The Phantom!

Yesterday we drove down to Boston to see The Phantom of the Opera! It was soooo good!!!

Here's the stage. The big thing in the burlap sack is THE chandelier.

Two beautiful girls, so happy to see the show. They LOVED it!!

Nina's wearing her new dress, too.

Ceiling in the opera house. Pretty!

Girls with chandeliers. We love chandeliers.

The opera house was really something else!

We got to Boston early enough to spend a few minutes at the frog pond before the show, too.

Such a great show. No traffic coming or going, either, so a perfect trip.

Look what I found

Nina made this for me... for Mothers' Day? My birthday? I don't remember when! But it's adorable!

That should say, "stuff mom is." She forgot to cross her t.

I got my own poem, too!

The second e is for emasing, by which she meant "amazing." The last one is "ein," German for one, just because she couldn't think of anything else. I told her it means #1!

Today I cleared some brush to open up our water view again. More to go, but I made some progress! Before and after pics one of these days!

Windjammer Days!

No photos of windjammers today. We didn't go into town until the parade, which was great! LOTS of CANDY!!

What's this?

A giant lobster, of course!

 Here's my lovely, making a dash back to us after collecting some candy!

Great action photo! I tell you, that little lego camera is the best we've ever owned!

 What's this coming along down the street now?

A boot car!

The fireworks were cancelled on account of the rain (you can see the rain clouds in the background up there, but it held off. The parade was HOT! The sun came out and it hit almost 80. Maggie said, "I'm roasting like a turkey!" Ha!). So instead of fireworks tonight we're having a dance party!

Best friends forever....

 The dogs just get weirded out when we dance, but that doesn't stop us!

Proud mama and her baby boy!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Landscaping update

Here's the back of the house, so far. You can see the hostas I've transplanted and the small stone border:

Trash can and old chair are kind of taking away from the pic. I must frame better!

 Here they are, closer up:

They're absolutely thriving in their new location!

 One more shot, since I'm so darn excited about them:

With a Marley photobomb. Hello Marley!

Also, knock on wood, the garden is really coming along. Meet my green bean seedlings!

Hello little friends!

 And one of my dozen or so zucchini seedlings.

She's a little blurry, mosquitoes were after me!

Very busy day today. First the girls and I went downtown to see the Windjammer Days festivities. Touch tank and a jellyfish craft on the library lawn, peach shortcake at the Ebb Tide, more crafts down by the bowling alley, Hannaford, then home to try to complete the lower unit oil change (fail), rebuild those last two carburetors (success!), start up the old engine (fail. New battery maybe? Or just a charge? I'll find out tomorrow), then cooked a birthday dinner for mom and continued project clean up the house. The girls' room is looking fantastic but boy am I pooped!

An oldie but goodie

I can't believe this never made it onto the blog! Maggie and I were playing hide-and-seek, and she wasn't quite yet two. I checked in Mom and Dad's computer room, and found this:

Where could she be??!!!


Aww, I miss these days!

Busy week!

I thought when it was summer, I'd have more time to blog. So far, no! That's because I've been busy with the girls all day. I'd forgotten how much work that is! But fun, fun, fun work. Swimming, kayaking, bouncing, crafting, and playing games. On top of that, I've been working on the boat with dad, doing a deep clean and organize in the house (which has been oh so neglected!), landscaping, and gardening. I moved the hostas that were still growing on the patio to the back of the house, and Nick and I build a small stone border around those too. Looks good! The vegetable garden is coming along as well, everything has sprouted, fingers crossed!

Today was an exciting day for Nina: she got her first pair of heels! Well, wedges, but still. Look!

Zomg, she's growing up!

 Some marketing genius somewhere decided to start making heels in toddler and little girl sizes about a year or two ago. Developmentally ridiculous, and I fought it for a looooong time. Then we went to Kaler's for dinner tonight, I had one glass of wine with dinner, we saw these afterwards, and I just couldn't say no any longer. Wedges MUST be better than heels, right??

She just loves them so much!

 Earlier this week, Nina and I had hit up the children's place online. They had a 50% off sale going on, and we stocked up on a few staples. Kid is growing so fast, almost nothing fit!

Maggie is modeling a homemade, statue-of-liberty-esque mumuu.

 Yesterday was all about cleaning and organizing the family room, and when it was all done, it looked so dreadfully bare. So I put up some of the girls' artwork. Much better!

The handprints are all Maggie's, the large matted piece is Nina's.

 I spent today trying to get the girls' room cleaned and organized, including going through their outgrown clothes. Big job! It's not totally done, but I think tomorrow I'll be finished. I also made a little headway sorting though clothes in my and Nick's room, but there's much more work to do there. Sigh... good thing summer is so long!

Here's the sunset tonight. It was a perfect weekend and perfect evening!

Trimming back that brush, that's another thing on my to-do list this summer...

More tomorrow!!

Landscaping work

A few weeks ago, I asked Nick to pick up some compost for the garden, and he brought home mulch. So close, and yet so far. But that's ok, I put the mulch to good use! The hostas and lilies! Once I mulched the lilies, I decided that I should use the stones we pulled off of the old patio to nicely frame them in. Look!!

Ohhh, classy!

You may recall that several years ago, when I first thought we were going to put in a new patio, I moved some of the hostas to the island in the driveway. Every year they've been eaten up by deer as soon as they emerged, but I think the dogs have kept the deer away this year, and they're back. Yay!

I might put stones around here too, but they're not very tall, so I don't want them to be 
overwhelmed by the stones... still up in the air on this one.

Here's another view of the front of the house. Lookin' good!

Finally, I got new window boxes and some plants for those, which you can see off to the left there. Underneath that I've planted some cosmos in the ground, we'll see if those come up.