After getting home from Costa Rica, we had some family over for ice cream cake to celebrate Hope’s birthday. It was pretty low key family time since we had celebrated her on numerous occasions during our time in Costa Rica. A few days later Kristen and I met up with some of her friends at the Savannah Bananas game in Baltimore. For anyone not familiar, it was more of a party than a baseball game. Tickets are primarily sold through a lottery which I had entered the previous year. We heard around May that we were in the “standby” round of lottery drawing, which essentially means if there were any tickets left by our time at 12:30 then we would get the chance to buy them along with everyone else in that round. I knew Kristen has wanted to go for a few years, and this is the closest we had come to getting tickets, so I was ready to log-on during my lunch break at work. Luckily there were still tickets available and I bought 4, around 12:35 we got an email that it had sold out…whew…that was close!!! The game was a lot of fun to watch, banana ball rules are set-up to keep the game moving and keep it exciting (foul ball caught by a fan counts as an out). There was also a lot of loud music, dancing, marching band, and games being played…all around a great time. The rest of that week was also filled with the usual vaulting practices, climbing practices, boat time to test out the new tow behind raft, and Marshy Point Nature Center with cousins. We love keeping the kids active in the summer and while they still get too much screen time we try to keep them going.
The following weekend we were finally able to get Autumn’s “Yes Day” scheduled from her birthday back in March. Unfortunately we were planning on celebrating around her birthday but that was right after the car accident happened and Kristen was pretty immobile. As Kristen got better we were running into schedule conflicts with Autumn’s friends and then vacations for us. The stars finally aligned in early August for us to take Autumn and two friends out for the day. A little background on yes day, I would have to start by saying that for as much as we spoil our kids, they are very conscious about money and how much things cost and they are not overly greedy. So while we don’t set official rules for yes day, the couple of times that we’ve done it for birthdays has been pretty reasonable. We started the day with Autumn picking out everyone’s outfits and accessories (I may or may not have been wearing a rainbow unicorn choker necklace). Autumn also wanted to start the day with an actual breakfast (sometimes there has been candy or ice cream for breakfast) which was very surprising and responsible of her. We picked up her two friends and headed to the mall for some shopping, riding escalators, playing in the glass elevator, and finally heading to Build-a-Bear for everyone to get what they wanted. After the mall we stopped at McDonalds for lunch and headed to a local river for some outdoor playtime. It didn’t last too long until they decided they wanted to go to Grandma’s for the pool, snow balls, and cotton candy. Overall not too expensive and they got some time playing outside…but there was a lot of sugar.
The following weekend we were finally able to get Autumn’s “Yes Day” scheduled from her birthday back in March. Unfortunately we were planning on celebrating around her birthday but that was right after the car accident happened and Kristen was pretty immobile. As Kristen got better we were running into schedule conflicts with Autumn’s friends and then vacations for us. The stars finally aligned in early August for us to take Autumn and two friends out for the day. A little background on yes day, I would have to start by saying that for as much as we spoil our kids, they are very conscious about money and how much things cost and they are not overly greedy. So while we don’t set official rules for yes day, the couple of times that we’ve done it for birthdays has been pretty reasonable. We started the day with Autumn picking out everyone’s outfits and accessories (I may or may not have been wearing a rainbow unicorn choker necklace). Autumn also wanted to start the day with an actual breakfast (sometimes there has been candy or ice cream for breakfast) which was very surprising and responsible of her. We picked up her two friends and headed to the mall for some shopping, riding escalators, playing in the glass elevator, and finally heading to Build-a-Bear for everyone to get what they wanted. After the mall we stopped at McDonalds for lunch and headed to our house to finish eating and play in the ninja gym. We tried going to a local river for some outdoor playtime but it didn’t last too long until they decided they wanted to go to Grandma’s for the pool, snow balls, and cotton candy. Overall not too expensive and they got some time playing outside…but there was a lot of sugar.
Next up in August is our annual OBX trip which didn’t turn out quite as expected due to Hurricane Erin!