First Days of School (and Dance!)

This was an exciting week for the Levine kids.

It started with on Monday with Avery's first day of 4 year-old preschool....

 She was so excited! 

 She was hesitant when waiting outside the classroom door, but once her teacher introduced herself,  Avery started talking about everything she could think of....what she had for breakfast, how her brother wakes her up at night with his crying, what book she read the night before, and so on.

 I can't believe she will be going to kindergarden next year! This is blowing my mind!

 The next day, was her first day back at dance. She was not at ALL hesitant for this! She got to meet up with a lot of her friends from last year's class. 

Thursday was Grayson's "practice day" for his 2-year-old preschool (can you believe it?!?! Wasn't he just born!?!). I asked him to do the same type of poses with the signs, but he doesn't take direction quite as well as Avery! 

 He was pretty excited that he could use both his backpack AND umbrella on the same day.

 Finding his "special hook"...

 Avery and I have been "talking up" preschool all last week to get him excited. Once he saw the play dough, life was good. His "practice day" was only a hour and I got to stay with him the whole time.

 Today was his first "real" day on his own.  I had been dreading this day for months. He seems so little to be going off on his own.  He cries when we drop him off for Sunday School, which is literally the same room as his classroom, so I didn't have high hopes for this morning.  Much to our surprise, he walked right into the classroom and sat down at the play dough table!! Avery and I watched from outside....about 30 seconds later, he started crying when he realized we didn't go in with him.  We waited outside the room for a few minutes and didn't hear him crying anymore.  His teachers said he got a little sad a few times, but overall did great as long as he was kept busy.  And Mommy didn't even shed a tear - big accomplishments for all of us!!! 

Potty Girl

We are trying to keep the potty out for Grayson to get interested in it....

meanwhile Avery (who I swear just 3 minutes prior had clothes on), calls me into the kitchen and says "Hey Mommy, look at me...I'm Potty Girl!"

I thought it was pretty creative.

We love to run!

This past weekend was the huge running event that Lehigh Valley Health Network (my place of work!) sponsors every year.  This was the second year for Avery and I, but was the first year for Grayson!  Kids as young as two can run in the 50 yard dash kids run, so Avery and Grayson were able to run it "together" this year! 

Here they are "pre-race" getting pumped up!

 As soon as the horn went off, Avery took off....

 Unfortunately, the horn scared Gray too much. He would only run if he held my hand.  

 All of the kids got medals, but Avery kept saying "I can't believe I won!"

 Grayson was a little overwhelmed with the whole thing!  There were a ton of people and noises and activities going on.  I didn't blame him.  

Love the Steel Stacks....

Adam took this pic of the Stacks in black and white, but kept the sky in color. It was a gorgeous day!

 This was my second year doing the marathon relay race with my team of co-workers that consisted of three nurses, one oncologist and one dietitian (me!). We are just average runners who like to do it for fun and are so NOT competitive, but we just happened to win FIRST place in our division!!! Ok, there were several divisions and we were certainly not first place overall, but it still feels good to win and get some exercise!!! 

I'm all about my kids learning to love being active...and I think it definitely helps when they see Mommy loving to be active too!  

Our Beach Vacation

On the last day of August, we returned from our  much anticipated weeklong beach vacation in Ocean City, MD.  We love vacationing at the very end of summer right when most people are going back to school and gearing up for the fall. We stayed at the same condo that we stayed at last year. Avery loves having her "own room," lots of open space to run around, and of course the bayside balcony!

We continued many traditions from last year...and also may have started a few more! One of their favorites is eating donuts after breakfast on the balcony.

This year, Mom Mom (Adam's mom) came down to spend three days with us during the week. It was great to have the extra help and it allowed Adam and I to go out on our own (twice!) 

Such a treat for us!  Here they are at Fish Tales.

She brought activities for the kids to do each day too.  Here they are putting together helicopters (while drinking some pre-dinner martinis).

Last year, we discovered "Sundaes in the Park"...a Sunday night of live music, a beautiful sunset, a great playground and make your own sundaes!  It is definitely one of the most fun days of the week!

I just can't get enough of the amazing sunsets there!

 The kids did great on the beach this year! They both loved the sand.  

Avery loved the water and played at the edge of it all morning long and by the end of the week, she even went in pretty far with Daddy.  

Meanwhile (surprise, surprise) our sensitive little guy was not  a fan of the water. He was happy just chilling in the sand or playing with his trucks.

They both loved all of the fun "beach" foods we packed each day to eat on the beach! 

Fruit/veggies squeezers...

and yogurt sticks.

 Our routine was to go to the beach every morning from 9 am to 1 pm, come back home to shower and nap. After naps, we headed out to whatever fun evening plans we had...most of which included dinners, playgrounds, ice cream and sunsets. Does life get much better than that?

Grayson made several fashion statements while on vaca...

sunglasses on top of his hat (while indoors),

his wearable towel,

his head in the blueberry container,

sea creature sponges all up his legs,

but most of the time, he just hung out in his diaper. Here he is in action jumping off the couch.

We got lots of cuddles from him this vacation, especially because he didn't seem to want to sleep much while there!

This required us to have several coffee runs! At least he helped me get the coffees back to our condo....

One afternoon, I took Avery on a Mini Golf date while Grayson napped back at the condo with Daddy.    It was her first time and she did great! She got two holes in ones in the first game and two more in the next game.  Yes, we played two games in a row and threw a fit when I said no to a third game.  So, apparently she has a new love for mini golf!

Even though we really don't love the boardwalk, we took the kids there one night so that they could ride the merry-go-round (Grayson's first time on one!)

Our newest tradition is what I call "Lollipops at Sunset"...we let the kids pick out one thing at The Candy Kitchen. They both chose lollipops and they ate them on the deck while the sun set.  This was probably their happiest night...they are so easy to please!

This was the view...

We finished the week off by having dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Dead Freddies, which is just a few yards away from our condo.  It's always a good time there!

Grayson really indulged in his newly discovered love of honey mustard...

and took advantage of the large portion he was given.  

It was a great vacation, but already seems like it was months ago!

It was so great not to worry about house stuff, cooking, cleaning and other chores for a whole week.  It was especially nice for Adam to be able to spend so much time with the kids since he's always working.  But I still kind of feel like I'm needing a vacation from our vacation!