The Great Training Wheel Liberation

Our biggest news this week is all about Maddie. I'm an official bike rider! I'm also a reader, a writer, a show tie-er and an extraordinary 100 piece puzzle putter together-er!
I'm just about all grown up!

Mina and I are also soccer players, although I can say we're probably not taking home any big awards this season. Coach Mark called us Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum last week (when we were not doing a very good job listening to directions). I wonder which one of us is Tweetle Dee?

And Jessa is growing up right along with us. She's talking a little bit and walking herself right into school every morning. She still cries sometimes, but her teachers says she gets right over it. Sweet baby!

Welcome Eli!

This is our new friend Eli! And when I say new, I really mean new. Eli's just two weeks old! Mina and Jessa went to go meet him on Saturday!


Eli lives in Greensboro with his mom and dad. I can't wait to meet him myself, but I couldn't go on Saturday because I really wanted to catch the Hokie game with dad on TV.
I also needed a second to make my late summer Christmas list!

While I stayed busy here, Mina and Jessa stayed busy in Greensboro. After their visit, they went to the Greensboro Science Museum, which has a little zoo! And do you know that this is just one a the gazillion places we get into with our Aquarium membership? That is one handy card!




Jessa worked on her ROAR with the tiger!

And her squeeks with the Meerkats.

She was absolutely thrilled to pet the animals in the petting zoo.

And Mina even found some otters there, which was very lucky for her, 'cause Mina loves otters! And also kangaroos!

a Baptism and a Barbie jeep

Katie and Grace loaned us their Barbie Jeep this week, and it has been so much fun! We're going to swing it back over to their place tomorrow- so we're enjoying every minute while it's here.


And when we weren't in the Barbie car, we were in the real one. We took a trip to St. Augustine, Florida this weekend to have our sweet baby baptized in the Catholic Church close to our Florida family. Aunt Holly and Uncle Mark met us there, as well as Aunt Kim and Uncle Donald. They are all J's Godparents! Lucky kid! Grandma Q also made the long trip with us for J's big day!

It was a very special day for our baby, and we're glad she got her official welcome into the Catholic church.

Afterwords, some yummy chicken got its official welcome into my belly when we had dinner with the Florida family. It was very fun to spend some time with our cousins Patrick and Emmy!

Labor Day

So just when we thought summer was a memory, along came Labor Day. We had a full day together- no school, no work, no nothing. So we packed up our things and spent the day in Kure Beach, where we have never been before. Super nice. We will be back!
We left at around 7 am to get to the Aquarium around opening time, in case of crowds. Turns out there was never too much of a crowd, and we got to see all our fish friends and some alligators too! This aquarium has no otters, and we were all sad about that. But, they did have lessons on the weather, which I especially liked!


Luna, the albino alligator!

Petting the stingrays!

Shark!

I really got into the jellyfish this time and asked Mom to take this picture to show Dad, who was at a football game.

The aquarium is on the beach, so we had some lunch on the picnic benches and hit the beach. It was pretty dark looking when we first got there, so we didn't even get our full suits on.

Lucky for us, all that dark cloud did was thin out the beach crowd. We played for a little more than two hours and it didn't even drizzle!

Jessa let us know when it was time to pack up and say goodbye to the NC beaches until 2011. We'll be back!