They look so natural

So the summer has zoomed by and we forgot to post. Here’s a whirlwind update.

Looking back over the pictures I found this gem – Nora’s self portrait. Adorable!

In June my bike club put on a race at Neshaminy High School. The whole family came and Nora even participated in the kids race. She’s racing here with her friend Christian with my buddy Steve in the background.

Later Nora, Christian and Levi had a private race in the tennis courts. My buddy Ken gets credit for this photo.

Since Nora’s not riding a 2 wheeler, Levi inherited her Glide bike. (New paint job from Grandpop coming soon.)

Early July we went to Ocean city to visit with some friends from our church. As usual the kids were all too eager to jump into the ocean!

Our friends even took us out on their boat. Doesn’t she look cute!

And no trip to Ocean City is complete without visiting the rides on the boardwalk, which you can see our kids take very seriously.

For Levi’s birthday we went camping at French Creek again. The Rogers family joined us for the celebration. Here’s Levi, Nora and cousin Olivia.

As usual, the rain came…but rain doesn’t stop the birthday boy.

But a busy weekend does, so we had a quiet ride home!

For Levi’s birthday, Grandpop gave him a sandbox and both kids love it, as well as all their neighborhood friends!

Mid July the Rogers family returned to Bethany Beach. Dad Rogers rented a beautiful house a few miles out of town. Most mornings we took a convenient shuttle bus to the beach.

Other days we just stayed in the complex and went to the pool 1 block away!. Of course we also got commemorative T-shirts

In late August, our friends Rena and Gary visited before returning to Rena’s teaching assignment in Turkey. We all went to the Reading Terminal market in Philly for lunch. Afterwards, Gary and I started dealing our special WAWA Vanilla milk on the streets. It was a bit hit!

A quick stop at the Chinatown gate.

In early August, we took another big trip back to the NW. The trip started with a few days with Grandma on Bainbridge Island. Levi and Nora were in good spirits.

One afternoon we hiked at Fort Ward

On the way to Part 2 of our trip we stopped at Ray’s Boathouse for a delicious lunch. Mmmm, I wish I had some of that Calamari now.

Part 2 was a family vacation to Middle/Eastern WA, the beautiful Banks Lake. We played on the beach,

and had many meals together. Me and two of my bros.

and spent a lot of time on Uncle Mark’s awesome boat. We had a blast tubing, wakeboarding and even surfing! Checkout my attempt – I was supposed to throw the rope into the boat but I never got good enough to maintain the proper speed to pull it off.

Nora took a turn on the tube with her cousins and really enjoyed it. But for her the real fun was just jumping in the water when we took a break from the other activites. Levi even got in the water.

Oh, one day we toured Grand Coulee Dam, our Nations largest Dam. Pretty impressive!

Now it’s back to work and back to school. Oh, I did take a class over summer semester and rocked it with an A. I’m already dreaming of what our next vacation will be.

The state inspection and tags (translation for Washingtonians: registration) on our old Explorer expired and we finally committed to buying a replacement vehicle. Funny thing is, we ended up with two new cars and still trying to sell the Explorer! To make a long story short, Alicia borrowed her Dad’s Prius and fell in love with it. Don’t get me wrong, we both really loved our Fusion but the Prius is more fun to drive and gets twice the MPG!

So here’s my new ride. You’ll have to bug Alicia to take pictures of the Prius.

 

If you couldn’t tell, its a 2008 Honda Pilot. I’ve already installed a trailer hitch and bike rack for the rear. Then I moved over the roof bike rack from the Explorer. Eventually we will probably add one of those rocket boxes since we want to haul bikes and all our camping gear.

The other huge change is Nora riding a real bike! A biker friend of mine (yo thanks Bob!) gave me a pedal bike for her about a year ago and we’ve had it hidden in the basement. She had already mastered bike balance from her Glide Bike but never really got into pedaling the various 3 wheelers I trash picked But recently she took an interest in our neighbors pedal bike with training wheels. So I figured it was time for the real thing. She picked it up in two evenings!

The first evening, I followed her around with hands only inches from her. Then the second night she started going on her own and doing fine. She still needs to work on using the bikes brakes, but she is very solid on flat terrain. Yeah Nora, I’m so proud of you!

Oh yeah, Levi is still very adventurous and is taking his time with words, though we know his comprehension is solid. Today Alicia got him to show off some of his vocabulary.

I guess there is one more change I could mention. On Friday my company acknowledged talks with another about a possible buyout (them buying us, link). This seemed to catch most folks in my office off guard so I’m eager to hear what happens. In the meantime, I guess I’ll just take advantage of the education reimbursement. My second Masters class starts in a little over a week. Oh yeah, I got a B+ in my first class if you were wondering