Bidding Adieu to Ballet (For the Summer)

Ryleigh had her final ballet class this week.  It was a sweet little performance.

This studio was a good little find for RyJo.  It certainly isn't anything fancy, but she has learned a lot and has wanted to be at every single class.  She is looking forward to being with the "big girls" next year in pre-ballet.

May showers have delayed the May flowers.  But, they certainly haven't dampened Ry's spirit.  We got home from school on Monday, and surprise, surprise, it was raining.  RJ ran inside.  Ryleigh ran outside with her umbrella.  Then, it stopped raining for a few moments.  She yelled for RJ to come out, but he was just fine inside.  So, she found some bubbles to entertain herself for a few minutes before the rain came back.

On Saturday morning, the kids and I headed to the beach.  I missed having another adult to help carry all of the stuff!  Slowly, but surely, we made our way to a good spot--nice and flat and not too far from the water.  The kids had a great time playing in the sand.  And, Ryleigh discovered the sheer joy of having the water swirl around her feet.  She screamed each time with delight and said over and over, "I'm having so much fun!"

Sunday turned out to be a bit rainy--again.  The kids and I joined our neighbors for lunch and a little shopping.  I was done with my shopping before Hannah, so I took RJ, Ryleigh, and Aless to a pottery painting place.  They had a great time!  They are having a hard time understanding why we can't pick up their masterpieces for a week, but maybe once their new piggy banks are on hand, they'll have a little bit better understanding.

This week is supposed to be full of, well, rain.  We'll all do our best to keep from going too stir crazy.  And as always, pics to come.  Until next time, cheers!

Stubby Blue Crayon

Since the ship was leaving on Tuesday, Jip was able to duck out early on Monday.  We took full advantage of having him home by picking up the kiddos and heading over to Mount Trashmore Park and then dinner at Jason's Deli.  The kids had a great time at the park until they decided on the way back to the car to run up the big hill and back down.  On the way back down, they both managed to find a huge pocket of mud.  Ryleigh lost a shoe (Jip found it) in the muck.  I didn't take any after pictures--I was too busy trying to figure out how to contain and clean the mess before heading to eat.  But, here are a couple before pics.

Jip got to stick around Tuesday morning, too.  We took RJ to school and he was able to see Ryleigh's ballet class before we dropped him off at the ship before lunch.  It takes a lot of time to prep the ship for its departure.  They finally made their way out as the sun was setting and they crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel just before sundown.  This is not my picture, by the way--the kids and I were probably reading stories in our jammies at this point.

On Friday, RJ's class members were invited to dress as their favorite storybook character.  RJ wanted to go as Grimlock from Transformers.  Um, not a storybook, kiddo.  So, I told him to think about his books, come up with a few ideas, and I'd make something happen.  Without any prompting from me, he chose Stubby Blue Crayon from the book The Day the Crayons Quit.  I ironed on some vinyl I cut with my die-cutting machine and found a tutorial for the hat made out of cardstock.  I present to you, Stubby Blue Crayon:

Our weekend was spent mostly indoors thanks to what seems to be incessant rain and highs in the 60s.  There is an end in sight and it should be back to a normal Virginia May with temps in the 80s by the end of the week.  I'm looking forward to some more outside time for the kiddos and for me so we can have more moments like this.

This week should be pretty normal.  We have Ryleigh's last ballet class until next fall on Tuesday.  And, I'm trying to figure out whether the kids and I should do a mini road trip this weekend.  Hotels in the Outer Banks (NC), Ocean City (MD), and Rehoboth (DE) are ridiculously expensive this weekend, so it might just have to be a day trip.  Maybe Kitty Hawk?  Maybe the Lost Colony (in NC)?  I'm sure the length of trip will be dictated by how everyone's attitudes are by the end of the week.  If they are super good kids, maybe we can make it all the way down to Hatteras Island.  A cool lighthouse and maybe getting really dirty in the sand might be just what is needed!

As always, pics to come.  Until next time, cheers!

Tepee

Poor Jip.  He goes to sea and I get on Pinterest.  I find projects.  I wait for him to be home to do them. But, I think I found a project that was fun for him.  We made a tepee for the kids out of canvas and PVC.  Jip cut and glued the PVC poles.  I cut the canvas and together we glued in the PVC endcaps and put in the seams with iron-on fabric adhesive.  We put on snaps, and voila!  A cute little collapsible tent.

My hope is that it will be a summer reading nook as well as a fun play area.  I'm on the hunt for the perfect indoor/outdoor papsan cushion.  But, in the meantime, the tent came inside and is now serving as a dressing room.

Ever since she saw it in my Pinterest feed, Ryleigh has been begging to transform some duplo blocks. While RJ went to Ninja Zone, Ryleigh and I stayed home and did just that.  We broke out my washi tape collection and wrapped some blocks.  Ryleigh did each and every block herself.  I went back and straightened some of them out.  Ryleigh built and rebuilt creations with her fancy blocks.

After RJ came home, he used the blocks to make his own creation (and take his own picture of it).

Jip heads back out to sea this week for about three weeks.  We're hopeful he will be back in time to see Ryleigh's gymnastics "competition" and will be home long enough for RJ's Kindergarten graduation ceremony.  Fingers crossed!  The rest of us will be continuing our routines of school and activities.  As always, pics to come.

Until next time, cheers!

