Summer Rewind

Summer is officially over (by the calendar definition) in just a few more days. Our summer seemed to fly by and was filled with lots of swimming, lots of tennis, lots of play, and lots of fun times.

Emma- Caroline and Sophie both made huge strides in their swimming skills.

Sophie actually got in the water this year and became a little fish as she practiced diligently on her Neverland Pirates Feeder swim team.

Emma-Caroline swam against her friend Karley whom she has known since she was just days old. It was awesome getting to see these two friends compete!

During the course of the summer, Emma-Caroline improved her strokes shaving off seconds and half minutes to place her in the finals in the City Meet. We are so proud of both of our little fish!

As a family we took a couple of trips together, one to Asheville where we toured the Biltmore and enjoyed some great Asheville cuisine.

Sophie just knew that she was born to reside in such a great "castle" as the Biltmore. Both girls were enthralled with the rooms and took special note of the Vanderbilt family photos in which they spied Cornelia wearing hair bows. Yes, these two were quite smitten with all things Biltmore.

We also enjoyed staying in downtown Asheville and being able to walk to all the local restaurants and see the wonderful sites.

Sophie appreciates my love of ironing and wanted me to take a photo of her "getting flat ironed!"

We also took a stop to the old Woolworth store which is now a huge local artist's gallery, and had to get a coke float at the soda fountain.

During the summer we also ventured to see some really great movies like Turbo and Planes.

And Howie went to NYC to see our niece get married. Of course he couldn't pass up and opportunity to go to a Mets game with another one of our nieces, Ellen. We were thrilled to see Howie and Ellen on TV at every "at-bat." Way too cool! Do you see him in this photo I took of the game on our TV?

To end our summer, we also took a family vacation to South Florida and stayed in a wonderful resort hotel on Hollywood Beach. We enjoyed our time of sitting by the pool, swimming, riding the waves, making sand castles and much more.

Our hotel was right on the beach, so we could literally just walk a few steps back and forth from the pool to the beach.

Usually the water is very calm, but we felt very blessed that the first few days we were there, there were waves for the girls to play in.

Howie and the girls became master sand castle builders and built a different "city" each day.

We even found two little mermaids washed ashore on the beach while we were in South Florida!

A nice passer-by took a family photo while we enjoyed a calmer version of the sea!

And the pool was a wonderful place to relax!

The girls got to go out on jet skies while we were there too. Sophie looks terrified in the photo above whereas EC is ready to go. Sophie actually di have fun :-)!

Emma-Caroline caught a few waves on the boogie board. Sophie was more content to jump the waves and lay out!

On our last evening in South Florida, we went for a nice meal on the Boardwalk at Hollywood Beach.

I actually had a seafood meal and ate all of it. I am not a big fish person, but this fish was tasty!

Our Florida vacation was a great way to end our summer before school started back.

Back home with friends we are ready to cheer on our home town team and enjoy selling a few more glasses of lemonade! Gooooo Vols!

School's Back In!

Life lately has been very busy in an extremely amazing and blessed way! As the days have moved along they have been filled with lots of fun and quality family moments as well as wonderful personal and spiritual moments with God.

 I truly love recording all that happens in and around our home however, at times of real busyness, my posts seem less frequent and often times sporadic. We had a wonderful summer filled with swimming and tennis and travel and fun, fun, fun. I will update our adventures soon, but today I want to focus on school.

 The girls began their new school year on August 12, 2013 in the third and first grades.

 They were so thrilled to go back to school and to see their school friends again. We were excited too with the girls' new teachers.

 Emma-Caroline got Ms. Murphy and Sophie got Mrs. McElroy. We have been pleased with how the school year has started and progressed.

Both girls are full speed ahead in their respective classrooms and have already gotten into the AR point winning quest. Emma-Caroline began her Harry Potter reading and has taken the first test on the Sorcerer's Stone. She now has earned 24 points just in one week of AR being open. She'll need 120 points to go around once. Her goal is to at least go around twice so she is off to a great start! Sophie is plugging along in first grade and getting stronger in her reading. Her teacher has the children writing constantly which I LOVE! I am going to have a huge stack of keepsake work that comes home from Sophie with all of that writing. 2013-2014 is off to a great start!