Here's to trying something new...Scrapblogging!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

No Friends Like Old Friends...

While visiting Lancaster, my oldest and dearest friend Beth and I got together with our kids for Happy Meals and a play date. Beth's oldest son Myles is only a few months younger than Riley. Beth and her family live in Harrisburg and we use to try to get the boys together whenever we could. Now that we live in Jax, it's much more difficult for them to see each other. Beth and I have stayed close since elementary school. Beth and I met at Toddler Gym at my church as preschoolers. Once we were in elementary school, we go to know each other much better. We use to go on family vacations together - I'd go with her to Wildwood, NJ with her family and she'd come to Virginia Beach with mine. We would go to church camp at Camp Hebron together as well as hockey camp each summer. Beth and I both played field hockey and ran track and we would train off season at the track every summer. She'd push me on the distance running and I'd push her on the sprints. We haven't lived in the same town since high school, but managed to stay close all this time. We noticed that the boys are following in our footsteps. They seemed to pick up right where they left off the last time they saw each other - which was Riley's birthday party in April. The two have even talked on the phone a few times. How wonderful for us that our kids enjoy each other as much as we enjoy each other's friendship! We're hoping that Myles and Beth can come down for a visit sometime. It's so difficult to stay in touch with all our crazy schedules. But I'm thankful that I have such an awesome friend who makes great efforts to stay close. (I'm also grateful for email so we can catch up with each other during nap time!)

Riley the Ring Bear

Riley was the ring "bear" in my cousin's wedding this past weekend in Pennsylvania. He was mighty disappointed to discover he was going to have to wear a suit instead of a "bear" costume. He was told that if he did everything that Uncle Jon and Aunt Laura asked of him, he'd be able to get a Geo Trax - which is a remote controlled train that runs on a track. He did a fantastic job so today we're going to head out to Target or Toys R Us after school to get his reward. During the ceremony, he was making the funniest faces - check out the video to watch some of his expressions. He stood fairly still and behaved himself, but loved the attention he got while making people laugh. They had a golf cart there to help get some people as well as supplies from the barn down to the location where they had the ceremony. Riley got to go for rides on with Uncle Jason and then with Daddy. That made wearing a tux more "bearable!" He thought it was especially funny to hit his bowl with his knife and make Jon and Laura kiss during the reception. Of course he wanted to do this non-stop and I did little to stand in his way since Jon did this to me at my wedding! The wedding was beautiful and we had a great time visiting with our family even though it was a crazy and stressful trip. All of us, except Kendall, were fighting colds and struggling from a lack of sleep. I was up for over 24 hours with only a 2 hour snooze at one point. It was rough, but we survived. Kendall was a perfect angel on the flight there and back. Not one peep out of the child. I was anticipating getting dirty looks from the rest of the passengers while she screamed bloody murder, but no such thing. It was much more difficult traveling with two kids verses one...don't know that we'll do it again anytime soon, but we're glad we were able to attend the wedding and see Jon and Laura start their new life together as husband and wife. To see a slide show from the wedding, click on the title Riley The Ring Bear.

Riley's Attempt at Photography

So after Kendall had her photo shoot last week, I decided, hey, I can do this. So I went to Walmart and found a king sized black sheet on sale for $12. I brought it home, rearranged some of the furniture in the family room to get the best natural lighting I could and then started snapping some pictures. Here are some of the ones I took:

This photo below was taken by Riley. He made sure it was centered and cropped the way he wanted it all by himself and then snapped the photo. I think he did a better job than most adults end up doing when taking photos. See for yourself.