Beach Wedding

Last Saturday afternoon we headed to the beach to attend a wedding. A mom from preschool generously offered to take the boys to a classmate's birthday party, so it was just me, Jeff, and the girls.

Clearly, Ree was thrilled about this arrangement.

Natalia was quite happy to sport her brother's sunglasses.

It was a nice ceremony, with the couple's children in attendance.

Can the ring bearer be any cuter?

After the ceremony, Ree was quite happy to escape to the water...although none of us were brave enough to get our feet wet in March.

Following the ceremony, there was a reception in a private room at a sports bar near the beach. Natalia and the ring bearer quickly became friends.

For the record, two two-year-olds playing Skee-Ball for two hours is quite scary. Miraculously, only one finger was smooshed, and there were no serious injuries even when they started launching the balls across the room. But even scarier is the fact the machine talked. On Monday Natalia started talking about the wedding. And she proudly told us her favorite part. "Beer Ball!"

Cape Fear Museum

We've been in a fairly mellow, happy place the past few weeks. It's...weird. Wonderful, but odd. Part of it is we haven't had any visitors or crazy plans. We've actually had (gasp) free time. So we've started exploring Wilmington. We've lived here over five years, and we decided it might be time to actually do something other than go to the beach, the parks, the mall, and Barnes and Noble. Crazy concept. Unintentionally, we started doing free activities, and now it has become a goal to find free activities every weekend.


Last weekend we went to the Cape Fear Museum of History and Science. There is a day each year where almost all local attractions are free to county residents, and last Sunday was the day. We probably wouldn't have gone otherwise, but it was definitely worth checking out for free.

It turned out to be a great museum, and the kids all had lots of fun. We will definitely be going back (and we discovered it is free the first Sunday of every month).

The kids found furry surprises in trash cans that were part of an exhibit on city life. (And, yes, the boys are sporting capes. They attach to the backs of their Angry Birds Space shirts.)

They had fun playing with different mirrors in the kids' area.

There were life-size beavers to check out.

And this will show my true math nerd-dom, but I think the museum had one of the greatest clocks ever.

Catching Up

I have no idea what happened to the past couple of weeks. They are gone. Poof! I am sure there are some stories to share, but I am too sleepy to think. So here are some pics of our adventures.

It snowed! Sorta. It didn't last long enough for us to bother putting on coats.

Leon bravely caught snowflakes with his tongue.

Ree and I went to the coldest birthday party ever. It was in the 70s in January when the mom planned to have the party at a park. The air temperature was in the 30s with steady 20+ mph winds the day of the party. At least it was pretty.

I took Leon and Michael to a Literacy Live event at UNCW. It was all about roller coasters. They rode a virtual roller coaster and then made roller coasters out of pipe insulation and marbles. Michael is a wee bit obsessed.

We checked out a new playground which Natalia named the Castle Park. We have no idea what it's really called, but the kids keep asking to go back.

Natalia "borrowed" our camera. It turns out she knows exactly how to use it. We got lots of pictures from a two-year-old viewpoint.