Gabi Visits - Days 1+2, including Luray Caverns

It was August, so it was time for another Grasheim-Morey adventure. This time, the Coloradans came to us, and boy did we pack that week with a lot of stuff!

First up was a Yaunches (and some Erger, on Adam's side) family bagel breakfast, with close by relatives coming to Bethesda to welcome Gabi and family into town. We were neglectful on the photo front, and only came out of that great breakfast with the photo below.

I don't think you can even tell that our younger cousin Sarah is 7 months pregnant!

The next day, we loaded into the cars for the couple of hours drive to the Shenandoah National Park area, and specifically to Luray Caverns in Virginia.

We arrived to Luray around lunchtime, and so we stopped for a bite to eat.

The kids just loved being in the caverns, always saying how "awesome" they were. It truly was a great stop for them all. Adam sat outside resting his foot. Note: My camera did not do well in the dark. Lots of devil eyes.

I was carrying Kaya on my back for a lot of the trip, but she often wanted to get down.

After, we stopped for some ice cream!

Luray has lots of other "historical" attractions, including a car museum, an old toy museum, and a frontier museum. The girls and I went to the gemstone sluice to clean and gather some gems.  Then it was on to the house we rented in town and a rest.

Wrapping up July 2014

Before we head into vacation posts with Gabi and family visiting, we have some photos to share from the end of July.

What's this? It's Adam in the ER after a bad landing in his adult gymnastics class. A horrible sprain that today (August 20) is still healing. Poor guy. At least no breaks?

Dinner with Saba and DeeDee

The girls have their Halloween costumes! 

Anna and Elsa from the movie Frozen, of course.

Sister bath.

Sister haircuts! Liora got her hair washed at the salon for the first time.

Kaya did much better this time (her second haircut), thanks to Frozen being on the TV.

This little hat was given to Liora at the hospital on the day she was born! I kept it in her drawer, and one day she came down with it on her head like this. Still fits! Hilarious.

Summer days after school are awesome!

With mommy's summer schedule at work, we had extra time after school to stop at the playground or sometimes the pool. I'll miss summer!

Kaya "eats" a string bean; don't have many photos from this meal, but MeMe was visiting from California and everyone had a yummy dinner together the night she got in.

Throwback Thursday - Rainbow cake edition (Feb. 2014)

While I think I've noted elsewhere that Winter 2014 was a particularly snowy and cold winter, it's good to note that again as we take a look back at some more winter pictures. It's also interesting as we've had a particularly beautiful summer--not very humid, perfect weather almost every day--apparently, a cold winter means a beautiful summer, and I'll take it. But for now, we take you back to February, when mommy and daddy were keeping the girls busy indoors...

…With bed snuggle time!

But also, we went to the DC Children's Museum one weekend, and though it was tiny, there was plenty to keep them busy!

Liora and Kaya...drove a truck!

...Got to see cookie monster! (That's the blue blob immediately in front of Liora; this look is just so joyful!)

...Climbed through an indoor obstacle course. Liora here is helping her sister through...

...Then moved on to driving a firetruck.

And lastly experimented with different car tracks.

I'm not quite sure where we got the energy that day, but ON THE SAME DAY, we made this crazy rainbow cake, with pink sparkle frosting:

We continued to enjoy that cake as the cold winter wore on and on… :)

And then we went to sleep, with tigers as our pillows.

Cascade Lake, MD

Two weeks ago, we took a family day trip up to Cascade Lake, north of Baltimore. It's a 6-acre lake with water slides, floats, and a water park on the property. We thought it sounded calm for our little ones and closer than the 2.5 hour drive to the beach, so we decided to check it out.

It was pretty crazy, honestly. Very crowded and loud. But, Liora loved the short water slide (sorry, no photos of that) and while she went down that dozens of times, Kaya and I walked around exploring things. She did not really want to go into the water.

Look at this sweet bathing beauty!

Liora with her flat Ariel (a little person we're supposed to take places and take pictures with)

Kaya practicing her selfie skills.

Liora practicing her swimming skills.

Kaya did eventually go down the water slide too, and braved it well about three times before she decided she was all done with that.

So, after some lunch we headed up to the little water park area. This was much more Kaya's speed.

Then we rounded out the day with a stop for ice cream!