Mustache Monday at the River

We made the long car ride up to NY to see our family and friends for a couple weeks this summer.  Though the travel is long, it is possibly the weeks I most look forward to out of the year!  This year, the day we arrived was Grandpa Dan's 60th Birthday, so we celebrated in style!

"Uncle Jay, where can I get a real one??"

Yup. Grandaddy wins for best pic of the night. :)

Connor and Grandpa checking out his birthday presents.

A special book from Connor and Annalee!

We went on a glass bottom boat tour the next day.  Nana put Connor in charge of the tickets while we waited.  I bet you know how he felt about that...

"All abooooard!  Tickets, please!"

Across the "glass bottom"!

The driver let Connor have a chance steering the big boat!

Back at the house.  Precious in an outfit that was his Uncle Dan's.

Otto did LOTS of running and playing with his sister and friends, but he did plenty of this, too...

Grandpa got some cool "River" presents while we were there...like this awesome blow up pool for the dock!

As well as the "love float".  You can see that was enjoyed. :)

 Annalee never wanted to get out of the water, just like her big bro.

She also has this thing about bracelets lately...these floaties were perfect accessories!

Connor did a lot of snorkeling like his Daddy and Grandpa.

A little help from Aunt SAS on the slide!  We had a wonderful time and I took way too many pics...more to come!

June is Bustin...

...into mid-July blog posts.  Ahhh well.  Here's some bits of the end of June.

Connor my helper...wanting to put sis' shoes on before church.  Her feet are so little that they never last.  So sweet.  Annalee didn't really think so. :)

Connor drinks rice milk (because of his dairy allergy) and water.  I've given him a few different kinds of juice to try and he has spit them out, so I don't bother trying because he doesn't need it.  One day, I ran upstairs to change Annalee and when I came down, Connor wasn't playing where he had been when I ran up.  I called him and he told me, "I in the kitchen, I havin' mine juice!"  Umm...what?  I asked him, "What juice?"  He said, "Connor's Cookie Monster juice, in the fridge."  I still had no idea what he meant so I asked him to show me...somehow he had dug a juicebox (from his birthday party last September) out of the very back of the fridge, opened the straw, poked it in, and drank about half the box.  So of course, I asked him if he liked it and then we had a chat about asking before grabbing something out of the fridge.  He proceeded to slurp the rest down.  Apparently he likes juice now. ;)

Elephant.

"Fishing."

Jonathan's mom sent us a mason jar centerpiece idea and Jonathan decided to do some woodwork and make it for her.  He wrapped it up and asked the kids to decorate (sorry Nana, he then had to open it back up to see how some different jars fit - but you can see it in pics!)...

Cutest "colorer" ever! :)

Garden Delicious

Okay, THIS - is not delicious.  Have you ever seen a Hornworm?  I hadn't, til I was checking out my beautiful tomato plants!  It was basically the largest "caterpillar" I had ever seen.  It is the SAME color as the tomato plant, so I'm lucky I saw it!  Apparently, they can demolish a plant in one night and lay eggs all over, so I was glad I caught it after it had crunched up about 3 branches of our plant, and got some good advice from a friend on how to take care of it! 

Ew that is its MOUTH!  I could watch it chomping away on our plant!

We had our first zucchini in June...

and yellow squash, too!

Tons of sweet little beans started growing...

as well as the beginning of our peas!

By the last week of June, we had 17 tomatoes growing between our two plants (one is a Greek tomato, Thessaloniki, and one is an heirloom - the Mortgage Lifter) - yay!

LOTS of blossoms on our cucumber plants, and lots of bees busy pollinating!

There's that first zucchini!  We picked a few more when they weren't quite so big. :)

Beans!  We at them raw, we ate some blanched and cold in salad, and I froze a little for later.

Lettuce.  I plan to plant lettuce again for the cooler fall weather (we didn't get a lot because we planted too late).  However, it was SO delicious!

Yeah!  First squash and another zucchini.

Sadly, something got to our squash and zucchini plants and pretty much ate through the stems.  I have some new strategies for avoiding this next year (thanks Dad)!

AHHH FIRST WATERMELON! :)

Let's Go Chiefs!

The Jones' decided to give in and declare Syracuse sports teams the best...just kidding!  The Charlotte Knights played the Syracuse Chiefs at the end of June so we took the opportunity to take the kiddos to a game.  It was our first day with our big(ger) car, so we all went together and it was so fun!

Jonathan made sure that the boys were fully prepped to cheer for the right team. :)  They were so excited they barely sat down!

Snack/dinner time!  Best part of being at the ball park, right?

We went back and forth on whether this little girl would come with us (the game started after 7pm) but she did very well and it really worked out for everyone to be there together (um, she ate a lot of little bites of popcorn and loved it).

No, we did not change our minds halfway through the game because the Chiefs were losing (though they were), but Jonathan spun a wheel and won Knights banners for the boys so they could cheer for their current home team, too. :)  It was a great night and we can't wait to go to the new stadium next summer!