Zoo, Pool and grandma

A few more pics to show what a tough live the kids lead. Trips to the pool, the Kansas City Zoo (snake picture is for Grammy French), Princess Dance class and visits from grandparents.





Even thought we moved to KC within a couple of months of our parents moving to Charlottesville, they have been wonderful about coming to visit. And yes, I realize it is a little weird that both sets of grandparents live near each other and that they are good friends.


Also, I finally got the video loaded from Ellie's dance recital. Be sure to go to the bottom of the post to see video.

4th of July bike parade

Last week was annual 4th of July neighborhood bike parade. Ellie was thrilled that she could ride her own bike this year. We spend part of the morning decorating the bikes. Then we walked down to the start, lined up behind the police car and rode down to the pool in a parade of red, white and blue. After the parade, there was plenty of water and Popsicles to cool off. We spent the afternoon one street over, eating hot dogs & playing kick-ball (the kids beat the adults once again).

We meant to make it out for fireworks, but the weather was questionable and the kids pretty worn out. We decided instead to let the kids fall asleep on the couch watching fireworks on TV.

Summer Fun

Melissa has been keeping the kids busy, or is it the kids have been keeping Melissa busy? Either way, the kids have had lots of activities this summer. Both Tyler and Ellie are taking swim lessons through our gym. The instructors are great, I guess you could say they are hands on (ha ha). The small class size has allowed Tyler and Ellie to make a ton of progress. Tyler is now doing the backstroke, while Ellie is learning the crawl, swimming underwater, and floating on her back. As you can tell, she thinks it is all great fun.

Besides swimming, Tyler & I just finished up baseball. The season was a little long, in part because all the rain outs forced a few games to be rescheduled. With coaching help from several team dads, the team showed great progress. At the last game, our team caught 3 or 4 fly-balls for outs, and everyone had a least one hit. However I think their favorite part was at the end of each game, when I handed out games balls. Even though I made sure everyone got at least one game ball during the year, the kids really seems to enjoy it.

As for Ellie, she just finished taking gymnastics. She had tons of fun. She learned how to do somer- saults, hand- stands, swinging on parallel bars, walking the balance beam, and pretty much being the little monkey that she is.

Somewhere in all that, Melissa found time to take Tyler to soccer camp. The camp was through our church, taught by a former pro and world cup player. It was very good learning experience for Tyler. Meanwhile, Ellie took part in a 'Princess Dance' camp - something that combined two of her favorite things. Each day, the girls dressed up in their favorite princess outfit and learned dance steps.

That is all for this post. I hope to have pics up from the 4th of July bike parade in a week or so.