Penelope

On June 5th, we brought home our newest family member.  Penelope is a cavalier King Charles spaniel and we brought her home when she was 9.5 weeks old.  She is now over 12 weeks old and we have loved every minute we have spent with this adorable and snuggley puppy.  She is full of adorable personality.  She loves to play tug-of-war and chase.  She loves to crunch ice and she darts to the refrigerator when we are getting ice in our cups. She loves to curl up in my lap in the morning, chewing on her bully stick.  She loves belly rubs and running up the stairs to see the girls.  She has certainly enriched our lives already and we are looking forward to the next 10-15 years we get to spend with her!

Coming home from the breeder

 Her first afternoon home was exhausting!

The many sleeping positions of Penelope...

Play time!

"Don't even think about taking this mermaid away from me!"

Pool kisses

 "Oh boy! I got the leaf!"

Happy, happy family!  Happy, happy puppy!

Swim Meets and Weddings

We are having a blast this summer, keeping cool with tons and tons of swimming.  This year we joined a different swim team, to try something new.  We are now Davis AquaMonsters and the girls are loving the change!  One biggest difference from our previous swim team experience is that the AquaMonsters are a club swim team that compete in dual swim meets each weekend.  There is a great sense of team belonging and having fun in the process.  Kate and Maggie have loved the competition and the swim practices have been great as well.

Our first swim meet took place at Consumnes River College in Sacramento

Go Maggie!

Way to go Kate!

After our swim meet we headed to my cousin's wedding in Sacramento.  It was hot, but we had a fun time!

Maggie found a coloring table set aside especially for the kids. 

Dancing with Daddy

Last Day of School and Neighborhood Party

Sorry it has been a while since I last posted.  We have been super busy with the end of the school year, the start of summer, bringing our puppy home (future post coming) and saying farewell to dear friends.  This post will start off with Maggie's graduation from kindergarten.  Oddly there was rain on our last day of school (June 8) and so the kindergarten carnival/bounce house was cancelled.  However, the weather cleared up enough to let all 72 kindergartners parade around their school yard in their special caps.

Maggie's cap kept falling off so she was doing her best to balance it and smile at the same time.

The kids got to enjoy ice cream cones before heading home.  Maggie and her best friend, Meg, consumed 3 ice cream cones each!

 Maggie really enjoyed her chocolate ice cream!

 Maggie loved having Mrs. Nicholson as one of her teachers!

We will also miss Mrs. Chicoine! 

Kate's 2nd grade class had an ice cream celebration as well.  Kate and best friend, Camilla, piled their ice cream high with lots of candy.  Yum!

We had a great year with Mr, Yeaman!  We will miss being in his class!

On a different note, on June 4 we hosted a neighborhood farewell party for our dear friends James, Liz, Meg and Zeke Tsang.  Over the past 4 years we have become very close friends with this amazing Christian family.  They are headed to Tuscon, Arizona to work with a college ministry at University of Arizona.  We are going to miss them so much!

We held the bash at the end of our street, in the park.  Lots of neighbors came to celebrate with us.

Liz has been such a wonderful friend.  We have gone on many "mommy" dates where we leave the kids with the dads and eat at restaurants with spicy or weird foods.  I am really sad to lose my date companion.

We brought over 200 water balloons to the park for the kids to have a water balloon fight.  It was a huge hit!

Neighborhood kids

From the left: Abby (age 7, next door neighbor), Zeke (age 4, moving to AZ), 

Meg (age 6, moving to AZ), Maggie, Toby (age 6, next door neighbor), Kate and Joseph (age 10, lives 3 houses down and goes to UCC)

Our amazing neighbors!!!