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We all went bowling on Saturday. JJ wanted a little help, and Molly was happy to oblige.

Hurray for bowling!

Molly’s working on good non-granny-style bowling form.

Emmie did great bowling, and had a commanding lead amongst the kids going into the final frame. In fact, I joked that the only way a kid could catch her was to get 3 strikes in the final frame (no other kid had gotten a single strike or spare at that point), though it really would only take a strike and a spare.

On Molly’s first ball of the last frame she threw a strike. Did not see that coming.

After her surprise strike, she managed to throw a spare with her remaining two balls. She was a bit excited when the pins all fell down.

Bowling is fun!

Aunt ‘Chelle, Uncle J, Emmie, and JJ came to visit us. Jen had heard that the Preakness Balloon Festival was awesome, so we decided to go for the fun. We got there a few minutes after things got started Friday, and headed straight to the tethered rides as we knew the line could get long. The line was already significant, but we knew it would get worse so we got in line anyway. Unfortunately, it was windy and they had to suspend tethered rides shortly after we got in line.

Jen and Michelle were kind enough to hold our spot in line, so Jeremy and I took the kids to explore all the vendors set up. The obvious destination was the climbing wall, which both Emmie and Molly wanted to try their hand at. Emmie was first.

And Molly went when she was done.

We then found the Hawaiian ice truck for a sweet treat. We took these back to Jen and Michelle to see how the line was doing. Sadly, it was still too windy to fly, so we all sat down in the grass in line to eat our treats.

And that’s where we stayed for much of the day. Some of us wandered off to throw a frisbee for a while, but mostly we just hung out. It was kind of a cross between a picnic and sitting in line. It was very nice outside - the breeze was lovely for people, if not for balloons.

We hung out in line from a little after 4 until 7, coming to grips with the fact that the balloons were not going to fly that day. Then, the wind calmed down and balloons started to get inflated. We grabbed some quick pictures with balloons in the background, assuming they would soon be taken down again.

To our surprise, some of the balloons that had been chartered started to take off and fly away.

And around 7:30, tethered rides resumed operation. Everyone in line promptly jumped up to reform into a proper line rather than a series of picnics in a row.

We still waited an hour and fifteen minutes in line before it was our turn. In that time, it got dark. But we made it. Molly, Leah, and Emmie wanted to ride, and Uncle J kindly agreed to be the adult to go up with them. They were all very excited.

There are lots of pictures on Flickr, but I’ll just post a few here.

The girls might have enjoyed it just a bit.

After a long day, we decided to leave before the grand finale to try to beat traffic (there was a lot of traffic). We managed to catch the Balloon Glow, though, as we were leaving. The balloons all lit their fires at about the same time. We have no regrets about leaving before it, though if we wanted to beat traffic completely we should have left just a little bit earlier than we did.

Despite parking, traffic, and wind troubles, we had a really fun time.

The girls had their Field Day at school, and it was great. Jen helped out in the morning with Leah and the rest of the younger kids, and I helped out in the afternoon with Molly and the older kids.

Since we all participated in either the morning or the afternoon, we even got to hang out together at lunch in between.

Then Molly and I headed out to the fun for the older kids. I was assigned to the egg/spoon race, right next to the sack race I managed last year. Can you tell Molly’s having fun there?

May is a month of celebrations around here. In addition to Mother’s Day, we also have birthdays for both Jen and myself. Birthday fun began with celebrating both of our birthdays (1 day early for me, 10 days early for Jen) with my family.

Jen requested a Smith Island Cake from SugarBakers (voted “Baltimore’s Best Cake”), with lots of layers of fudge icing and yellow cake, and some peanut butter cups as well. It was delicious.

Molly took the opportunity to hang out with Charlie.

The next day was my actual birthday. And what better way to celebrate than going to a Disney musical. For Christmas, Grammy gave us tickets to take the girls to the Hippodrome in Baltimore to see Beauty and the Beast. This was their first time going to a big fancy theater to see a play, and they loved it.

For dinner, I got to choose whatever restaurant I wanted for my birthday dinner. I decided to go fancy and head to BGR (wearing the new hat Leah gave me for my birthday).

And then nine days later, it was finally Jen’s birthday. Jen’s very excited about massive amounts of thread we gave her.

Happy birthday to us!

We’ve lived in Columbia/Ellicott City for almost 13 years, and we’ve never been to a concert at Merriweather Post Pavilion. That all finally changed, as Jen and I went to see Pentatonix there.

The first opening act was AJ.

The second opening act was Us The Duo, who were a lot of fun.

And then it was time for the main attraction. Penatonix put on a great show. We really enjoyed it.

We celebrated Mother’s Day with Jen.

And with Grams.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Sorry for the lack of posts of late. Over the next few days, I’ll be catching up from early May, beginning with this post.

Like last year, the girls’ school held a Legos with Dad night, in which kids could bring their dads up to school for an evening of Lego building. They had 3 rounds with prizes handed out and lots of fun. Each kid got a bag of random Legos and then had to create something with them. Here’s what the girls made for the air and space round.

And here’s what they made for the monster round.

It was a fun night, and great to have both kids along for the fun for the first time.

Leah has been asking about getting a tennis dress, not skirts like she currently owns. So, Jen decided to upcycle one of her t-shirts and make a new tennis dress for Leah.

Tennis is fun when you have on a new tennis dress.

She loves tennis (just like me)!

Last night Leah lost her third tooth. I was not home, but Jen was. Here’s the story as Leah tells it (Jen may not tell it exactly the same way).

The tooth has been wiggly for weeks. Last night, Leah was trying to pull it out and got it most of the way detached. It hurt a lot and she cried, but she kept pulling anyway. It was still hanging on tight in one place, though, and was bleeding a lot. Jen then tried to finish pulling it out, but was too freaked out to do it. So, Leah grabbed it and pulled, and eventually got it out. After she stopped crying and got the bleeding under control, she was all smiles.

Last night, Molly had a belt test at karate (and earned her green stripe on her blue belt). During it, she got the chance to break a board for the first time. She did it on the first try.

She also earned her green stripe on her blue belt. Sorry that you can’t see her green strip on her belt; it’s behind her elbow.

Great job, Molly!