Well, so far summer has been kind of fun… I’ve had lots of fun stuff planned, but the kids had to test limits for a couple days so we didn’t get to do as much as I’d wanted to this week.  We also had a wonderful time going to my 10 year college reunion last weekend!  All the pictures are at Photogrove on Flikr, but here’s a few highlights…

I couldn’t resist buying the kids some University of Richmond t-shirts, here they are in front of Westhampton Lake:

And here they are climbing a tree with the child of one of my very best friends in college:

We went swimming on Tuesday, and then today we went cherry picking! It was wonderful, and since we got home I’ve made a TON of freezer jam, a bottle of cherry vodka, and we still have five pounds of cherries left for snacking on this week.

Ellie lost her first tooth this week, Killian lost his 3rd tooth.  They both have other loose teeth and I really hate loose teeth! They creep me out a lot.

We are still managing to have lots of fun, even with me shuddering all the time.  Yesterday we went swimming and paddleboating in Fairystone Lake, today we went to a very cool park in Blacksburg and had a picnic lunch with David.  Good times!

We had a wonderful time on Saturday with family and friends, afterward Killian told me it was his best birthday party ever!

I would write more but its late and tomorrow is swimming day so the kids and I will be busy! You can see more awesome party pictures at Photogrove on Flickr.

My darling Killian, my sweet boy, my jokester, my “Super Scientist” award winner…  He made me a mother seven years ago and I will forever be grateful. In the past seven years, some things have changed but some have stayed the same:

I spent all day thinking about how much fun this summer will be – the resource center will be open by appointment only so I won’t be working much at all and so I get to be a full-time-stay-at-home-mama again. Then, the kids came home and it was one tantrum after another all night. We have a guest so they’re getting to bed late for the second night in a row so I don’t expect tomorrow to be much better. And, its the last week of school so the kids are all hyped up all the time!

This is just a crazy week – I subbed Monday (for my favorite class, which I love) and the kids had make-up music lessons, I’m working in the resource center T/W/Th, tomorrow is Killian’s birthday so I’ve been baking cupcakes for his class this afternoon (the dogs ate some of the first batch so I had to do a second batch), we have a houseguest this week, tomorrow and Thursday the kids have their regular music lessons, I’m taking Killian and some of his friends bowling on Friday (last day of school!), and Saturday the kids have a recital and then we’re doing Killian’s birthday party.

Individually all these things are wonderful and they are all things I want to do – but I’m just feeling very overwhelmed at the moment! My friend who’s visiting is helping me clean house (I haven’t seen him is over two years so its great to get to catch up with him) which does help as far as getting ready for the party this weekend and I love to cook so I shouldn’t complain about baking and icing cupcakes, and of course I want to celebrate my darling Killian’s birthday – I’m so proud of him and the big kid he’s become! Do other moms feel like this? I feel lame for being so overwhelmed when I only work part-time and only have two kids. I need to get myself together and become more capable. Is it too late for New Years Resolutions?

Anyway, back to summer vacation. In addition to the trips we have planned, I want to try to take the kids swimming one day a week, hiking one day a week, another day we’ll do something fun and active like bowling or skating or visiting a new park or a zoo, and one day each week we’ll do our music lessons and child-care at the gym in town. So, hopefully we’ll be able to have a lot of fun and have just enough structure to have a good routine going so we don’t have many meltdowns. That’s the plan, anyway…

We flew in and out of Washington, DC and I scored us a room at a very nice hotel just a few blocks away from the National Zoo.  Having worked at the KC Zoo, I really love visiting different zoos and I hadn’t been to the National Zoo since I was in elementary school.  It was wonderful, of course, and we had a good time even though we were all a little tired from traveling the day before, as you can see:

David got lots of great pictures of animals, check them all out at Phtogrove on Flickr.  My favorite animals to see were the Pandas and the lions:

Ellie brought her favorite toy – Baby Lion – and had a lot of fun showing it all the different animals in the zoo, she was so cute!

David and I realized that this was actually our first family vacation that was just the four of us. (I’m not counting our NYC trips last year because he had to work 40+ hours each of those weeks!)  We love visiting family and traveling with family, but it was really special to have a trip that was just the four of us.  I’m glad the kids are old enough that they’ll always remember it!

We had a wonderful trip! The pictures are on Photogrove on Flickr.

The resort (Gran Melia Cancun) was lovely and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!  My and David’s favorite part was the private Bali Bed/tiki hut on the beach, it was heavenly!

The view from it was amazing:

The kids loved the pools and the beach:

And they really loved it when this iguana would pop out of the bushes next to our Bali Bed or while we were eating lunch at the outdoor grill:

Our flights to and from went great, customs was slow but there were no problems, the service at the hotel was lovely (we even got a cheap upgrade!), and it was really just a wonderful relaxing trip.  There was a Kids Club at the resort so David and I even got a few hours to ourselves while the kids did art project and dove for marbles in the kids pool with the babysitter. We had an all-inclusive package, so we ate wonderful food and David and I had at least three of every tropical drink you’ve ever heard of!