Campus Capers

We went to "college" Tuesday morning although this time it was for a study for the B-man.  He was quite excited since the whole going-to-school-all-day-every-day thing pretty much removed him from the opportunity of such adventures this past year.  This particular study was comprised of two computer games--can't imagine why THAT would appeal to a 6-year old!!--that had something to do with how emotions affect visual searches.  Or something.   I don't know-- I just take my kids to be lab rats.  ;-)

I may or may not try to schedule appointments so that we can hit up the nearby restaurant scene for lunch.  And, of course, bubble tea:

 This time, we decided to drink our treats in the restaurant and take advantage of their game stash.  The kiddies loved playing Connect Four:

When we got back to our parking meter, it still had 13 minutes left so they took off running through campus on this beautiful day:

 And they even found a tunnel!   Best campus exploration ever!

And The Rest (Feat. Griffmeister)

Corning is so friendly that it named a whole block after the littlest Moore:

Cousin bonding:

Scaring Ellie:

 With my favorite pair o' sisters:

We hit the road after this final lunch at Aniello's.  (My weekend Aniello's inventory:  1/2 a slice of cheese pizza Friday night from the takeout at JuJu's; a wedge of calzone later Friday night from the takeout Casa Havalchak, 1 slice of meatball pizza Saturday takeout lunch, and 1/2 a meatball sub + 1/2 slice of broccoli pizza on Sunday.  It was all delicious, obviously.) 

Such a fun weekend!

Watery Saturday

The BG and I, fresh off an evening without kids, planned an early morning walk around town with a stop for warm bevvies at the local coffee house....and then found out it didn't open until 8 on Saturdays and we were supposed to pick up the kids at 7:30.   (wah-WAH).  

(There's not really a point to telling you that other than emphasizing, once again, that Corning is a WALKABLE town!!  Have I convinced you to visit yet?)

We were collecting the tykes early to clear them out of the way at JuJu's Inn where all the Moores were getting ready for our morning family photo shoot.  The four of us went back to our hotel to have breakfast and get ourselves dressed before we all met up to get a few shots snapped by a family friend.  The kids loved looking over the walking bridge at all the water, of course:

After we were done with photos, we WALKED to Wegmans for people to get various snacks and then we got ourselves ready to drive to Keuka Lake, one of the Finger Lakes,  where we spent a few hours with dear family friends.   There was no shortage of activity on the lake-- check out what is about to happen on the water:

The BG took B-man first:

And then it was Miss C's turn!

The LA Moores came for a little bit (Geoff had to get back to plan the Trivia Contest for his reunion event that evening) and Nicki and Griffin enjoyed playing with waterside rocks:

Then we got to go out on the water in the big boat!

And, upon returning to Corning, enjoyed some milkshakes which are even better than water!!!

Crystal City Weekend

This past weekend was Geoff's 20th high school reunion.  We long ago decided we would all meet up for family time in Corning and, while we greatly missed Opa who was in on the original plans, we no doubt made him proud with all our activities (4 different occasions of eating Aniello's!  3 trips to Weggies!) in his favorite small town.

Speaking of Wegs-- I snapped this picture earlier last week at a store in this state.  Each Wegmans has a big timeline in the front of the store with notable milestones and I'd just like to point out that our little Corning boasts two-- and we were there for both of them!!

One of the most wonderful things about Corning, besides its cutting-edge grocery store, is that it is so walkable.  (The BG would be chortling right now if he were standing next to me because that became our joke all weekend after my steady stream of pointing it out!)   But seriously-- you can walk anywhere!   Or you can dance:



That platform is right in the middle of vibrant downtown Market Street and the music piped out all day just got the kids a-dancin'!!

The B-man was really intent on finding my brick in Centerway Square-- see it by his foot?

After all the walking (and groovin') Friday afternoon, the kiddies spent the night with Grammie (and adopted grandmother JC, aka JuJu, who hosted all the Moores at her house) and we got to have a night out.  And guess what?    We walked from our hotel over the bridge to Market Street and then back over the bridge to see Emily and Anne (who drove in for the weekend) and then back to the hotel.  See, SO WALKABLE!!

Up next:  Saturday adventures.  (yes, I'm going to milk this trip for a few days since I don't see a lot of interesting things going on in my immediate future!)

Now and Then

Ah, these kiddies:

They've come a long way since earlier grocery cart rides:

 And:

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Busy Week

The funniest part is that he insists he did NOT take a nap in the car!!!

Jam-Packed Day

(And I mean that literally: we totally had peanut butter and JAM-ly sammies on a picnic lunch!)

