Summer Lovin'

We've been staying busy this summer! The following pictures are from early July... hopefully the captions will capture the adventures.

Enjoying a kid-sized ice cream cone at the local Smiling Hill Farm.

Peek-a-boo! Smiling Hill Farm has a great local ice cream and an outdoor playground perfect for little ones.

No comment - except: she did this to herself.

Swimming with cousin Fiona at Nanie & Grampy Plum's. They have a "big" pool, too, but the girls like this one just as much!

A girl, her dress, and a chainsaw. It's a beautiful thing.

The fourth of July we started out the day with some strawberry picking with our friends Jami, Ryan, and Braydon. Payson's not fond of eating strawberries (strange!) but liked picking them.

Braydon enjoyed eating them - very much!

In the afternoon, we headed over to our friends, the Heslers, for what has become an annual cookout. Delaney, left, is 4 and Allie, right, is 2 and a half.

Christine & Delaney.

What holiday was this again?

The Monday after the Fourth Payson and I went to Ferry Beach in Saco with 5 other moms/toddler combos. From left to right are: Lisa & Leah, Payson & me, Kelly & Elliot, and Kate & Julie. Taking the picture is (another) Kate, and also missing is her son Jack. We had a blast!!

Payson and I heading back from the Beach. You would not believe how much stuff I was schlepping!

Hanging out at home in style!

I hope to do more updating soon! This weekend's the 10K I've been waiting/training for - Beach to Beacon. I figured out that this is my ninth time running this race! I'm very excited, and will do my best to post my results and accounts of the day.

Auntie Leesha's Visit

So, I've got a ton of updating to do! First off, my computer problem stemmed from insufficient memory. So I bought more; hopefully the computer won't crash before it arrives and I have a chance to install it!

I'll start with oldest events first, and keep the commentary to a minimum. I know all you really want to see is the pictures anyway!

My sister Alicia came to visit for a 4.5 day weekend in mid June. We had SO much fun, and did a ton of fun stuff.

We started off the visit by hiking to Portland's only waterfall, Jewell Falls. Who knew? It was a short hike, but well worth it.

We did a little finger painting too! Or was it face painting?

Saturday we visited Windham's annual Summerfest event. It was... well, interesting. We started off with the parade in the morning - highlight: monster truck-style fire truck. Oh well. No pictures from that, unfortunately.

But here's one of Payson, ready for Summerfest action!

We returned home to do some good, old fashioned puddle jumping! I think Auntie Leesha (as Payson ended up calling her - the Salsa nickname didn't stick) needs to do this more often!

Alicia and I headed to the Old Port for some sister shopping time for a few hours and returned to the Summerfest's live music! Who was on first but the Kora Shriners band! (I had no idea what the Kora Shriners was - they were actually decent, but NO ONE was there!)

At least they had free bubbles. We discovered Payson can now blow the bubbles herself!

Here we are amongst the unmanageable crowds!

Payson had a blast dancing around with me.

Sunday we went to Old Orchard Beach. It wasn't exactly beach weather, which explains our attire. We still managed to have an absolute blast - Payson just LOVED the beach experience. How could you beat it? It's big sandbox meets big bathtub, with birds!

She enjoyed playing with the different textures of sand...

... and being super silly and happy while enjoying a picnic.

Sunday afternoon my mom and Aunt Maryann made the trek up to Maine so they could spend time with all of us together, a rarity. Monday we went to Freeport and had lunch and checked out the fishies in LL Bean. What a great weekend!

We also checked out the hats! Alicia and Payson being silly & hanging loose.

I had to get in on the action, too!

I'm going to do my best to get up to date as soon as possible on here! Check back soon for more updates on the last month's adventures! We have been having a lot of fun this summer, and Payson is just an absolute riot and so much fun to be with. Although she's always been quite a little chatter box, this past week her language has really seemed to pick up concept and sentence structure wise. She also started pretending! What an amazing process to watch and be a part of.

We've been MIA

Just a quick note to let you know we've been missing in action here at the ole Plum Tree blog, and it's not going to get better any time soon. My computer's on the fritz and I'm finding it hard to find any time to call Dell tech support! Besides that, we've been so busy having fun. We're capturing all of our adventures with pictures, which, when I find time and my computer revives, I'll be sure to post!

Some of our recent adventures since I last blogged include:

My sister Alicia's visit - we went hiking, to a Festival, Old Orchard Beach, & visited with my mom and aunt.
Swimming at Nanie & Grampy Plummer's with Chloe and Fiona
Strawberry picking with Braydon, Jami, & Ryan
Ferry Beach visit with 4 other moms and little ones
And plenty of outside play!

Next week we are taking a vacation and starting off with a trip to RI. So I'm not hopeful that between now and then I'll get the computer fixed. Grrrrr...

Hope you are all well, and I'll get back on here as soon as possible!