A Week of Teachers and Moms

This week was teacher appreciation week.  This year it was on my radar nice and early, so I had time to design something for Ryleigh and RJ's teachers.  I had the below design printed on shopping bags and magnets.

The school's PTO put on an amazing breakfast buffet for the teachers one morning.  I had a good time making labels for the water and juice and helping serve the yummy treats.

RJ's teacher asked for simple things, like drawings or classroom supplies instead of the various food and flower gifts that people often give.  So, RJ drew a picture on the iPad and asked me to email it to her so that she would be really surprised.  He drew a picture of his teacher and himself walking on the playground together.  She was surprised and touched.

For Mother's Day, the kids' teachers had a couple fun projects.  Ryleigh made me a clay necklace with her fingerprints pushed into it in the shape of a heart.  RJ answered a bunch of questions about me in a purse-shaped packet.  He made me laugh--he said he loves my cooking.  Ha!  This from the kid who eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bagels with cream cheese for lunch and dinner nearly every day.  I must have a special touch with my knife and his spreads of choice.

Jip also took the kids shopping and the collectively picked out a necklace, iced tea cup, and socks for me.  They did a great job with their selections!

Sunday morning was actually a little crazy for us.  RJ had Ninja Zone as usual.  And Ryleigh had a birthday party at the zoo.  She touched a millipede and a Flemish giant rabbit.  Jip's camera took blurry photos of those little milestones, of course.  But I'm sure you get the idea from the pics that did turn out.

After the party and a quick walk through part of the zoo, Jip and Ryleigh scurried back to the Founders Inn for brunch, where they met RJ and I.  RJ changed in the car after class and we actually made our noon reservation on time.  Brunch was delicious.  And, it seems that the Founders Inn learned a couple lessons from the not-so-great Easter brunch.  They had more face painters and balloon artists and asked them to limit their work to a few designs that weren't time consuming.  Ryleigh only had to wait about 7 or 8 minutes instead of the 110 minutes on Easter to get her face painted.

My kids indulged me with a couple selfies to commemorate our day.

I hope your Mother's Day was great like mine!

Until next time, cheers!

PBS-Kind-of-Fun Weekend

Jip here for a change -- we'll see if it ends up being a good change...

I've been underway for the past couple weeks out carving our way around the Eastern Seaboard helping new pilots get qualified to land their fancy aircraft on 4 1/2 acres of U.S. sovereign territory known as an aircraft carrier.  This will be the primary tasking for USS GEORGE WASHINGTON for the remainder of this year as we go in and out for a few weeks at a time.  All pilots learning to land on the carrier (flying T-34 Goshawks) or trying to qualify on the F-18E/F Super Hornets, C-2A Greyhounds, or E-2C Hawkeyes spend time practicing on our deck while we go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...

Anyway, we got back Monday night late after about 13 days out of port.  I worked on Tuesday and then headed up to Washington, D.C. that evening to attend an Integrated Project Team Development conference for the team who will be working GEORGE WASHINGTON's Refueling Complex Overhaul (RCOH) starting in Summer 2017.  It's a good event to meet other people and get to know them better, but the topics presented can be pretty dry.  It wasn't too bad this time, and I was able to catch up with a couple colleagues that I haven't seen for a while. We also got to hear from a few of the admirals in my community.

Amy and I decided that we'd take advantage of the forcing function of having me up in D.C. so she and the kids rode the Amtrak train from Norfolk to D.C. on Friday.  They had to get up "wicked early" as they would say in Boston to get on the train and arrived at the Pentagon City Mall around 11:00 a.m. after switching to the Metro in the city.

On Friday afternoon, we went over to the National Museum of Natural History (one of the Smithsonian museums).  RJ and Ryleigh complained all the way from the parking garage into the museum but were instantly enthralled once we walked into the museum and started looking around.  They especially liked the animals.  We watched a National Park IMAX film and also played in a kids' room filled with science stuff.  Unfortunately, we didn't have many pictures of them in the museum, but here are a few.

After the smashing success of the museum, we went to the hotel and the pool--the most important part of any hotel according to our kids -- for the night.  On Saturday morning, we found an indoor play place to burn some energy.  The kids had some fun climbing and rolling around (below).  The place also had a great digital mat where the kids could play games.

Next, we went to the Air and Space Museum Annex located near Dulles Airport.  Despite the complaining by the kids about how "boring" some of the planes were, we had a good time looking at the aircraft and spacecraft.  Space Shuttle Discovery is now located in the facility (it wasn't there the last time I visited the museum) so it was great to see such a historical vehicle.  The kiddos also enjoyed some tables with robots (for RJ) and experiments where you could test your reaction times to dropping a yard stick through your fingers (for Ryleigh--see her written results below).

That last photo is pretty good -- not of me, of course, don't be silly -- but the SR-71 Blackbird is in the foreground and Space Shuttle Discovery is in the background.  I recommend visiting this museum should you find yourself with a few extra hours and near Dulles Airport.

We found an outdoor playground to help burn some more energy and then went back to the hotel for another round in the pool.  Today, we got up and chilled for a while before heading over to a restaurant to meet some old friends from Amy's days at The George Washington University.  We had a nice lunch and then headed out on a long drive back home.

Well, we're back home now and ready for school tomorrow.  The kids are asleep and I'm ready to crash myself.  Have a great week, and we'll see you again next week with more of our adventures!

-Jip