Botanica

 On Wednesday we decided to take the girls to Botanica because we heard it was really fun, and really pretty. We thought that if we went in the morning, we would avoid most of the heat and be fine. Boy, were we wrong. I think while we were there at 10am it was 106 degrees. Whose idea was this again? Did we check the weather before we went? Nope. Needless to say, we didn't last long and had to run back the building and the a/c before our babies literally melted. After that, we got some lunch and put the girls down for naps. Here a couple of pictures I was able to take before everyone got too grumpy.

Hi, mom

whad up?

exploration place

My mom and I took Evie to Exploration place today, and she loved it. Now that she can walk, she has so much more fun. She even sat through the whole dome movie about galaxies with big, wide eyes and no complaints. Here are some pictures, Dan honey. Love you.

Evie wants to be a Vet just like her daddy

looking at some x-rays

loving the chicken

Ducks

While we were at this cute little shopping center yesterday, we took a little stroll by the water and fountain, and there were ducks! Words cannot convey how excited Evie was to see those poor ducks. She squealed and chased them around until we made her stop cause it was time to go home. Is my daughter cute, or what?

baby ducks. awwww

 I put these last two pictures in because they are so darn cute.

she played with my hat for almost an hour one day

challenge accepted

My best friend, Kasie, put out a challenge to lose 20 lbs before October,and I wanna jump on that bandwagon. I don't think I'm gonna try to lose 20 lbs (over-achiever), but I'll settle for 10. Tell me what to do Kas! I'll do anything you tell me to do, barring some weird things like roller derby or eating kale. No thanks.

Here's to being more healthy and hopefully shedding some weight!

update, update

Some pretty exciting things have been happening around here lately. The pictures above are from a tiny little island we went and scoped out before Dan's parents visited because Dan wanted to see if it would be any good for fishing. As you can see, it's beautiful, so whether they were able to fish or not is irrelevant in my book.

The first day Diane and Merrill were here, Dan had to go into work, so we decided to take the naval bus tour so that we could see all the huge ships. It was a great success.

this was a memorial for some men who died in an accident. The hedges make an anchor.

The next day we decided we wanted to see some historical sights, so we hopped in the car to head to Williamsburg. We were unfortunately thwarted in our efforts to go through any of the tunnels leaving the Norfolk area, and an hour or so later were back in Norfolk determined to see something. So, we ended up at the Nauticus and USS Wisconsin. It would have been really fun to see inside the ship, but the price of admission was outrageous, so we took some pictures in front of it, got back in the car, and went home. For 21/2 hours in the car, very little was accomplished. I should mention that Dan and Merrill went fly fishing every morning. 

USS Wisconsin

Evie in her new Elmo hat. I couldn't find her hat anywhere, so I bought the first one I saw at the Rite Aid. It was a million degrees that day.

she promptly fell asleep as soon as we were in the car

went out to eat that night at a little seafood place. Evie was excited. She just learned how to do high fives!

Dan and Merrill had no luck fishing, but they had a lot of luck with crabbing

 Saturday was my birthday, and it was truly exceptional. I'm so thankful I got to have some family around because I felt so pampered and loved. They made me breakfast in bed that morning, then I got to open all my presents, which consisted of some very pretty shirts and a Kindle Fire. Sweet! That night we went to eat at my all time favorite place, Kagura, which was divine.

My breakfast. I am a little ashamed to say that I ate the whole thing

 Evie really likes my new Kindle  And here she is watching everyone else out on the porch cleaning the crabs

eating the crab they caught.

 On Sunday night, we had our friends over for dinner and it was a lot of fun. Evie loves, loves playing with their kids, and now that she's walking, she enjoys it so much more.

Here she is after she stole Papa's corn on the cob, and after she was given a bit of birthday cake.

That evening we went out to the beach and it was spectacular.We actually saw dolphins! I tried my best to get a picture of them, but I was always too late.

one of my many attempts to catch the dolphins

family

 

 

And, here is just a little video of Evie walking. I cannot believe how fast she's taken to it. At the beginning of the week she was crawling, and now she's walking like she's been doing it forever. Blows my mind.