Later in the day, we hung out at JW and C's house and had fun playing on Little Frog's backyard playset with one of J's best friends from high school. We had such a relaxing, fun visit with everyone, and it got even better when Big D and Aunt T came by late in the evening.
And of course, one of the very best things about going to someone else's house--especially someone elses that have kids!--is discovering all the toys they have! Here are RUS, R, and Little Frog wreaking havoc in Little Frog's room. I have to tell you that RUS's favorite thing in Little Frog's bedroom was the Ariel vanity and mirror. He is the cutest thing when it comes to wanting hair accessories in his hair. And once he discovered Little Frog's battery-operated hand-held fan it was all over. He didn't want to play with anything else. (You see him holding it in the group shot above).
Heck, I even find it hard to get clear, crisp pictures with an iPhone when the targets are standing perfectly still and smiling! But this picture is still awfully cute, isn't it??
Every day R would ask us, "Am I sleeping over tonight?" and we would tell her, "Yes, we're sleeping over for TWO nights!" or "Yes, we're sleeping over tonight but we're going to go home tomorrow." She then announced several times to Little Frog, "I'm sleeping over for ONE MORE NIGHT but then I'm going home tomorrow."
We went to Connecticut this weekend to visit J's side of the family and had an AMAZING time. The first thing we did was head straight to GiGi and PopPop's house, where we had takeout lunch from Paul's. We just hung out and relaxed--RUS enjoyed picking up all of GiGi's delicate lighthouse decorations while we continuously told him "no, don't touch that!" and tried to distract him with plastic dinosaurs and duplo blocks. Too bad he's too smart for that kind of foolery.
Here's her second attempt. Still! Not too bad!
Then I took the camera away and took a few pictures myself, including the one at the top of this post and this lovely one of GiGi, R, and PopPop making silly faces.
My dad organized our San Diego get-together as a surprise for my mom for their 40th anniversary. As part of the surprise Cali and I arranged for a professional photographer to take pictures of all of us together on the beach, along with pictures of Mom and Dad to commemorate 40 years.
The pictures we ordered of RUS and R really capture them perfectly. I just love them.
R had a lovely 4th birthday party. She got a new fancy party dress from Grandma and Grandpa and J and I got the yard and porch all decked out for the party, with the alligator blow-up pool and slides, sprinkler pool, sprinkler, and tiny pink baby pool.
R very specifically requested Princess cupcakes and Spiderman cupcakes, because we had invited all of her day care classmates and, well, some of them are boys. And "boys don't like princesses. Boys like Spiderman." So this is what I came up with:
When her friends started arriving, she was so excited!!!!
Here's RUS fresh from his nap. I'm not sure he's quite awake yet in this picture.
It's so great to have my parents come in town for R's birthday parties. She absolutely eats up all the attention, of course, and I love having my mom at events that I host.
This is the table of grandparents! The woman in the pink shirt is one of my closest friends here in Delaware, and she's R's "honorary" grandma. She has a granddaughter of her own, whose name also starts with "R." It's such a good letter, isn't it?
Grandmas!!!
This year, as last year, one of the big hits was the craft table. J found these really easy craft kits--airplanes, monsters, and crowns & wands--on clearance at Target so we snapped up a whole bunch of them and just dumped them all out on the table for the kids. They LOVED it. Here's R decorating her crown while taking a break from the water fun.
We served pizza and then I brought the cupcakes out for everyone to eat. The princess ones were a huge hit.
Here's R with her cupcake after blowing out the candles.
And then her friends crowded around to watch her open presents. I know a lot of people don't like opening presents at kids' parties but I really think her friends enjoyed it. I wouldn't have minded if we waited until after the party to open them but R was antsy to open them and all the other kids (who weren't still playing in the water & sand) seemed really interested in it.
Four generations!
Because my mom and R are kindred spirits, my parents always remember to bring yummy desserts for R. Here she is eating a bunny cookie as big as her head. I looked over after she'd been working on the cookie for awhile and said, "Wow! Did you eat that entire thing?" and R shook her head no and proceeded to hold up a crumb about the size of her fingertip.
Here's my mom with RUS, who spent practically their entire visit asking people to read him books.
My dad joined in the reading fun with the kids, too!
A rare picture of just the four of us.
The big highlight of their visit was driving down to Baltimore to see the National Aquarium. We were especially excited to do this because one of RUS's absolute favorite signs is "fish" and he has an uncanny knack for recognizing any fish that appears--whether a live fish, a drawing, part of a logo, anything--wherever we go or whatever we are looking at.
We weren't wrong, either: RUS went ballistic for all the fish. I was almost worried his hand was going to fall off because he kept signing and signing fish EVERY SINGLE TIME he saw a fish. You can imagine that that happened a lot at the aquarium. It was a really nice aquarium, too--we all enjoyed it quite a lot.
After the aquarium we walked around the Inner Harbor briefly, but it was a pretty cool day, with a brisk, cold wind blowing, so we didn't linger too long before heading to lunch at Phillip's and then home.
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