Tiny Dancer

Avonlea Jane was thrilled to get a dance medal at her dress rehearsal.

All ready to dance to "On the Good Ship Lollypop"

The video quality isn't great. Thankfully, we have a DVD of the actual recital.

"Did you like it?"

Our little ballerina

Springtime Catch-Up

We got to have a nice visit with Granny and Granpy on both their way to and from a vacation in Turkey. On  their second trip here, the kids and I spent a day with them at the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, while David was working on a merit badge testing for the Boy Scouts.

The glass flower exhibit

The hall of gems and minerals

A docent explaining a fossil to Avonlea Jane after the museum's story time

The kids liked the giant giraffe.

We took a museum break to go get lunch and stopped to watch the Harvard Band giving an outdoor performance.

Avonlea Jane pretending to knit a blanket for her new baby cousin.

Dancing in the kitchen with Daddy

Enjoying a gardening activity at the Salem Athenaeum 

Will fell asleep but woke up in time for snacks.

Climbing in the garden afterward

April fun

Time at the playground tuckered everyone out. David and Avonlea Jane crashed on the floor, and Will was fast asleep in bed.

Avonlea Jane shared some of her popsicle with Will at their weekly play date at Justin's.

Then she took it away.

Content again on the tractor

This week, we drove up to Haverhill to have a playground picnic with Mommy's friend Max from New Hampshire and her daughter, Shana.

Being in Haverhill allowed us to cross four items of our 1000 Places to see in Massachusetts list.

We visited the Winnekenni Castle, Lake Kenoza, the Main Street historic district, and the Bradford Park historic district.

Happy Easter!

David was out of town for Easter weekend, but we made sure to still have plenty of fun. On Saturday, we went to the Athenaeum egg hunt with Michele, Carolyn, and Joe and then out to lunch. Then Sunday, the weather was a bit chilly, so we decided to start our morning with an indoor egg hunt.

Will loved finding eggs throughout the living room, especially when he would find one before Avonlea Jane.

Once he found an egg filled with popcorn jelly beans, he decided he could stop looking.

The kids loved their Easter goodies from us and from both sets of grandparents.

Someone had too much Easter fun.

The end of our Big Sister/Little Brother/Big Sister/Little Brother vacation

On our way from Georgia back to Massachusetts, we stopped to see the Biltmore Estate in Ashville, North Carolina.

George Vanderbilt's 135,000 sq.ft. private home completed in 1895 was impressive to the say the least.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to take interior photos, but the inside was just as impressive as the building's exterior. We were all given audio guides for our tour, and Avonlea Jane loved having her own headset. She listened to the whole tour and was always on top of pressing the next tour number. My favorite rooms were the servants' quarters, and she loved seeing the indoor swimming pool.

We ate lunch in the transformed stables on the grounds, where Avonlea Jane also got a hobby horse she named Thurston. She decided he needed time to graze.

Amazingly, Will was content for our entire visit and didn't have any issues inside the house. We split up our four-story tour into two chunks with a break for lunch in between, and he was great the whole time.

"No licking your uncle" was a vacation rule Dillon did not expect to have to enforce.

After our day at the Biltmore, we had two more days of driving. We stopped for a few minutes to enjoy the view in Tennessee.

Avonlea Jane enjoying some sidewalk art in Roanoke, Virginia

After thirteen days, thirteen states (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, plus Washington, D.C.), and 2,730 miles, we can say that we had a wonderful Big Sister/Little Brother/Big Sister/Little Brother vacation.