lewis ginter

I go back to work on Monday so I'm making the most of what's left of my time off.  Today my mom and I went to the botanical gardens.  It was a beautiful sunny day and it wasn't too hot.

We enjoyed the flowers and the butterfly exhibit.

I even had one land on me.

It really was a beautiful day.

We enjoyed a delicious lunch in the tea house before heading home.

just some adult things

Our Sunday school class/life group is full of lots of fun couples.  The girls in our group like to get together to celebrate birthdays.  We invited the guys along for this birthday celebration.  We had a fun time playing shuffle board and hanging out. 

I took my friend Katy to lunch on her birthday.  It was such a nice afternoon to sit outside and relax.

Some of the ladies from our church attended a local ladies retreat on Saturday.  

Saturday night we went to a Ducks Unlimited banquet with some friends.

It was an interesting, but fun time!

It sure is refreshing to have adult time with friends!

baseball

Bryce's fall baseball started the last weekend of August.  He plays every other Sunday with this league.

His team joined another league that plays pretty much every other Friday night.  Those games seem to fall on the same weekend as the Sunday games so far.

It's kind of fun playing under the lights on Fridays.

When you have a Friday and Sunday off from baseball, why not play on Saturday?  That's what we did this particular weekend.  We headed to Williamsburg for those games.

I really do enjoy watching him play.

We treated these games as scrimmages because it wasn't a tournament so the boys got to play different positions than they normally do.  Bryce always gets excited when he gets to pitch.

The boys ended up losing one and winning one.

We stopped at our favorite barbeque place on the way down and a new favorite custard place before heading home.  

We try not to make Emmy come to all the baseball games, but some times she just has to!

Ice cream afterwards makes it worth it.

swimRVA

The second graders at our school got to participate in a free 6 day swimming program at the start of school!  Lucky for me I'm not back at work yet so I was able to go each day and watch.  Lucky for her, it's been in the 90's still so it was perfect pool weather.

Each day the kids boarded a bus, drove to a local pool and did a 45 minute lesson and then headed back to school.

Emmy thought she looked silly in the swim cap. I thought it was cute.

Emmy started off in level 3 of 7.

The kids got to ring a bell every time they passed a level.  

Emmy made it to level 5 over the 6 days.

We were able to coordinate a class picture on the last day.

The kids to got to play and jump in the pool at the end of the last session.  They also got to slide down the slide!

Emmy did a great job and really improved her freestyle stroke!  Hope she remembers it next summer!

back to school

The Thursday before school starts is always Open House when the kids go and find out who their teacher is.  

Emmy had in her mind what teacher she wanted this year.  She didn't get who she thought she wanted, but she got who I wanted and she's got a really good friend in her class and now she's very excited about Mrs. Crow.

Bryce was hoping to get Ms. Miller and he did!

Last first day of elementary school. Woah!

Cutest second grader I ever did see.

Emmy never wants to wear dresses and I'm fine with it.  She even picked out a sporty Under Armour outfit for the first day and then decided to wear a dress and fancy shoes.  I was kind of happy about it!

Both kids managed matching backpacks and lunch boxes this year.

And just like that, we blinked and five years have gone by.  I can't believe it!

We typically go to Brusters for ice cream after dinner on the first day of school but we ended up at Sweet Frog right after school this year!

We are all really excited about a great year!

summer wrap up

We've done a lot this summer and had tons of fun, but I tried to plan something fun each day to close out the last week of summer vacation.  

On Monday all the cousins went to Nana's house for a sewing lesson.  They made quillows!  It's essentially a fleece blanket that folds up into a pillow.  

We went to Nana's pool on Tuesday and had it to ourselves!

Wednesday we went to daddy's office (see previous post).  On Thursday we met the kids' teachers (see next post) and their fall sports schedules started up.  Afterwards we celebrated the fact they have practices on the same day and at the same time this season!

Jason was off on Friday so we had our annual Friday family fun day.  We started off at Boomerang just like last year!

We headed to brunch and then made a quick stop by Kings Dominion so Jason and Bryce could ride one last roller coaster together.  It was really busy so we didn't stay long.  

Crazy shakes are the new thing around here and we've been wanting to try out a new place.  We went to a different place last year on our Family Friday fun day to close out the summer.  We are tradition people!

We were back at Nana's pool on Saturday morning.  

And home in time Saturday afternoon to watch the Hokies play!

We love the carefree pace of the summer, but it will be nice to be back on a bit of a schedule when school starts!