 Before we did anything adventurous, however, we had to sharpen our minds (insert eye roll) with screen time:

Although Dr. Chris had to work all day, Jen entertained the troops mightily by taking us to a creek near a nature preserve for some serious aquatic exploration.   I was so startled by the road leading to where we parked-- apparently this is the only exit from the Zoo that's also there and it truly always is covered with water like this:

(It's a good thing I wasn't driving because all I could hear was "don't EVER cross standing water" in my mind!)   If you look in the mid-back right, you can see the older boys in the water!

 Another direction was a cool bridge:

Creek selfie:

The girls are 18 months apart but had lots of fun playing together:

On the way out, we stopped to see the bison:

And then the fun (and cool sky!) continued a few hours later with a big trip to see the local minor league baseball team play.  They had gotten a bunch of free tickets from a neighbor which made everything even sweeter!

I would guess this was the first baseball game the BG has attended where he watched very little of the actual game.  We sought out the kids area and the wee ones enjoyed running (er, sliding) around:

We got up and left first thing yesterday morning.   We're sure going to miss our friends!

The Lineup

Many of you longtime readers might remember that we had super fun neighbors living behind us our last two years at the other house.  We shared many laughs and adventures together, not the least of which when we ran an extension cord between the houses so we could have a working fridge during the great Power Outage of 2011.

A year after we moved, they moved, too, although they actually changed states.  We were so excited to find a time to go see them-- even if it were just a late Sunday to early Tuesday quick trip.  We sure had an eventful Monday!

But....you will have to wait to see the evidence of our fun.  Blogging on the road is not so bueno so I will just leave you with this: The Lineup!

Summer Projects

Yeah-- not so much with the "teacher in the house gets the summer off" thing.  Turns out the world of high school football head-coaching is one that does not take any sort of seasonal break.  Add to that a week of all-day AP Bio training and assorted meetings and we find ourselves hurdling toward August without any real rest time (um, or paychecks-- teachers here get paid on a 10-month schedule) for the BG.

So he might as well keep working, right?!   While we were gone, he stained and sealed the deck but ran out of time to re-set the patio stones and then fill in between them with special sand.  Just as well, though, since that meant his little helper could assist last week:

It's Friday!

Make faces!

 Eat ice cream!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Bringing Them To Life

You saw them on canvas yesterday.  Now spend a completely random 46 seconds with them!

(Note:  this video transpired because I came outside for our post-dinner trip to the park to see her wearing socks which was just so unexpected for summer.  When I asked her why, her response cracked me up.   I tried to get her to replicate on video for entertainment purposes but it was not so successful and, in fact, her brother just started answering for her because he was annoyed.  Ha.  ANYWAY-- you are also treated to my lovely "congestion voice" that was actually twice as bad the day before!!)

Captured Smiles

I posted on FB awhile back about needing to redeem a canvas photo order I'd purchased from Living Social that was about to expire.  On a recent Saturday morning, I got the kids dressed and enticed them to come outside for 10 minutes so I could try to get a winning pose for the canvas order.   At that time, I shared a version that made me giggle but here is the ultimate champion:

B's toothless grin will be forever captured!  These two are pretty funny nuggets.

Made It

Yesterday was an exhausting day.  I finally just went ahead and got up at 5 AM after a night of not sleeping very well.  I left the house around 7:45 for my drive to the court for jury duty-- I was so nervous about all the unknowns for the day/week and effects on our schedule.  I got one of the last parking spots in the juror lot (even though I was 20 minutes early-- apparently there are lots of efficient people around here, which I guess doesn't really surprise me) and made my way through the lines, security, etc.

We were told that there were 5 trials on the calendar, that they were all criminal trials, and that some of them were scheduled to last 5 days.  I knew I had a very high number (#356 out of the 375 who were told to report to duty) but that still made me nervous.  In any event, the commissioner made it sound like even if we didn't ever get called into a courtroom, we'd likely be there until 4 or 4:30.

HOW DID I NOT THINK TO BRING SNACKS???

They called potential jurors for the first 3 trials within the first hour or so after our orientation and that got them all the way to #199ish.  Then there was a really long wait until they called another group around 11:30.   They got all the way to #313-- but then reported that the other trial(s?) had not come to fruition after all and the rest of us could go home!  Hooray!   If I hadn't gone in at all (as in, if, on Friday afternoon, they only summoned jurors #1-#300 to appear at all Monday morning), I would supposedly not be called for at least 2 more years but, since I did appear and then got sent home, I shouldn't been called again for 3-5 years.     In talking both to friends and to people sitting around me in the jury lounge, however, it sounds like jury duty isn't something that happens even that often.

I will say that I'm keenly interested in the process-- and comparing it to how it appears on TV, of course!   Perhaps the next time I get called, the kids will be old enough that schedules aren't quite as stressful and I can get a little farther into the experience.

