Our Casa Lennon is your Casa

The Casa Lennon clan made a trek to the NC Museum of Life and Science earlier this week.  We had Chloe’s company for this outing.  This was probably the first time we have gone that Sophia could genuinely appreciate it. We even broke down and got a family membership. Michele is going to stay home now, and it will be great to have this fantastic facility in her activity repertoire. That, and we won’t have to lean on our friends, the Straffins, for (ahem) access.  All you other RTP-local parents that may want to engage in weekday, daytime activities, reach out to Michele.

Pix from the outing

Link to the Album of picutres

View the pictures as a slideshow

Some Videos from outing

Direct Link to the ladies enjoying some cooling water

Direct Link to Alexander fascinated by plant

We are thankful to celebrate all birthdays, but there is something special about the milestones.

Abuela appreciating her birthday collage

Casa Lennon’s abuela, sometimes know called Juana Antónia Lennon Gutierrez Magro Ibañez Alonso Palacios Barona Ruano García, delighted everyone by turning 70 years young. Much of the family converged on Las Tapas in Old Town Alexandria in what unexpectedly turned out to be a surprise party. More a function of the Lennon clan’s well communicated inability to communicate well.

That said, it was really fun. People came from Florida, North Carolina, New York, and even Maryland to take part. The primary “gift” abuela always wants is the time spent with her family – namely the grandkids. That is what she wants more than anything else. That said, Michael coordinated a gathering of lifetime photos and stories to put together for abuela. I highly recommend viewing the awesome collage that was the product of that effort.

ASIDE: We had the good fortune of being at the Spanish restaurant while Spain was beating Paraguay in the World Cup. (In case you hadn’t heard, SPAIN WON!!!! VIVA ESPANA!!! )

One last thing, we’d like to thank our niece Chloe for snapping so many candid photos.

Pictures from the Celebration

Here is the photo album gallery.

Here you can view it as a slideshow.

Everyone thinks their kids are cute. Sophia just seemed to be in rare form Sunday morning.

As background, you need to know that “Ellie” is Sophia’s most treasured posession. Ellie is a Carter’s pink, elephant plush toy. (Get it, “Ellie”?) Once we realized how much she loved this toy, we started hunting for a duplicate. We called multiple Targets in multiple states. (Really.) No dice. We wanted insurance should something happen to Ellie. Our solution was Paco (the Pachyderm). You can see a pic of them side by side. Alas, what we got was a daughter who now needed two elephants to go to sleep.

Sophia giving Alexander an unprompted hug

Well, last week Mommy Michele texted Daddy Dave cuz we thought we might have found a suitable stand in.

And (finally) on to the point of this post.

We came downstairs and Sophia spotted the 3rd elephant and yelled “other Ellie!” She lit up and was delighted. She grabbed and hugged her. Alexander was already awake at this time but a wee bit fussy. Sophia-being the sweetheart she is-walked over to him and started trying to appease him by playing with him. When that didn’t settle him down, she leaned down and gave him a big old hug. (Proud, beautiful moment for a parent to have your 2 year old hug her 5 month old brother without prompting.)

But then things got even cuter.

Sophia's "pink choo-choo"

As I calmed Alexander down (read, found pacifier), Sophia went off and entertained herself. When I turned my attention to her, I saw she’d definitely found a way to keep herself busy.Without any intervention or input from me, Sophia had set up a “pink choo-choo”. Her words, not mine. She had arranged to kitchen chairs back-to-back, put the Ellie and other Ellie in one chair, and sat in the second chair. Her “pink choo-choo” was complete with the requisite “choo-choo” sounds. Of course, the highlight was when she asked if I wanted to ride the pink choo-choo. Of course, nothing is beneath me.

Once the rest of the house was awake, Mommy realized she needed to go upstairs for something. Sophia very much wanted to stay with Mommy. As we all began heading upstairs, Sophia turned around, looked at me and said, “Daddy, go downstairs.” I guess I had outlived my usefulness.

Small Album of pix from this AM

Click to view the photo album

Click to view as a slideshow