the trip

I am relying on friends and family for pictures, so pictures may be sporadic. We left thursday morning at 2am for Maryland. The girls apparently thought it was great to be woken up at 2, and therefore didn't go back to sleep. It took Kennedy 1.5 hours before she fell asleep and Reagan lasted 2.5 hours in the pitch black morning hours before she finally closed her eyes. Then, at the first crack of light they were wide awake. Yikes! So crankiness was inevitable. We checked in to our hotel and headed to DC to spend a few hours before we needed to be back at the hotel to meet everyone. We didn't see a whole lot, but the girls were happy to be out of the car and run around. Reagan rode the carousel twice, Kennedy only once, and we hit the Museum of Natural History. They thought the Metro was awesome!

Next we headed with the family to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. We ended up waiting 1.5+ hours before we got seated. Luckily Kennedy snoozed for half of it, and Reagan wandered the mall with Aunt Amber. They rode the escalator way too many times and watched a band play music. Dinner was yummy, of course!

Day two we headed to the Temple at 9. Lots of pictures and a wedding ceremony, then we headed to lunch about 1. The girls napped for most of the drive to Philadelphia, phew! We checked in at our hotel and then headed to the reception. The girls (especially Reagan) loved, loved, loved to dance! Afterwards we took them to the hotel and put them down and played games with the family (we miss you Tuckers!)

Sunday we decided to head in the opposite direction of home and drove to New Jersey. They have an awesome Aquarium there! I am hoping to get pictures from Jon to show you this weekend. We got to pet, yes PET, sharks, starfish, anemone, jellyfish, shrimp... It was AWESOME! Plus we got to see penguins and seals and hippos and turtles and fish and... Yea, I will just have to show you pictures. Then we embarked on the 12 hour drive home - fun!

So here are some pictures of my cute lil girls in their $15 dresses brand new off Ebay!

They danced...

and danced...
and danced...

My little momma's girl

An *attempt* at a family picture...

My sweet lil beauties - what troopers!

Congratulations to Eric and Khirah - pictures to come!

yakity yak

Kennedy tries to say so much these days, but my favorite is when she tries to imitate animal sounds!

preparing

We are leaving late tonight to go to Washington DC for Rick's brother's wedding. We have been doing lots of preparation for the big day - shopping for dresses, finding shoes, mending a suit, ironing, packing, cleaning, and most importantly dancing! The girls are excited to go the reception and get their groove on. Lately Rick has been playing the piano in the evenings and the girls dance around. I decided to catch it on tape the other day.

my little towhead

It's hard to believe that my little dark-haired baby has turned blond!

i'm lazy

So I apparently decided to take the summer off from teaching Reagan very much. I decided to try to be more diligent with teaching her new things, so I was super impressed with our first "lesson." I took a few tips from my cousin-to-be Jill about what things kids are learning in preschool and kindergarten, as well as a few new ways of teaching these things. I decided to start with writing, since she obviously loves letters and words. I spent about 15 minutes working with her on writing the letters A, B, C and D. Here are the results...

Isn't that awesome?!! I was sooooo excited! My little, big girl is learning again!

(Sorry the picture is fuzzy, I still haven't bought a camera yet and am using my mom's back-up in the meantime...)