Anne and Rick's Blog: 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.