Luke's 6 months old!

Luke had his 6-month check up yesterday. He's now 19 lbs and 26.5" long. He's supposed to start having "real" food, beginning with rice cereal, but the few times I've tried to feed him, he snaps his mouth shut as soon as the spoon comes near. Either that, or he blows raspberries and sprays the cereal all over me! Gotta love that. Happy half-Birthday, Luke!

Eliana's 1st Day of School!

All went well for both mom and child this morning when I took Eliana to school. No tears! She did climb back in bed this morning (which she never does) and say she was too tired to go to school, but after some encouragement, we got there and it didn't take long at all (about 5 minutes) for her to warm up to her teacher and the classroom and say an excited good-bye to me and Luke. She had a great time and can't wait to go back. In fact, she said it was too short! I took the picture after school, when she was very excited about her class. In her own words: "This morning I thought I didn't like school, but now I really really like school! It was so much fun!!!"

Eliana is in the 3 year old class Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:25-11:45 at Norfolk Christian's beach campus. We're hoping that they will move her up to the 4 year old class so that the following year she can enter kindergarten. That would be a year earlier than she's supposed to according to the age requirement, and the only way around that (that I've been able to find) is to have her complete a private state-accredited kindergarten, and then she can enter public school without any "age problem". That's our plan. We'll see how it goes!

I love Triple Coupons!

I just got back from Harris Teeter, where they're tripling coupons up to 99 cents through Tuesday. You can use 20 coupons per day. Look at all I got for just $9.89!!

The total was $77.80 before VIC Savings and coupons. I saved $51.27 with coupons! I really shouldn't have so much fun at a grocery store.

A Cousin is Born!!

We are so excited to introduce Eliana and Luke's first cousin, Baylee Jolynn Perkins born to Stu's brother Dan and his wife Amy. Baylee was born August 10th around 2:45am in the same room Luke was born, and weighed the same as Eliana--8lbs 6oz.

A New Friend is Born!

Welcome to the world, Josiah Michael! Josiah was born this morning to my good friend from college, Melissa, and her husband Mike. I commented while we were visiting with them that it's amazing how much babies change in just five months. Doesn't seem that long ago at all that Luke was Josiah's size, and really, it wasn't! Luke is only five months older, almost to the day, so we expect them to be good buddies!

Cow Appreciation Day

Free meal today at Chic-fil-A if you come dressed as a cow! It was fun...

Harborfest

We spent the fourth of July in downtown Norfolk enjoying Harborfest. We got down there early in the day, around 11am, and conveniently parked in Stu's work-day parking space, just a block from Waterside. Getting down there early was a good idea because no one else was there yet. :) Stu's office acted as a "home base" and was a great place to return to when the crowds got to be too much or we just needed a little down-time. Nauticus opened earlier than the festival, so we started out there and enjoyed walking around the museum for a couple of hours. Admission was only $4/adult with kids free, and you could come and go through out the day. We came back a couple of times to see different movies they were showing in the theater. Harborfest was a lot of fun, and not terribly crowded (during the day, anyway. It did get crazy closer to the fireworks). There were some fun acts to watch, and Eliana loved her little mermaid hat from Ryan-the-balloon-guy. It was a great fireworks display. How do you know you have good "seats" for the fireworks? You get showered in ash. Yup, we really did. Luke was great-didn't cry once, and actually fell asleep during the finale! We didn't get home until about 11pm and the kids were so good the whole time. We really had a great family day!