Nice Night for a Walk

When it's 75 degrees with low humidity during a Washington DC summer, you need to get outside ... so we decided to take a walk. We found/enjoyed the following things:

• Huge bird (Heron) about 20 feet away
• Ripe raspberries along the hiking trail
• A 8 person teeter-totter
• A treasure of $5 plastic coins
• Jogging up a hill while singing the theme to Rocky

On the way home, I heard somebody utter the phrase "this walk was boring, we didn't even get to play soccer." Fortunately, all I heard (selective hearing) was "Dad, thanks for taking us on an awesome walk :-)

Julia Turns Three

Happy Birthday Julia

Julia was pretty excited about her birthday - almost as excited as Mom. After church we headed home to meet Granddad and start the celebration.

Mom made an awesome pinata from paper-mache - the pictures don't do it justice. RJ and Julia took turns swinging the baseball bat and picking up candy. Even Mom and Granddad got in on the action.

Next Julia opened presents. Lots of cool things arrived including books, a home-made sandwich kit, a sleeping bag and a pillowcase, money-money-money, Lego, and a sticker book with clothes to put on girls. Opening all the packages or eating pinata candy may have been the best part.

We went to lunch at the Diner where RJ and Dad visited when Julia was being born.

Then we came home for train cake! Notice the train dress matched the cake. Thanks Bradley for lending us the engine!

The rest of the day involved playing outside and not taking a nap. So, when bedtime arrived, Julia ended up spending 7 minutes screaming in the garage for not listening. Oh well ... only one more year to go until she turns 4 ... smile.

Father's Day 2017

On Father's Day, we started the day being crazy in the basement. After dancing with the guitar toy for 10 minutes, we took a selfie.

Next we drove to Baltimore and met up with Granddad. It was hot, so we went to Meadowbrook pool and played in the kids pool. Then Granddad celebrated by being making all of us dinner. During dinner, Julia managed to tip her chair over - Mom's spackling abilities are going to come in handy the next time we go to Baltimore.

Fishing with Grandad

Spur of the moment trip to the Chesapeake Bay to do some fishing. At first we caught 2 perch and played with them in the live box.

After 2 hours on the water we got to a hot spot. You could drop a line in and catch a rock fish in about 1 minute. The challenge was keeping the lines in the water. We caught about 10 fish in an hour - most of the time was spent taking fish off of hooks and untangling lines.

Here is one of the 'keepers'

After getting off the water, we hit TGI Fridays and got home at 10pm. All in all, a great day fishing.

RJ Exits Preschool

All good things come to an end ... and so it was for RJ after 3 years at Redeemed Lutheran Preschool.

Pictures from the ceremony.

Special thanks to RJ's teachers

Additional thanks to the photogenic neighbors (with a decent camera phone) in the audience!