September Fun

Duke has been through a lot these past few months. After he lost his brother, Bronx, we found out he has diabetes. Thankfully, since he is 110 lbs, two shots a day doesn't bother him in the slightest. But he also had awful hips and a possible torn ACL so he is now on several different medications to try and make walking easier for him. But even with all of his health issues, he still loves being part of the family and always follows the kids around - even when it means Madeleine will dress him up.

James isn't always thrilled to go to school, but he carpools with a friend which he loves - so at least he is usually happy while waiting for his buddy to come and pick him up in the mornings!

One of Madeleine's friends turned 4 and had a really fun birthday party where they rented a retired firetruck to come out so the kids could take a ride around the neighborhood and get sprayed with the hose. It was a very cool experience for the kids.

We went apply picking with our friends at Sky Top Orchard. This is our third time there and every time it is so much fun!

Football season is fun but practice makes for long nights.

It has lightly rained the past two practices but each time we get the prettiest rainbows afterwards!

First day of Madeleines last year of preschool

Last week Madeleine started her last year of preschool! She was very ready to go back to school, especially since she had to watch James go off to school for almost three full weeks before she got to go. I am so proud of the young lady she is becoming, I am excited to see how much she grows this year - 4 is turning out to be such an amazing age for her.

Some more end of Summer pictures

Most of these pictures are just from my phone that we just some happy moments the last month or so. We had such a busy summer (as always) that it is good to look back and see that we actually did have some relaxing moments where we could just enjoy our time together.

One of our good friends has a lake house in Georgia that we went to this summer with a few other families. James was the oldest and the only boy out of diapers. He handled himself pretty well for being surrounded by lots of girls.

John basically spent the weekend like this...

This is one of the dads with most of the kids. It was a really fun weekend with lots of kids and laughs.

For Madeleine's birthday, she got a new bike! This one is super special because it has a basket AND a baby seat on the back for her dolls.

John took James and one of his friends to a Charlotte Knights game last month. It was one of their family nights so the kids got to run the bases after the game and there were lots of activities to do while the game was going on when they got a little restless.

Olympic watching!

James started playing flag football a few weeks ago - and he LOVES it! He is one of the smallest on the field but he is quick.

Boys Weekend

Over Labor Day, John took James back to Ohio for an epic boys weekend. On Friday, we picked James up from school early and I dropped them both off at the airport so they could fly back to Columbus. It was James' first flight and John was able to upgrade them to business class!

Saturday morning we were able to FaceTime with James while they drove to OSU campus to tailgate with Johns family for the game.

After the game, they all drove up to Cleveland to see a Cleveland Indians game!

This is Meredith, Johns brothers girlfriend. She is staying with us for two months while she completes one of her PT clinicals in Charlotte. As you can see, James loves her. Madeleine was amazingly jealous that Meredith was allowed on the boys weekend and she wasn't. But I think that has more to do with the fact that she missed out on Meredith time, because she also loves her. Both kids are thrilled she staying for two months - poor Meredith might regret staying with us because she will not get any rest from those two! Also, she has the best name ;)

Sunday they went to the Cleveland Air Show - and James conned Uncle Stephen into getting him the biggest lollipop he has ever seen.

After three packed full days, they headed home on Tuesday morning. I picked them up from the airport and then James went straight to school.

I am so happy that they were able to have such a special weekend, but we were very happy to have them back home!

First day of first grade

Yep, this guy started first grade. The entire time he was eating breakfast on his first day, he kept mumbling to himself "I cant believe I made it, I cant believe I made it to first grade. Me either buddy, me either.

Washington DC

John had a work meeting in Washington DC last week so we decided we would take the kids and make a week long trip out of it as a sort of last summer hurrah. James has been wanting to see The White House and monuments since they talked about it in school and of course we knew he would love the museums.

Museum of Natural History was our first stop.

Matthias slept through all of this museum.

Unfortunately, the Hall of Dinosaurs was closed for renovations but there were still several skeletons displayed and tons of fossils for James to look at. He didn't know what he was missing so there was no complaining. The hall is closed until 2018 so we will have to make the trip back once it has reopened for him.

Madeleine's favorite area was all the gems. She wasn't that impressed with The Hope Diamond (because she has fake rings that look the same) but she loves the big quarts and all the different colored stones. There were also real crowns on display that she couldn't get over that actual princesses and queens wore.

Our next stop was The Museum of American History. 

And Matthias missed most of this one too...

We tried to only stay out every day until about 2 or so, and then we would come back to the hotel to rest and then swim! We didn't want to push the kids too hard with all the walking since we had a whole week to sightsee.

The metro was one of James' favorite parts of the city. He loved the whole experience of it. I, on the other hand, was a big ball of anxiety. Taking three kids on the metro made me very happy that we didn't need that in Charlotte. All I could think of what sort of accidents could happen. However, John is such a seasoned traveler that he pretty much took charge of all the navigating so I just had to focus on the kids and not which line we had to get on or what stop to get off at. So in hindsight, it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. And once again, James loved it.

On the second day, we went to The National Building Museum which had a huge ice burg exhibit and lots of hands on exhibits for the kids. We only planned on staying there for a few hours but ended up spending all morning there because they kids had so much fun. And Matthias was actually awake for some of this one!

We got a travel bouncer for Matthias for this trip that has to hook up to a doorway. Since we were getting a one bedroom suite, we figured that there would be several doorways that we could hang this from. Totally and completely wrong. The ceilings were so low (old building) that the only doorframe was in the closet... that was on the other side of where we all were. So the poor third kid was stuck in the closet half the time we were in the room and he was all the way down the hall from us. Thankfully he never seemed to care and was just thrilled to be able to have a bouncer!

Our next day we took a tour of the monuments. We signed up for a tour but knew the kids probably wouldn't make the whole trip, but it was fun to get some information on everything we were able to see with the tour. We ended up breaking off about halfway through and walked around on our own.

I found these really cool kid maps on Amazon for the kids to help see where everything was. They came with stickers so we could mark off where our hotel was, what museums we went to, monuments and lots of other really fun sightseeing places. They also make the tour much more fun for the kids.

And yes, Matthias is asleep again.

After we broke off from the tour, we went to lunch at The Hamilton. Which was AMAZING.

The next day we took a tour of Arlington.

Yep - out cold

And of course we were able to visit Grandpa Al's grave.

Then we checked out John's favorite museum, The National Air and Space Museum. John and James were able to do an in flight simulator and there was just so much to see.

We ended up at a park right by The Capitol and we let the kids run (because for some reason they still have so much energy). The squirrels in DC are so friendly from being fed by people that they kept chasing the kids around, in a very friendly non scary way, which they got the biggest kick from.

On our last day, we went to The National Postal Museum. I really didn't think stamps were cool until we went here, and then somehow we walked out with like 600 stamps because they really are just that cool.

It was an amazing trip, probably the best we have every taken. We did so much more than I don't have pictures for - Union Station, Vietnam Memorial, WW2 Memorial, listen to music in the park, went to an outdoor market, and lots of other just fun stuff. And lots of lots of walking. Every night we crashed, but every morning we were up and excited to get back out there. James is already planning on what we can do on our next trip to DC since there were still a few things we weren't able to get to this time. Hopefully John has another work trip to DC in the next few years and we can do it all over again.