I was so happy to be "sprung" early since we had two couples (and one kid) over for dinner last night.  Not great timing with the just-having-got-back-from-a-trip/jury duty/anniversary/slightly under the weather thing, but it was the only date that had worked for everyone.   Since I didn't know when I'd be able to get home yesterday, I'd done a lot of food prep on Sunday which made that day kinda stressful, too.  All in all, it was a successful dinner party and a good time.....but I'm super excited to NOT have any of that to worry about today!!

Busy Bastille Day

Today is our 13th anniversary.  I will be spending it appearing for my first-ever jury duty summons.

Try not to be too jealous.

I had an epiphany the other day while still in Dallas and, within about 15 minutes and with some luck, I had a babysitter lined up and reservations made for a celebratory dinner last night.    We had a delicious meal and I even captured one piece of it for posterity because there's something you must know about me...

If there are deviled eggs on a menu, I WILL be ordering them!!!

In other news, the restaurant "sent" the bill in this little mailbox with instructions to raise the flag when ready to pay.   A bit too precious, indeed, but I still got a kick out of it!

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Big Fun

First of all:

 Girl loves to sleep at camp.

After I woke her up (which seriously took about 3 minutes of poking and talking), we hit the road to visit Auntie Lindsay and her crew.  Do you think B had fun?

The kids, no joke, spent about 2.5 hours in the pool.  The adults had a most wonderful time visiting just off-camera!

They finally got out for some dinner...but then got right back in again!

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Napping Through It

The kids are attending a "Summer Fun Days" camp Tues/Wed/Thurs of this week at a nearby church.  It's from 9:30-2:30 and the information said that 3 year-olds should bring a nap mat for rest time.  I was pretty skeptical about even bothering to take anything since I knew Miss C would be playing it up all day long but I dutifully took a blanket my mom had on hand that I actually used when I was a little girl!

When we walked into the classroom yesterday to pick her up, I didn't immediately see her among all the kids bustling about playing.   Why was that, you ask?   Oh, you know-- she was snoozing away in the corner:

Guess she's just having too much fun!

Beating the Texas Heat

Yesterday afternoon, we got to go with my cousin Paula and her two chickens to their community pool.   We arrived just as adult swim started so the 4 second-cousins lined up on the edge to wait:

The pool had fabulous water slides and, by the end of our time there, the B-man was whooshing down one of them and swimming to the edge of the pool by himself.  It was a big day!

Obviously, snow cones were required:

Independence Day Parade

We got all spirited-up for Grammie's neighborhood 4th of July parade on Friday morning:

Apparently our spot in front of the high school was a little sunny for the wee ones, although props to them for still smiling:

We actually were here last year, too, so here's a fun "now and then" pic with the 2013 shot! (the year I thought to take them sunglasses-- ha!)

They had SO much fun running after all the goodies thrown by people in the parade!

PS:  HAPPY BIRTHDAY to loyal reader Kathy!!!!!!  Hope people throw you some candy and frisbees today!   :-)

Newfound Besties

When we make a trip to Texas, we often find ourselves zooming through Waco on I-35 since it's right on the highway between our families in Austin and Dallas.   While we've had time in previous years to walk around campus and seek out some Mexican food, we never have time really to "do" Waco.   I decided that this was the year to change that so last Thursday, Grammie and I took the kids on a little day trip adventure.  We were gone just about exactly 12 hours and had so much fun!

The bulk of our visit was with a family who looks quite a lot like ours.  Mason and Hailey are exactly 3 years apart and are 6.5 and 3.5 (like B&C); they are just October babies instead of January ones.   Their mother, Jennifer, lived two doors down from me in the dorm freshman year and we think it's so fun to imagine our kids being roommates 29 (and 32) years later!

Baylor has a really neat children's museum on the edge of campus where we have always wanted to explore, so we planned our adventure to meet up with them as it opened at 10 AM...

Taken 10 seconds after we arrived-- no matter that the girls had never met before!!!

 The boys bonded over a video game display in the dinosaur room (and are being helped by an exhibit employee):

Trying on dino tails:

Playing with balls in the blowing air:

We took photos all over the museum-- it's REALLY a great place and way cheaper than most big city children's museums (and even cheaper when a friend gets you in on her membership-- thanks, J!!)--but I'll spare you all of those.  Rest assured the kids had a fabulous time.

We then went to a local sandwich shop and stuffed our faces (no pics) and then went in search of a cupcake truck we'd each read about on Facebook!  (Thank you, social media!)

Found it!

Our 6 different varieties for sampling:

We took our treats back to their house to play and these kids were Ninja Turtles in about 5 minutes:

We made them take a break from playing long enough to snap a pic of them holding a photo from the last time they met-- when they were just babies!

We can't wait to get back to Waco and have lots more fun with this gang!!