Emily & Jason's Birthday Party! (Age 2 & 4)

Big Brother Garrett helping Emmy on the balance beam.

 Well, it was another joint birthday party for the two youngest members of our family!  Until Emily and Jason start a formal petition, I will be celebrating their birthdays, which are separated by thirty calendar days (and 22 months), together, so that everyone in the tri-state area doesn't have to travel twice, especially so close to the holidays.
We kept it simple and fun this year with a gymnastics birthday at the Parks and Rec gym center.  It's pretty cheap to rent ($25 an hour!) and you can have up to 30 kids!  Emily and her friends had a ball, running and jumping and tumbling all over the equipment.  We could hardly get the kids to take a break and do the cake, let alone open presents.

The kids were just a blur of energy and no injuries!  Yay!

Peggy and Johnny III

Emily proudly showing off her "4" candle!  Emily picked out the "silly monster" cake at Walmart, and I gotta tell you, that thing was so fresh and the whippy icing was amazing!

Happy birthday to youuuuuu!  Happy birthday dear Emily and Jason!

Cute cousins!

Halloween 2014

 Yes, it's November 8th and I'm just now updating everyone on Halloween!  Blame a slow internet connection.  The kids kept it simple this year:  Emily was Anna, Jason was Scooby Doo (not that he knows who that is, but he loves dogs and the costume fit), Caroline was a cat, and Garrett was a hot dog ( no pics, sadly, but it was hilarious!  I found the costume at Walmart!).
We like to "keep it local", so while most of the kids in our neighborhood loaded up the minivans to go trick or treating in Hopyard (a nearby neighborhood where the 300 houses are 2.5 feet apart from each other), we hit the mean streets of Cedar Lane and Dixie Drive.  Most houses had a porch light on, so we didn't do too badly in the candy department.
Garrett stayed home so that he could answer the door for the.....wait for it....TWO groups of trick or treaters that made it to our front door.  And we were one of those two groups!

Our grumpy puppy hated the dog hat immediately and insisted on bringing his pacifier.  It was a rough evening with that one.

Save the Reeses for me Emmy!

Garrett's Homecoming Dance

 As a freshman, this was Garrett's first opportunity to go a homecoming dance.  He had never shown in any interest in the middle school dances, but then again, they were held in daylight hours and included more teacher chaperones than students!  Garrett was messing around for my pics and did his "Momma June" face above so I threatened to put that pic on Facebook!  I didn't do that, but I figured it had to show up on the blog :)

Every important photo in King George must include a mounted deer head!

Birthday "Stay-cation" in DC

 Carrie and I were discussing the lack of enthusiasm for our birthday this year (not that I mind turning 36.  That's not the issue.  It's just that I'm sandwiched between 2 kids' birthday--Jason and Emily--who are honestly excited about their own celebrations and couldn't care less about the "old lady").  So we decided to jointly spend the weekend together with the husbands and do something that neither of us have done recently--visit DC.  Each of us shipped the kids off to the grandparents' houses and met up for some dinner at High Tides on the Potomac in Colonial Beach (where our meal took approx. 3 times as long as it should have due to the crappiest service I have had in a while).  The next morning we headed into DC and luckily found parking without too much trouble.  We walked all over the place (over 7 miles according to my Fit Bit!).

This memorial has 4,048 stars--one to represent each 100 deaths during WWII.

Timmy doing some "reflecting" next to the pool.

Hi Carrie!

An awkward threesome-Carrie, Josh and Lincoln.

My first time at the Korean War Memorial

We were so hoping for a fence jumper to keep the day exciting, but no such luck!