Let Summer Begin!

Happy Memorial Day! We're celebrating all the ways we know how...lost of grins and giggles...

....loads of roses blossoming in our garden.....

....loads of fresh peas being stripped off our pea plants by hungry boys who waited all winter just for this.

And then a salad with roses and peas....along with a lot of lettuce, also from our garden. Ah! Nothing like growing your own. This is the first of our produce for the year.

 

The baby is still cute! (gratuitous infant moment)

The pool is fabulous! Ah!

And the grill, she is fired up. Steaks or shrimp or burgers? Such choices....

And this morning I was so proud of my sons, soaking up the parade with glowing faces, asking me what each of the uniforms meant, impressed by the bigger boyscouts, thrilled about the helicopter fly-over and clapping enthusiastically when the marching band came thrumming past. Such sweet boys! I've always love love loved parades but, there's something really magical about sharing parades with your children.

And Then He Was Four

 Well, it was a positively gorgeous weekend, blazing sunshine, honest-to-goodness hot weather at points and bright blue skies. Not a bad way to celebrate turning four!

We went into the city and strolled around, enjoying the cheery feeling of New York in the spring, took in the circus, bought sidewalk churros and "smelled the flowers." (just like Ferdinand)

Then on our way home we stopped at the local skate shop and A won Coolest Dad of the Year by buying Ru a genuine skateboard, deep desire of his heart for a year or so now. He was a pretty happy boy.

We rolled into our own parking lot in front of our unit and found birthday packages on the stoop to carry indoors with us...and then on to birthday cake, music, present opening and jolly well-wishing birthday phone calls. He slept pretty deeply that night.

And now he's four! Four! I can't believe it! For his birthday he got a camera, a skateboard, a pair of sunglasses and some gardening tools (among other things).

I have suddenly reached the point at which my children start accumulating their own "stuff." We've largely been free of that until now. There are assorted toys and books but nothing of any great quantity belongs to either child, just their special animals they sleep with pretty much. I am going to have to figure out where individual kids special belongings can live. I am not prepared for this...time to mentally and physically re-arrange for the kid stage instead of baby/toddler world.