Scott's dad and extended family. Izzy had not been since she was 2 and Charlie and Lila had never taken the trip. We had a wonderful, relaxing time.
They loved visiting a working corn grist/watermill where they grind corn. It had recently been rebuilt, but in the past, Abraham Lincoln's dad ground his grains at this mill.

The kids really enjoyed spending time with their Grandpa Biggs too. They met a lot of second cousins and had a fun cookout with them.
We went to a farm team baseball game at the stadium where the movie A League of Their Own was filmed. It was the kid's first baseball game. They were more impressed by the giant sized ice pops than they were by the game. I loved the old signs they had in the outfield that were left over from the movie, but they were hard to get clear pictures of through the netting.

East Coast BMX Nationals/NC state qualifier race

Working backwards on my pictures of the past few months. Last weekend was the East Coast ABA BMX Nationals. Charlie raced 3 days in a row. Came in 4th. We got to see a lot of pros and learned more about big races. When we race our weekly races, there are about 18 or 19 motos on a good night (motos are like heats or divisions, charlie is in 6 intermediate moto). At these races, there were about 115 motos. big difference! Some pics are from the NC State Qualifier race. Charlie placed 3rd. He was the most excited that his Uncle came to watch!

Haven't forgotten about blogging! Life has just been to busy. Now that school is out (and swim team is in), hopefully I can post some more. Pics and stories to come, very soon. Hope everyone is having a wonderful summer so far. Hope to see some of you this summer! As for my family, we will either be at the pool or BMX track, with a week at the beach.

Great Wolf

For Izzy's 10th birthday, we promised to go to Great Wolf Lodge. We were supposed to go a week ago, but we had to reschedule because of the snow. This week, the kids had a 1/2 day Thursday and a full day off on Friday, so at lunch time Thursday, we left for our mini vacation. The Lodge is only about 15 minutes away. It just opened last year and this was our first time going. What a great place! We just stayed one night, but that was really all we needed. The room was really neat. It was a regular hotel room, but it had a mini log cabin inside for the kids. In the log cabin there was a set of bunk beds and a single bed. The kids loved it because they had their own tv!
The best part was the water park. We let Izzy take her best friend and they had so much fun. They have great slides, a huge wave pool, another pool and a 12 level water playground. All of this is inside! They keep the air at a constant 84 degrees, so even though it was cold and rainy outside, it was nice and warm in the water park. Izzy and her friend loved all of the slides, even the scariest ones. Charlie and I stuck to some of the tamer slides, but still loved it. Lila wasn't old enough to go down any of the slides yet, so she just hung out at the pools. We will definitely be going back this summer.

Snow!!

We all had a great time playing in the snow this year. I took Izzy and Charlie on a night walk the first night it snowed. They love doing this for two reasons. First, it is magical to walk through the neighborhood under a full moon when it is snowing. Second, it keeps them up way past their bed time! I love it just as much as they do.
For the next 2 days, we spent hours up at the pool where we have a huge sledding hill. All of the neighborhood kids congregate there too.What you can't see in the picture is that the hill goes straight down into a creek and then back up again. Now that the kids are older, they really enjoy sledding more. We also celebrated Izzy's 10th bday. She was a little dissapointed at first because her friends couldn't come over, but we invited a neighborhood friend over to eat cake with us and they spent the day outside. My parents even risked the icy road and came over to sled too!