2nd and 5th!

We survived the first week of school, but just barely.  

Dude. 

Dylan spent all of last week at the Outer Banks with his best friend and his family.  They spent hours everyday tubing behind their boat, and swimming in their pool and at the beach.  He arrived back this past Monday.  I missed him so much!  We spent the whole Labor Day weekend at neighborhood BBQ's and at our pool, but it was just so strange only having Logan and not Dylan.  Dylan got back Monday afternoon and said he had a great time, and that his ear hurt a little bit.  Uh oh.   I had some swimmers ear drops on hand, so treated him with drops and sent him for the first day.

Well, by the 2nd day of school it was really hurting him quite a bit.  Took him to the doc the morning before the 3rd day of school only to find out double ear infection.  He stayed home that day (yesterday) since he couldn't even hear out of the left side.  I kept a heating pad on it, and he rested.  Last night, at midnight, he projectile vomited all over his bedroom ... FRUIT PUNCH.  Have you ever tried to shampoo splattered fruit punch vomit out of carpet in the middle of the night?  TWO HOURS later we all attempted to go back to sleep, but needless to say, Dylan missed another day of school today.  So he went two out of four days.  Ugh.

Regardless, the boys were both very excited to begin school.  Logan is attending a special classroom at a  nearby elementary school with a smaller classroom focused on teaching behavioral strategies.  He has made a new friend already, and is excited to be part of a brand new beautiful school. And this will be Dylan's final year in elementary school.   The workload will be a lot.. they really expect the kids to do quite a bit to be ready for middle school.  But he can handle it, and  he has such a great group of friends!

Here they are on their first day...

  2nd and 5th grades!!

camping trip to Luray!

In an attempt to get caught up on blog posts (thanks for the push, Chris), I am realizing I never blogged about our totally awesome camping trip to Jellystone Luray back in early August. Shame on me!  It was such a fun, awesome week spent with my Mom and Robby, and with some friends of ours, the B family.  It was spectacular!

This was our super cute camping cabin. Will be hard to tent camp ever again, after having A/C, a fridge, a real bed and our own bathroom!  Mom and Robby had their trailer right behind our cabin so we were close by and ate all of our meals together!

 

Our cabin faced towards a huge field where the kids could play and run!

The boys played laser tag everyday!

Inside of our cabin..

Outdoor group cooking...

 

Cornhole!

 

My friend S at the bonfire...

She made awesome Jello shooters!

 

best waterslide ever!

 

 

We played games during 'happy hour'

 

And played kickball, baseball, and soccer

 

My Mom made a totally awesome bubble solution that made GIGANTIC bubbles!

We rented golf carts for the week, one of the best parts of the trip!  We were constantly taking spins around the campsite, the kids loved it.

 S made brownies that looked like hamburgers...

 

 

We even watched the season opener Redskins game outside...

 

On Friday (day 5) we checked out of the campsite and stopped at Luray Caverns on the way home. Fantastic!

Such a great vacation... it was close, easy, relaxing and not too expensive either.  I think we'll do it or something very similar next summer!

Gettysburg

Gettysburg is a place I've always wanted to visit, but somehow it just has never happened yet.  Now that the boys are getting older and really interested in history, it was the perfect time to go.  Our NJ cousins were here, and they wanted to go. The perfect excuse for us to finally get up there and see it.

Wow, what an amazing place!  I was sad we couldn't spend the entire weekend..there was so much to see and do. We spend a full day roaming the museum and battlefield and will be returning again for sure.  Its a mere 1 1/2 hours from, and just simply amazing!

cousins unite!

A few weeks ago, our super fun, super cool cousins from NJ came to visit.  C and K have boys the same ages as our boys, so it was a six day slumber party playdate extravaganza.  They did some fun sight seeing type day trips from our house, and we did some fun stuff together, including daytrips to Great Falls, and Gettysburg. We also had a lovely evening dinner picnic at one of our favorite local vineyards, Sunset Hills.

We hadn't seen them in a couple of years and time flies... the boys are all so grown up together now and besides my brothers' kids, these are our boys' only other cousins.  It was great to see them bond again and get to know each other as 'young men'.  Loads of fun, we love them dearly.