Naples Grape Festival and Soccer

The weekend summary:

On Saturday morning we went to Seton soccer practice. I've been hanging with Mary Grace and letting William venture on his own. Every week during the scrimmage, Mary Grace can be found in the middle of the field, all alone either looking up at the sky, down at the ground, or admiring her finger nails. She does great during the warmups and drills, she just does not like the scrimmage part.

This week she started crying. Alone. In the middle of the field. I went and got her and talked her into trying again, which she did, until one of the kids kicked a ball that glanced off the top of her head (she wasn't looking, thankfully). That was enough for her. As Mommy says, maybe Mary Grace is not an athlete.

I think next week I'll switch it up.

Today we went to the Naples Grape Festival. It was a long ride there, but I told the kids to watch out for the bear at the side of the road where I have always stopped for grape pies in the past. Here are the kids at said bear.



William decided to frisk the bear and found a bunch of tools in his apron. Thankfully he didn't ask if he could keep them. And here's the deliciousness that we bought this year.



The grapes were sooo sweet and tasty that we upgraded to the large basket so that Anne could try making a homemade grape pie or two.


We proceeded to the festival and scored a decent parking spot on the main road then walked to the festival. It wasn't very far, but the crowds made it take forever.

We immediately went for food and decided to keep it simple with hot dogs all around (Zweiglers, as my mother-in-law calls them)

As I stood up from our shady picnic spot behind the vendors, I saw a look of horror on Annes face, then she says "THERE'S A GIANT BUG ON YOU". Now I don't dig bugs. When there's a bug on me I usually swat it away, and run away screaming, but this message was confusing. What kind of bug? Where exactly is this bug? So I stood there. Looking at my wife looking at me with a look of fear and disgust on her face. Then she swatted it off my shirtsleeve, screaming the whole time. What was this horrible pest that was about to consume me you might be wondering? Here it is:



Yes, a cute caterpillar. Lets just say the people working the booth that we were picnicking behind definitely knew we were city-folk. :)

After all the commotion, William entered into a single-minded goal to get some cotton candy and Mary Grace scored some new doll clothes. We walked the festival for a little over an hour, then made our way back to the car.

On the way back, we stopped at our favorite scenic overlook in Naples, looking down almost the entire length of Canandaigua lake. Here's my favorite girl enjoying the view with me



After we got home, the Regan kids came over and everyone got to play while Daddy worked on the basement. Continue on to http://rickdidit.blogspot.com for more on that.

Best dream

Mary Grace has unfortunately acquired her back-to-school virus and is home sick today. I'm working from home while mommy is working. So far she's slept, then watched "Night At The Museum". She just told me "Daddy, I had the best dream ever last night!" I asked what the dream was about and she replied "Mommy was hiding all my birthday presents in my closet and I saw all of them! There were two American Girl dolls and a bunch of pretty outfits!" Now she's watching American Girl doll stop-motion videos on YouTube using Darrick's Android tablet.

End of summer, 2011

It was a whirlwind end of summer for us. It started in July with our wonderful family from Arizona visiting. The kids had a great time with their cousins. They looked forward to the visit all spring and early summer and when the day arrived, they were uber-excited.

The "kids"

Crazy swinging on the kids new swingset!

The girls enjoying time at the big summer family reuinion

After our visitors returned to Arizona, we had another cousin come stay with us for almost a week. Sarah was a great guest and the kids had an awesome time playing with her. She even babysat the kids one day so that Anne and I could (independently) go to work. Here are some photos of a little summer marshmallow roasting we had one evening:

Not sure who's expression is better in this shot!

Cousins!

Next, we took a trip to Boston and Deerfield to both visit the American Girl store and to visit the Thiels. The American Girl store was a huge hit with Mary Grace and Anne and William and I lasted about 15 minutes there, then we went off in search of miniature golf. We met back at the store a few hours later and had a nice dinner at the restaurant right in the store!
Then we headed to Deerfield, fully aware that hurricane Irene was approaching. We spent a night and a day both enjoying our hosts company, their beautiful house and their wonderful kids. We saw the Eric Carle museum, a cool dinosaur museum, then attended a tomato festival! After a great dinner, we checked the weather. We had hoped for the best, that the storm would dissipate or veer off to the ocean, but that was not meant to be. So we sadly packed up and left that night at 9:00pm, returning to Rochester a little after 2:00am. In retrospect, it was the right decision as there was a LOT of rain and flooding and our return trip would probably have been 10x worse the next day.
And that brings us to the final week of summer and the first day of school.
The kids had plenty of time to consider the end of summer and the coming school year. Mary Grace was excited to start a new year and William was a little anxious to have a new teacher and new friends. All-in-all, it was a painless first day. The kids were up early because of the excitement. Mommy had everything in order and ready to go, and off we sent the kids on the bus. Mary Grace was a great big sister, showing William the ropes and even sitting with him on his first day.
Mommy followed the bus to school and took some more photos when the bus arrived. Here's our memories of that day.

All ready to go out and wait for the bus! Looking so beautiful and handsome!

William looking slightly nervous	The expressions tell it all!
Mama came to help out!	And off they go. Let the tears flow!