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This time we went to karate graduation, both of the boys earned new belts! Aunt Becca, Uncle Sean, Grandma, and Grandpa all came to watch the fun. I think we got the most laughs when Miles’s class was demonstrating kicks on their instructors…someone should have told his instructor to wear a cup when being kicked by 3-year-olds!!!

Here they are with their new belts:

After the graduation Grandpa had to go to work, but the rest of us went over to Oak Knoll Wildlife Sanctuary to enjoy the gorgeous weather!

This past weekend was a long weekend so we took the opportunity to go up to New Hampshire for more skiing! We also celebrated my mom’s birthday, a bit belated, but it was great to do it with the family all together. (Don’t miss the video link down below!)

We skied two days at Cranmore, where my cousin and his girlfriend work, and here’s Miles with the Cranmore mascot! He remembered him from last time we were here and ran right over to give him a hug.

Here he is again, skiing with Grandpa.

Here’s Quinn giving Grandma the special birthday card that he made for her.

Cutie patootie Miles sleeping with his little mousie!

Our third day of skiing was at King Pine, and Miles started learning to turn! Here’s a video of him at KP. He can do the little magic carpet run at KP all by himself – getting on and off the carpet and then skiing down, even with a lot of other people on the hill.

Also at KP, Quinn had a disagreement with Eric on the last run about which trail to take and ended up colliding with another child. His injury was mild, but he ended up in first aid because he was bleeding everywhere! Here he is a few hours later at dinner with his lovely fat lips!

Click here to go to the February album and see more pictures of our ski weekend.

Yesterday while the boys and I had some friends over to play, we had a thunderstorm. I didn’t think too much of it, but apparently it was very close! Just a mile away at my parents’ house, this happened…

Two lightning strikes!

Overall, it seems like the damage is not too bad, considering the realm of possibilities, but there’s still a lot of clean up to be done. Here’s the tree in the pine grove that appears to have exploded.

And a close up of the bottom portion of the trunk where it’s detached from the stump – there are even junks of wood embedded into the ground!

The other tree is still standing, but not in good shape.

A fuse exploded in the pool house (yes, I said fuse – I guess that will be getting replaced soon!) and pushed the fuse box door open, and there were several bulbs in the basement of the house that were shattered. The transformer for the mosquito magnet is also toast.

Here’s where it was sitting on the deck of the shed. There’s a nice scorched area surrounded by lots of bits of plastic.

Quinn was having fun spotting the bits of plastic that were at the opposite end of the deck.

Here are the boys and me back by the tree that was downed.

It was near the property line but thankfully fell away from the neighbor’s house – though they had lots of sticks and debris on their roof. There were pieces of wood everywhere – even across the street! Here’s a piece of bark hanging on a nearby branch.

Here are Grandma and the boys in the pine grove standing by (or on!) one of the pieces of tree. Nearby lay a good 25 foot tree “shard” – just a section of the center of the trunk that had been split off and thrown a different direction than the bulk of the tree.

Lightning is powerful stuff!

Father’s Day was a much better day than Mother’s Day this year, mostly because none of the fathers were sick sick sick on their day! But Father’s Day is extra fun in our family anyway, because we also get to celebrate Becca’s birthday. This year her actual birthday was a few days ahead of time, but who’s counting?

At Quinn’s request, we started the day with special breakfast (Eric chose French toast) and Quinn insisted that Eric open his gift right away. (Well, the part of the gift that he didn’t know about, since last weekend he bought a lovely widescreen monitor, and I said “Happy Father’s Day!”) I’d like to know what Miles was so excited about in Daddy’s card:

Quinn picked out all of the Father’s Day cards this year, and did a super job decorating them. Here’s the one he did for Papa – can you tell what it says?

Ok, did you guess? On the left it says: “Hope to see you soon Love Miles Quinn” After he wrote the “Hope” vertically I asked him to switch colors so that you’d have a chance in heck of figuring out what he wrote!

Later in the day, Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Becca, and Uncle Sean came over to play MarioKart, take naps (well the fathers did, anyway!) and generally have a good time. We had a lovely dinner of fruity salad (a la Becca and Sean), shrimp and scallops (a la Grandpa and Grandma), potatoes fontecchio, and cake (a la me). After dinner there were gifts, including lots of bbq sauce for Grandpa, and a new yellow bag for Aunt Becca, for which Miles had a great time opening all of the pockets! But the highlight of the gift opening was when Grandpa opened the card that Quinn had selected for him – and it played the Pink Panther theme! Unfortunately my timing was off and I didn’t get a photo of the surprise and all the big smiles, but I think it got the reaction for which Quinn was hoping!

Then came dessert and it was YUMMY! I made the Pioneer Woman’s Strawberry Shortcake Cake. It was delightful and I’ll definitely make it again. Hmmm…I think there are some strawberries in my refrigerator right now…..

During April vacation week, my mom and I took the boys for a train ride downtown to visit Aunt Becca, check out the Museum of Science, and have some dinner before we took off on the train again for home. It was a quick trip, but the boys had a great time. Of course, the highlight of the trip was the train ride itself! If all we had done was that, I think they both would have been happy.

At the museum, the first thing the boys found was the Rube-Goldberg-type machine, with lots of balls to watch rolling around. I think if we’d let them, we could have spent our entire museum trip here!

Riding the T was also an adventure. Quinn got to learn why you need to hold on when you ride the T standing up! Can you see the fascination on their faces? It was fun for us adults to watch them trying to take it all in.

Needless to say we arrived home well after bedtime with some tuckered out boys. But they can’t wait until we get a chance to do it again!