A whole half

Eight years ago today, I took this picture of my adorable baby boy.

Today I took this one, as we ate celebratory donut holes with his classmates.

Still adorable, still my boy... not so much baby anymore!!

Mrs. Bryan, Foul Ball & Clone Wars

We've had a busy fun-packed 24 hours here...

Yesterday afternoon we trekked up to school with our neighbors for the ceremonial posting-of-the-class-lists. O was so very excited to learn that he will have Mrs. Bryan for third grade (his #1 choice) and that he has a really great group of kids in his class. This will be his first year in a trailer, and he is especially excited about the air conditioning! He also received a letter in the mail from Mrs. Bryan today, and we got excited all over again for school to start on Thursday!

Then last night we went to the Aeros game with a group of friends from church. (It was so much fun last time, we figured we'd do it again, this time with fireworks.) We sat really close along the first base line, and O managed to catch a foul ball (with an assist from dad)!!! He was so stinkin' excited. He held on to that thing all night like it was his Wonka Golden Ticket. We also took pictures with Orbit, chowed on yummy pricy snacks, and got some autographs from the stars of the future of the New Britain RockCats.

Today we rounded out the big 8th b-day celebration by taking some buddies to see the new Star Wars movie. I'm being kind to say that cinematically, it was lacking, but the boys loved it. O really was thrilled to celebrate with his good friends and the entire galactic alliance. Here's the crew at DQ before the movie and then with all their testosterone a-blazin' afterwards...

New link for pics

Heard from Aunt Lynn that the new Smugmug link I tried did not work afterall. Bummer. So here's an old-style link...

http://spando.smugmug.com/gallery/5637735_Esifa/1/346662548_qvtpL

Have a great day!

Great 8th Birthday

Having a summer birthday is really a lot of fun!! This year, O's big 8th birthday coinsided with some McFamily coming into town (Nana & Grand-dad, Auntie E, Uncle Ry and Sophie). So we invited a few good friends and Baba & Gumpa to join the McCrowd to celebrate on Saturday afternoon. We had a few of O's favorite foods for lunch-- pizza, watermelon, DQ cake--and then headed outside for a big giant water battle and some slip'n'sliding. As you see in the pics, kids of ALL ages had a ball!

On the actual birthday day, Baba & I took the b-day boy to the Science Center. We got to explore the exhibits, watch an IMAX movie, learn about Einstein, and explore the Mather. We topped the afternoon off with a humongous sundae at the Honey Hut. In the evening we had dinner at Applebee's, ate some more ice cream, and opened presents with Daddy. We even managed to squeeze in a little Playstation Indiana Jones between birthday greeting phone calls. It was really a great day. We'll continue the celebration in a few weeks when we go to see the new Star Wars "Clone Wars" movie with some buddies (the movie doesn't open til the 15th).

There are, of course, more pics to see on Smugmug. Both grandma's are having trouble viewing pics, so I'm trying a new way to link... leave us a comment to let us know if this works!

http://spando.smugmug.com/photos/346662548_qvtpL-Th.jpg

So far, O thinks 8 is pretty great! I'm still a little awed by the fact that he's eight years old!! And a third grader!! Frankly, it's a little much for mom at this point. This of course is confounded by the fact that summer flew by entirely too fast and school starts two weeks from today. We are so not ready for that...