A Summer Day

This morning, following their "slumber party" Chloe was reading to Alexa.

How sweet is that? We went to the beach this afternoon... eventually after some bickering/arguing/ dramatics.

If you bring Alexa to the beach bring her a bowl of watermelon. She will eat basically the entire bowl.

Chloe took up sand drawing with a feather. New meaning to the feather pen.

Sleep Over

The girls decided that Chloe should have a sleep over in Lexa's room tonight.

Not sure how that will end, but they are all set up in there.

Only Child

Chloe is at her first slumber party tonight. She has gone to sleep over before but never a slumber party. There will be about five girls all "sleeping" in a tent in her friend Sami's backyard. I am under no expectations that she will be sleeping. I was under strict orders not to embarrass her at the drop off. I was allowed to take one photo prior to leaving and none when we got there.

A lot of rules. Alexa is very sad about not having Chloe home. She didn't want o do anything too special because then Chloe would miss it. So we settled on a movie night. We did pick our first lemon cucumber for dinner. Not having ever had or grown one before I wasn't completely sure when they were ready to be picked. It seemed ready though...

and it tasted yummy.

Reading Evening

No bike ride tonight since it was raining. I was a bit surprised to find them all in the same chair reading!

Evening Bike Ride

Yesterday after dinner we went bunny hunting, also known as a bike ride. Alexa's count was one bunny and lots of ducks.

We ended up on the tire swing. I call it the arm workout portion of the ride.

Carrot Cleaning

We picked and cleaned some carrots today. They are little as we really need to thin them to allow for some to get bigger, so we are eating our way to thinning them! Alexa was enjoying scrubbing them clean.

She scrubbed them till they shined!

Plum Planting

We were at the farmer's market on Saturday and were able to buy some of our favorite plums. They are, of course, from a local orchard and delicious. So delicious that the girls wanted to try to plant the pits and see if we could grow our own plum trees. They polished off the pound of plums we bought within two days... Alexa ate six in a row Saturday. They are small but that is still and impressive undertaking. Today we planted some of them.

We put them on the bulkhead which is slowly becoming another garden area.

Now we will wait and see what happens!

Another Beach Adventure

I have been a bit hesitant to head to the beach lately. The lack of rain and hot weather have raised concerns over algae blooms. However, after reading the parks and rec web site that ensures that they are testing the water daily I felt OK about us going. It was windy when we first arrived and the kids had a blast in the waves.

I was amazed and saddened though to see exactly how low the lake water has dropped. There is easily fifteen more feet of beach since the last time we were there a few weeks ago. As much as I am enjoying all the sunny nice weather. I hope that we get rain soon.

Of course, with the bach at Leddy there is always the fun of playing in the snow from the ice arena on your way out!

Cupcake Adventures

Chloe had a  birthday party to attend today. Alexa was feeling a bit left out so we had  little mommy Lexa time to do something she really wanted to do. She has been eye-balling the My Little Cupcake store downtown for months. So today, we headed down.

I was under strict orders not to do anything embarrassing. I asked if we should dress up and she told me that you just dress as you would for a regular cupcake store. That cleared everything right up for me.

We ordered some mini cupcakes and a glass of milk.

There are LOTS of options and it took us a bit to settle on one, but Alexa's verdict is that they are VERY yummy. She also enjoyed all the pink that is everywhere in the store!

Hidden Picture

Can you spot the dog in here?

How about now?

This is why I say my dog is one step up from a stuffed animal.

Cardboard Box Parade

The girls wanted to participate in the cardboard box parade on Church Street again this year. I was a little worried about how we would pull it off since I did not have any boxes in the house. In a last minute effort we were able to get some from the grocery store. They got right to work painting them this morning. The theme, as always, is to be your favorite book character. It is part of the library summer reading program.

Alexa was Chester from the book Chester by Melanie Watt. She was him last year too.

Chloe was a cat from the Warriors series by Erin Hunter. She has been plowing her way through those books this summer.

They were even interviewed by a reporter, so maybe they will be in the paper this week!

We finished the afternoon up with ice cream!

Summer Nights

This evening was such a nice night we decided to go over to the park and bike ride after dinner. Alexa inherited Chloe's old bike and is working up her confidence on it.

As you can see they were whizzing around the paths.

We then saw one of Alexa's good friends with the same idea to enjoy the park on a summer evening and they spent some time racing around the playground. It made for a later bed time tonight but that what summer vacation is for. You have to grab those great weather opportunities when you can!

Pet Show

Today was the Children's Pet Show. Thunderstorms forced the show to be inside this year. The girls once a again wanted to enter the Best Costumed Pet and Owner category. This year we settled on the Wizard of Oz theme. Alexa was Dorothy. Chloe the lion, and Cabbie the tin man. They won third place.

Alexa also entered Cutie (her hamster) in smallest animal. She won first place again this year. Apparently no one is smaller than a dwarf hamster.

Cutie also won third place in the cutest rodent category.

Garden Update

When you go away for a few days you miss the day to day changes of your garden. It is kind of fun to come back and see what has happened while you were gone. This only works, of course, if you are lucky enough to have neighbors that will kindly water for you while you are gone. Especially this year as we seem to go weeks without rain. We had some picking to do when we got back. Here is what we gathered from the peas and green beans.

We actually froze the green beans as we have too many coming in again to get them eaten fast enough.

We have the first morning glories blooming.

Our favorite morning view is the flowers on the pumpkins, and we found two little pumkins have started. Chloe is licking her lips for pumpkin bread already.

If you look closely you can see the start of a cucumber.

Quite a few green tomatoes. Alexa is hoping for a bumper crop as she wants us to try making our own ketchup. Not sure how that will turn out, but if we have enough tomatoes I will give it a try.

The flower boxes on the shed are almost at their summer height. They can grow high enough to cover half the windows.

Last year the roofers that worked on the neighbor's garage did in the honeysuckle. It has made a nice come back this year though and the birds couldn't happier.