Summer At Its Finest!

We have had such a fun weekend so far and we're only half way through it!  We (and by "We" I mean "Scott") have been working incredibly hard this summer.  Scott leaves for work around 6:40 every morning and heads out to build stonewalls for the next 5 hours.  He has joined two other friends of ours from Proctor on their stonewall business and is loving learning the art of stonewall restoration.  They work on this incredible private property and he is really enjoying being outside everyday and doing something so completely different from what he does during the school year.  Here are a few pictures of some of the stonewalls they have done (since this is Scott's first year he didn't personally do all of these with the other guys)...

 After working hard all morning, Scott comes home, grabs lunch and gets to work on our house.  We are scraping, priming and painting the exterior and it is such a huge task!  We are both out there every afternoon while our boys nap and any other moment we can get.  Here was the house just three days ago...

 And here it is after our hard work today (and the few days in between!)...

After a very long week of physical labor Scott had the wonderful idea of heading over to Sunapee Harbor for an evening out with the boys.  It was a perfect escape and we had a blast poking around the waterfront, eating at the Anchorage and getting ice cream!
Here we are having dinner on the deck!

 Our view from our table!

 The brick pathway has tons of names of donors in it...it was fun to find Aerosmith...

 Liv Tyler...

 And Steven Tyler (with his sister Lynda)...

Aerosmith has a pretty awesome history from this area (a couple of the guys graduated from my high school and my dad overlapped with one of them when he was there).  Steven Tyler has a house on Lake Sunapee and most people who live around here have seen him at one point or another in the grocery store or at a restaurant etc...  He gave Oprah a pretty neat tour of Sunapee here.  ANYWAYS, we had a great time with the hula hoops outside of the country store...

 This morning we brought the boys to the Farmer's Market.  Here's Camden checking out some frogs (it was "Kids Day" so most booths had something special for the kids...

 Just a little corner of "Farmer Kat's" stand...

 The kids got to climb inside the fire trucks!  They were both pretty tentative, but they loved their cool plastic hats!

 This evening Micah had a blast on his little balance bike (a very early birthday gift from my parents)...

 After dinner we brought the boys to the Wilmot bandstand to hear our friends from Proctor perform.  They boys had fun with their Daddy...

 ...and running around with new friends!

 They wanted to go up front and play some of the instruments...we had a great time!  Thanks NOB!  You guys rock!

We certainly have had a wonderful couple of days!  I love summer and our little family!

Good Friends

We had a wonderful, spontaneous trip to go visit our dear friends Courtney and Adam in upstate New York this past weekend.  Spontaneous isn't generally the word used to describe our small little family, in fact, my parents were shocked to hear of us making such a last minute decision, but I talked to Courtney on Thursday night and we left first thing Saturday morning.  We went straight to Court's parents house on the beautiful Great Sacandaga Lake for a fun afternoon of swimming and running around their gorgeous property.  Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald for an amazing afternoon! 

This photo was taken about 3 minutes after we got out of the car.  Camden and Annabelle were pretty excited to see each other!!

A beautiful spot!

Their own private little piece of paradise! 

Camden was a total fish!  After refusing to participate in swimming lessons for the last three weeks (that's another blog post altogether) he splashed, swam and played in the water for over two hours straight! 

Here's little Oliver who is about 4 months older than Micah.

Such a big boy!

Friends for 12 years now!  So thankful for this friendship!

Hard to believe we have four little ones running around now!  Here they are as we headed out for a boat ride!

Camden must have had something very interesting to say! 

Micah didn't really like the boat very much.  He did better than I expected though! 

Camden, on the other hand, LOVED the boat ride!

Husbands and babies.  We are lucky girls!

We stopped for ice cream on our way back to Courtney and Adam's house after a fun day in the water!  The kids were pretty psyched!

I am in love with Annabelle's face in this one.  So cute!

She is a little daredevil!

Scott was reading them a "scary" book.  I love how they are all snuggled up together! 

Friends.

Micah didn't want to leave.

Thanks for another great trip, Court!  This is our fourth summer in a row (maybe more than that) of having special time with our two families.  (Here is our trip last summer and here is 2010 and 2008)

Precious.

Of course, we had to stop at White Cottage in Woodstock, VT on the way home to eat ice cream and play in the river.  A great ending to a wonderful adventure. 

Thanks for all the fun, food and fellowship Court and Adam!  We love you guys!!!!