A few fun summer days!

We crammed in some fun near the end of the summer!

We made our first visit to Knoebels- we went with our friends Orazio, Kelly, little Orazio & Gracie. It was a really fun (and cheap!) day. Knoebels is...an experience, I'll just leave it at that...

it was a little hot, and Kelly is 6 mo. pregnant...

We had a weekend getaway with our friends Rick, Alicia, Gracie & Maryjane. We only live about 1/2 mile from each other, but due to busy schedules, hardly ever get to hang out as families, so it was so much fun to get away and just be together. We went to a house that was right on the Cheseapeake.

although 4 years apart, these little girlies get along so well!

That same weekend, we headed over to celebrate our nephew Wil's 1st birthday!

And of course, summer would not be complete without a day trip to the beach with our friends the Skis! We have been blessed with great weather 6 years in a row now. It has become such a fun, highly anticipated tradition.

the weather forecast was not good so maybe that's why the beach is so empty? it ended up being gorgeous though!

Lizziepalooza!

For Lizzie's 40th birthday, she had a weekend-long celebration. It was very fun to celebrate someone who is such an important part of our family. The girls (sister-in-laws) headed up on Friday night for a Girls Night Out on the town!

birthday girl

Elizabeth & Erin

Elizabeth & Dawn

Elizabeth & Shannon

I love this picture because we were having such a good laugh on our way into the city. We were on the bus and were trying to take self-portraits and one of them came out so funny and this was right after we viewed it. (I won't be sharing the one we were laughing at) :-)

Merle and E

Cindy and E

A couple of E's good friends joined us as well and it was fun to get to know them.

Liz was able to secure some very hard-to-get reservations at Po - a restaurant in the west village that was started by Mario Batali.

the food was AMAZING

if you ever get the chance to go, save room for Panna Cotta!

The next morning, the guys came up with all of the kids, along with Liz's parents and we spent the day at the Liberty Science Museum - a great place for kids. It was a really fun day together as a family.

Family Vacation!

We usually spend our vacation time/money visiting family or friends, but we decided that it's time for us to start creating some memories of vacations with just the 4 of us. We have some great friends that live in Rhode Island that invited us to spend the 4th of July holiday weekend with them, and so we decided to extend our time up there and rent a beach house for the rest of the week.

Our time with our hosts - Seth, Donna, Graham, Sadie, Gracie and Lucia - was great!

I loved being around a newborn again and held Lucia as often as possible - although, I had to fight Sophia for her and she won a lot! She loves babies!!!.

Sophia & Sadie "babysitting"

The day after we arrived, Donna's sister Dionne and her husband Mike and their baby boy Quinn joined us! We all have so much fun together - our bond started on the Italy trip last year and just keeps getting stronger.

So, on to our family time! We rented a little house 1/2 mile from the beach in Charlestown, RI. Our days went something like this - wake up and get to the beach by 8:00, come home for lunch and a break from the heat, head back to the beach until dinner, come home and get ready for dinner and go out, go back to the beach until it closed at 9:00 and then repeat daily! It was so much fun to just be with the kids and really play with them. It was SO hot that week - it got up to 101 two different days and was in the high 90s the rest of the time, so we were in the water A LOT! I would highly recommend a RI beach vacation - a very different pace/feel than the Jersey shore!

We took a day-trip to Block Island - about a 30 minute ferry ride just a few minutes from where we were staying. It was a beautiful island, but the day we went it got up to 101 and for some reason we didn't think to bring our bathing suits. So, it kind of turned out to be our least favorite day but I would definitely go back someday if the weather was not so hot and we brought bathing suits.

Block Island ("main" street)

We spent a lot of our evenings on the beach as well. Since it was such a hot week, evening swimming was great. We'd also spend time playing games and taking pics.

I think Anthony has Jon's same body - just a smaller version :-)

I love these pics of them because they truly love each other so much. They get along so well and we are so thankful that they are such good friends. This has been an exceptionally good summer - they never fight!