Cousins

Cherie brought Annabel and Sam over top play while we were visiting Grammie. This is good because Annabel and Alexa love to play together. They are very cute little buddies.


I caught a green crab for the kids to look at. Last year we made the discovery that they live under the rocks along the new boat ramp. You can catch themat low tide if you are willing to move the rocks around at bit. That doesn't sound too hard, however, the barnacles on those rocks can doa number on your finger. I am still healing from the wounds, but they have fun observing it for awhile before we let it go.

Frog Hunting

My sister Cherie lives on a section of Mount Desert Island largely insulated from tourists. It is also convenient that just down the road from her is a lovely pond filled with frogs. The kids (particularly Chloe) love the idea of catching frogs. Fortunately Uncle Michael is really good at catching them.

Chloe keeping the frogs in the bucket.

Walking back from frog hunting.

Sales

The girls like to take advantage of the location of Grammie's house to sell things to the tourists. Since the island is small a lot of people come on for the day and walk the island. Stopping at the cafe, museum, and gift shop. My mom's house is located about 1/4 of a mile up the road from the town dock. Everyone has to pass it to get to anyone the other stops. The first day they sold their beach treasures and some fresh picked flowers.The second day Alexa made some of her lemonade and sold that. That was a huge success. They sold out of two batches of it. Something about the hot, sunny day combined with the uphill walk from the town dock, and the cold lemonade being sold under the shady maple trees offered just the right marketing combination. On the final day of their sale the girls had home made dog biscuits. They also sold some fresh pciked lettuce from Grammie's garden.

The three day sale total was $30.20. To say the least, they were thrilled. They have each been saving up for items they want. Since each of them made more than the would have in about a month of allowance, it gave them a huge boost.

Maine Vacation

We are on vacation and went on vacation. Get it? I am rather delayed at getting this post up, but I wanted to make sure to put up some pictures of our trip before the month changed over to August.

The girls wanted to head right down to the beach and collect beach treasures for their "sale".


Alexa was checkign to see if anyone was living in the shell before she took it.

Later, Alexa wanted to test her life jacket to see if it would float. The water is about 50 degrees, so she never stayed in long enough for me to snap a picture.

Biking Girls

The girls and I have been heading out for bike rides on the bike path several times now. After getting Chloe over her initial anxieties about riding she is a girl on a mission. She tells me, "This is so much fun I don't know why I didn't want to do this." She is whizzing down hills and splashing through mud puddles. It is great to see. The first time we covered about ten miles, the second seven. I am so proud of how much they are enjoying exploring by bike.

Here is a shot of Alexa on the tag along bike which she loves.

Today we ended up at North Beach.

They were enjoying the water so much we decided to bike home and drive back with our suits, towels, and snacks. With temperatures around ninety today it was a good choice.

Winter in Summer

I was washing the dinner dishes. I could hear the kids chatting away with each other in the living room. I was one of those conversations that a parent doesn't pay too much attention to. The was no yelling, the tones were pleasant and animated, nothing to indicate anything was amiss. So I plodded through the dishes and stepped over to wash the table. That was when I rounded the corner, glanced into the living room, and spotted this...what the heck???

Some new kind of a game they created. It was 84 degrees out today. Notice still had on their swim suits under all the layers? Honestly as long as they were not hurting anyone I am good with it.

Cardboard Box Parade

It is costume week here this week. Today was the Cardboard Box Parade. It is part of the summer reading program through the library. The concept is simple you decorate a cardboard box as your favorite book character, everyone meets at the top of Church Street at 1 o'clock, throw in some drummers to keep the beat, and off you go. They usually make sure to get several summer camps to join as well which makes for a really good amount of kids to march. Chloe and Alexa started working on their costumes last night. Alexa decided she wanted to be Chester from the book Chester by Melanie Watt. Chloe went as Skippyjon Jones from the book Skippyjon Jones by Judy Schachner. It was hard to narrow down their favorite book characters so they picked some that are really fun for us to read together. They started working on them last night to allow time to dry.

Alexa had some finishing touches to add this morning. Notice her faithful assistant Cabbie is sticking by her side and catching some rays.

Here is how they turned out...
the back view (we wanted to make sure people knew what they were).

Marching along...

The parade ended in City Hall Park where the kids got watch a magician. As you can see they were really enjoying the show.

Pet Show

Today was the annual Children's Pet Show. The girls we excited to have two pets to enter this year. We entered Cabbie,of course, and even let him remove the E-collar he has been sporting for four days. Alexa also wanted to enter Cutie. Cabbie was entered in the Best Costumed Pet category. This year we were inspired by the Peter Pan play Chloe saw at school. We had

Alexa was Wendy,

Chloe was Peter Pan,

and Cabbie made a lovely Tinker Bell.

There were a lot of entries for this category again this year. The girls came in second place with first place going to a girl in the flippers, swim suit, and scuba mask. Her dog was wearing a swim suit. They had a lot of fun.

Alexa entered Cutie in two categories- Smallest Pet and Cutest Rodent.

Here she is talking to the announcer (the man in the bird hat)about her hamster. She was really nervous to talk in front of the crowd. But she did it and took first place in both categories she was entered in. She was really proud of herself.