September 2014

We spent part of labor day weekend at a money pit fun farm. The kids had a great time riding ponies, bouncing, and playing around. Doug and I liked the country store. :)

We celebrated the last day of summer with breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts. Clearly they hated it ;)

 The first day of second grade arrives! Gianna is growing her bangs out...she looks so grown up to me!

We have to walk now that she goes to the neighborhood school. It's great exercise and no one seems to mind, especially with this sweet ride for the boys. Mark could run to California and back if it was part of a transformer game or something like that, but ask him to walk 1/2 a mile to school and he is suddenly too tired. Thus, the purchase of the new stroller (used, at the bargain price of $20; I couldn't be more pleased!). 

And she was off with friends! She had a great first day! Her teacher seems wondeful. I'm so happy for her!

The following Monday was Mark's first day of Pre-K. When we first moved I put him in a weekly playgroup and he hated it! So I was pretty nervous that he wouldn't like school here (even though he liked it in our old town). To my delight, he loves it and wants to go all day every day!

Settling in to his classroom. He did great! We love his teachers too and our super happy with this choice of preschool!

Joe doesn't even need school. Look how smart he is building towers. I'm looking forward to spending time alone with this cutie!

August 2014

We crammed a lot of last minute summer fun into August! We started by having a mini Coughlin family reunion. We moved away from one of my cousins, but are now just 30 minutes from another! Luckily, both of them and their families could make it to our house that day, along with half my aunts and uncles and my parents. It was such a fun time! And to add a DeAngelo twist, we had twice as much food as we needed. 

This summer was so mild, we didn't get our money's worth at the pool at all, so we went every chance we got in August to try and make up for it. Gianna finally conquered the water slide. She was thrilled! She probably went down it 100 times in just a couple pool visits. 

I should have included this in the last post, but this is Joe the day after coming home from the lake.. I'm convinced he missed his people!

We did sleepovers for the big kids too. We hosted Jack and Mark first. I think we've set the bar way too high for sleepovers! We started with ice cream, then went home for sparklers, playing outside, and staying up late with a movie. They loved every minute!

The girls got their matching jammies at Bella's sleepover and then brought them here for Gianna's. I didn't take nearly enough photos of the girls!

At the very end of August, Doug and I had a night away for a wedding on Long Island. It was fun to get dressed up and go to a super fun castle wedding!

Page Lake 2014

We went to Page Lake for the third year in a row. We stayed in the same place as last year, which made it sort of like coming home.  The kids were dying to have smores the first night, but we were in no way prepared to make a fire right away so I roasted marshmallows on the stove. 

The minute Joe walked in the door of the lake house, his talking took off. He got really good at saying "cheese" so we took lots of pictures of him doing just that.

The kids and Doug out on the first evening. 

Joe threw a fit that he wasn't on that boat, so Doug took him out too. We thought he'd hate the vest, but he loved it!

Nick and Elizabeth came for an overnight visit and our friends in PA joined us for the day as well. Here are all our littlest ones together.

We celebrated Jack's 5th Birthday!

The kids played hard and had so much fun together!

The boys even rode the raft this year!

The first rainy day we headed up to Binghamton. Great Grandpa is always a hit with Joe!

Back at the lake, the theme for the rest of the week was COLD! Notice all the blankets and sweatshirts. It's usually cold in the evening, but this year two days were so cold we couldn't take our jackets off. But we still managed to have fun. Thank goodness for Uncle Randy and Aunt Mary and their fun kids. We had the best time! Joe maybe had the best time of all. He loved being around all those big kids all the time and had a real fondness for Jake. We were afraid he might be a disaster all week, but he was so easy going and happy just wandering around all the time.