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I had promised the girls and myself that we’d go to Sandcastle, the local waterpark, before the end of summer.  We cut it pretty close, but I was able to carve out a day off this past friday to take the girls and mom to Sandcastle.  We all had a wonderful time – it was brutally hot, but once we got wet it wasn’t bad, and the girls are finally big enough to really enjoy a lot of the attractions.  Last time we went, which was two or three years ago, the girls weren’t up for anything more than the kiddie wading pool and mini slides.  This year, they all enjoyed the double tube ride, taking turns riding it with me.  It’s a cool ride that goes thru dark tunnels and has some fast but not too fast turns and dips.  They also enjoyed Wet Willie’s, the bigger kid play area, and jumping and bodysurfing the waves in the wave pool.

De was especially adventurous, tho, and wanted to go on every ride she could.  She was too short for several of them, but was allowed to go on the Boardwalk Blasters, a slide advertised as an "extreme action slide" that ends in a 7 foot drop into a 12 foot deep pool.    I went on it with her, and boy did it pack a punch!  She was the littlest kid to try it by a good margin, but she handled it like a trooper, flying down the slide and popping right up out of the water.  The lifeguard commended her for being such an amazingly good swimmer.  I didn’t bring a camera, since I didn’t want to have to juggle it around all that water, so unfortunatley I don’t have any pictures of the great adventure.   All in all, a great day, and a nice end of summer treat before school and all the fall activities start up.

So yesterday evening, at Jenya’s request, I removed the training wheels from her bike.  She took to riding without training wheels like a duck to water – I don’t know if it’s the scooter practice or what, but she didn’t fall at all, in fact she barely wobbled.  I ran next to her the first few times but she never needed my help.  Her sisters were both very good sports, too, and were enthusiastically cheering her on.  Now she’s on that bike at every opportunity.  I was impressed – my memory of learning to ride a two-wheeler involved a lot more false starts.  Here’s a pic of the proud moment.

A nice pic of Jenya emptying the dishwasher and putting away the dishes – which given her height, involves her climbing up on the counters to reach the upper shelves.  Makes for an interesting sight, but she’s quite good at it. 

Well, we survived all of the end-of-school-season madness – an assortment of recitals, shows, parties, festivals, and other activities in quick sucession.  Jenya had a speaking part in the Montessori end of term recital – if I can figure out how to post video clips I’ll link up the video.  The theme for the Montessorri show was south america, which has been the theme for a lot of the school year – so the kids can name every country, major city, and important event in south america, but aren’t clear on what country they live in… 

They also had their gymnastics recital, and got the ubiquitous medals and trophies for showing up (a trend I’m not happy about in the world as a whole, but at least now I’ve got the kids to understand that they don’t "win" those medals).  They all did a great job, and all got promoted – twins from little dipper to big dipper, Jenya from Lucky Star to Pearls (Pearls is the pre-team team prep level), so they were very happy.  And of course they did a nice job at their dance recital earlier, as well.

 

As most of you probably know, my time with my current company (ESS) is coming to an end soon, and I’m getting involved with a new company.  Lunn has been busy updating the graphics and layout for the website (Aspira Consulting), continuing his unbroken trend of somehow being volunteered to do logos and/or graphic design for every company I’ve been involved with for the last ten years or so.  We’ll be finishing it and taking it live over the next week or so.  Feedback is welcome!

We originally had the pool scheduled to open the end of May, but it’s been so warm here the last few weeks that we went ahead and opened it early.  It’s a bit chilly in the water, but the girls love it.  Here are a few pictures of the first swim of the season.  

So Jenya FINALLY got to climb the rock wall, after waiting impatiently for "forever."  And she did a great job, and really enjoyed herself.

The new Y in our neighborhood opened a year or so ago and has a rock climbing wall.  Jenya has been dying to climb it ever since she first laid eyes on it, but much to her dismay they have a hard and fast minimum age of 7 years to climb.  She has frequently expressed her frustrations with this rule ("It doesn’t matter how old you are, it matters can you do it").  Frankly I’m inclined to agree with her, but we explained to her that different places have different rules, and the Y has a right to make whatever rules they want for their space whether we think they are fair or not, and if we want to go there we have to play by their rules.  Life’s like that.

Just got back from a week in DC with the family.  It was a very nice quasi-vacation.  We stayed at the company condo (a bit cramped but great location and the girls loved it).  We did quite a lot.  We spent Saturday at the Air and Space museum downtown — they were having a kite special event, so the girls got to make and color their own kites, and watch kite dancing events, and all kinds of stuff in addition to the usual neat stuff at that museum.  Unfortunately I forgot to bring the camera, so no pics of that visit.

Lots of pics of the next few days, tho.  We had a nice breakfast with Lunn’s parents and some of his cousins.  The girls got to meet Rose, their 18 mos. old new little cousin, and her mom Becky and her husband.  Another one of Lunn’s cousins, Niles and his wife, were able to join us as well.  It was a very nice visit.  After that, and after a detour to the playground to let the girls burn off all the energy from behaving well at the restaurant, we went over to my friend Lynch’s house for a nice bar-b-que and visit with him, his wife and two boys, and of course their dog.  The girls very much enjoyed playing with all the boys’ toys, and even condescended to play with the boys themselves from time to time.

The next day we went to the Reston Zoo, which we’d been told was a good petting zoo.  It actually turned into one of those "good but totally not in the way you intended" kind of trips.  The place itself was overpriced and an absolute tourist trap.  The girls learned some interesting lessons, tho — like how to project physical dominance to scare off the omnipresent ducks, swans and geese chasing them looking for food.    But Jenya got to pet a bunny (actually several bunnies), which made her week — and they all got pony rides, which they enjoyed. 

We capped off the tourist-y portion of the trip with an afternoon at Mt. Vernon.  The twins were really too young to appreciate it, and mostly just ran, played, and got bored, but Jenya seemed quite interested in the history.  The best part was the girls’ visit with "Martha Washington" — they had an actress in full historic garb recreating Mrs. Washington, and she had a very interesting in-character conversation with the girls — told them all about life as a little girl in colonial America.  Afterwards Jenya said "wow, she must be 170 years old." 

I put an album with some of the pics from the trip up on the albums link. 

Jenya has started her very own blog – you can read her first story here at http://rlestina.typepad.com/jenyas_writings/.  I encourage everyone to comment on her entries – I know she’d love to see some feedback from her family on what she writes.  If you don’t know how to do it, all you have to do to comment on a blog entry is click the comment link at the bottom of the entry and write your comments. 

She looks pretty much at home here, doesn’t she?