Laney is finally tall enough to reach the pedals on her bike and has been super excited to ride with Kaya around the neighborhood. So far she only has the hang of it on flat ground or downhill, so Kaya rides up behind her and gives her a push from behind on the uphill parts. Pretty good teamwork.

One highlight (and perhaps the only highlight) of our trip to Boston was that Maggie and Angelica got to meet Lynn, Edward, and Audrey, my dear freshman college roommate(s) and their two year old. Despite my best efforts, I never really got Audrey warm up to me. But, I did get to witness the kind of food she gets to eat. This is a picture of the lobster dinner she was ordered at Legal Seafoods. Granted, Lynn ate the lobster, but my kids are lucky if I order them anything but water. She lives in luxury! She is also quite cute and very well dressed. And you know, it was good to see Lynn and Edward too.

Laney has hit the age where all of her friends are turning 3  – which means the era of birthday parties has really just started for her. Last weekend we went to Evanito’s birthday party at the Children’s Museum in Alamance County, which was quite fun and nice for the 3 year old crowd (very Kidzu-esque). She had a great time, although still prefers to play with her parents over her friends. And nothing gets her more excited than wearing a party dress!

Once a month through the springtime, our local baby goat farm opens its doors to the locals and lets them in to play with the baby goats. It’s become so popular they started selling tickets, and with the fierce competition, we were only able to snag July tickets, which turned out to be more like adolescent goats who were extremely hot in the 100 degree July heat. But, the kids still liked petting the goats and Maggie even went for a ride! Photo credit to Yoya.

Sandwiched in between our beach trip and our trip to Boston, we managed to take a 4 month picture of Maggie. Poor thing was sniffly (she still is) but she managed to keep her head up long enough to strike the pose. Happy 4 months Maggie!

I spent last week in Boston at a workshop, so Tommy had Kaya and Laney for the week (Maggie and Angelica came with me). Lucky for them (and him), Baba was around and eager to play host to the girls a few nights. Here’s a gem she sent along from one of those nights – they look like they missed me, right?

We have had the pleasure of hosting Piolina (our dog niece) and Cafe (Kaya’s preschool teacher’s pup) for the last couple weeks. They are both very sweet dogs, although Cafe is a bit skittish for our overwhelming brood. The girls claim they like Max and Piolina, but they REALLY like Cafe. Laney can even walk him without getting knocked over!

This year we headed to Duck a bit earlier and caught the 4th of July in OBX. It was a great week, although I was admittedly less active than prior years and feel like I sat around a lot of the week (maybe that’s a good thing – it was the beginning of the Rose plague). Kaya and Laney are old enough to finally fall in love with swimming in the ocean and jumping waves – they were downright insatiable. Maggie took a few good beach naps herself. Next year I am going to promise myself to actually get to ride a wave or two without holding up a kid. Many thanks to all the participants for making it such a great successful week!

The first weekend Angelica was here, we asked her what she wanted to do while she was in the United States. And she said, “See an elephant.” We were pretty psyched that we could actually make that happen. The girls were pretty excited to show off the elephants and zebras, and our trip was followed by a nice picnic lunch with a finicky vending machine.

(Note: We also saw a real elephant, but only sat on a fake one)

The plague hath befallen the Rose clan. So far only the patriarch and the eldest kin have emerged unscathed. My typically ironclad blog updating suffers from the great plague. So you know, please excuse all the somewhat out of date blog posts while I catch up.

(My thermometer reading 2 nights ago)