Evie monkeys around for her birthday

Evie had a delightful time celebrating her birthday with her friends at JW Tumbles this Saturday. Luckily Hurricane Irene wasn't due to hit DC until later that night, so we dressed up in our raincoats and rainboots to brave the storm. Everyone had a delightful time running and jumping around, going down and climbing up the slides, and "freeze" dancing.


Evie and friends Izzy and Greta enjoy jumping on the trampoline. Wow, they're getting some air!

Mason and Katie found some giant bouncy balls to play with.


Carson, Sam, and Molly all wish Evie a loud happy birthday to her delight.

She looks happy as a clam and is ready for her next adventure.

The kids - Evie followed by Ava, Addie, Mason, and Greta - wait in line to walk up the shaky slide.

Whee! Evie enjoys her ride down the zipline!


Ellie found all the activities to be quite interesting, keeping her big eyes open during the whole party.


We break for pizza, fruit, and frozen chocolate bananas. Mason was a big fan of his juice box.

Levi, Carson, Izzy, Connor and little Charlotte all enjoy their food. Ba provided the beautiful flowers.


Daddy made this delightful monkey cake (Evie helped with the eyes, nose and smile placement).


Evie prepares to blow out her candles while we all sing Happy Birthday!

At the end of the party, Evie happily hands out favor bags to her guests and thanks them for coming. Whew, what a day! While Evie is taking a nap to recover at home, we got some cute pictures of Ellie who found Daddy's antics quite amusing (below).




She must be teething because she enjoys munching on her fingers these days!

A wonderful birthday party for Bebe in Spring Lake

What a lovely couple of days the family had in Spring Lake this weekend! We were in town to help do a little attic cleaning and packing and then finish with one last party to celebrate Bebe's birthday. Evie got in some beach time which she was delighted about! Here she is helping put water into the "pool" (a big hole created by Uncle Wally).

Yikes! The waves were big but Evie didn't mind getting splashed too much. When asked what she liked best about the beach, Evie's answer was, "The waves!"


Molly and Evie enjoy some quality time rolling around in the sun.


The girls were in much need of a bath upon their return home and loved the fancy sink bath!

Whee! Ellie hams it up for the camera with a big smile.


On Saturday we had a big bash for Bebe. There was wiffleball and cake! Bebe thanked everyone for coming before she and her helpful grand kids blew out the candles. While she was talking, the kids got a little impatient and started digging their fingers into the frosting. Whoopsie!

Daddy presents the Beanie cup to Gable Hall, the official name of 701 Third Avenue, aka the McDonald family homestead for 31 years.

Aunt Amy's and Uncle Karl's Baby Shower

To end the weekend we had a lovely baby shower for Amy and Karl on Sunday. We were joined by many friends and relatives. We all had a great time decorating onesies, catching up with family and friends, and eating lots of delicious food!


Uncle Karl holds up a great onesie painted by cousin Kevin. There were quite a few artists in the family that were uncovered through this activity.

Amy and Karl cut the cake!

Amy holds up the baby's first bikini, but daddy Karl looks a little dubious about letting his daughter wear that!

Here is a more conservative Christmas outfit admired by Amy and her mom Becky.

Elinor's Christening Celebration

This Saturday was a special day as little Elinor Genevieve was baptized at Our Lady Queen of Peace surrounded by her loving family. Her godparents, Uncle Karl and Aunt Amy, traveled from Florida with Amy's mom, Becky, and we were also joined by Ba, Opa, Bebe, Popi and Great-Aunt Dellie. It was a lovely service and celebration dinner.


The family poses for a portrait. Ellie was so peaceful throughout the service, and only complained once when the water was poured on her head. Like her sister before her, Ellie is wearing Popi's christening gown from when he was a baby!


Godfather Karl draws a cross on Ellie's forehead while Father Tom watches. While we got it right this time in terms of asking the church for a "baptism" for Ellie, instead of "health and happiness" when Evie got baptized, we accidentally first drew crosses on our foreheads before Father Tom reminded us we should do it on the baby instead. Whoops.


Evie was a little *too* excited as she could not sit still during the service. While Ellie was being baptized she was running around us. Luckily the priest was a little understanding about it.

Hooray! We present Ellie to the congregation. Aunt Amy stands proudly by (with baby Foelsche cheering in her tummy) and Karl holds the baptismal candle.

After the mass, we headed over to Trummer's on Main, a great restaurant in Clifton. It was actually the site of the Hermitage Inn, where we had our wedding rehearsal dinner back in 2004, so it was a nice trip down memory lane. Ellie slept in Daddy's Baby Bjorn the whole night.


Aunt Dellie and Becky enjoyed the delicious food and wine.


The Foelsches pose for a picture in front of the wine cellar and in front of Ba's beautiful flower arrangement.

Evie called it a night around 9:00 p.m. She crawled in her stroller and was out. She missed the best brownie sundae ever which Daddy and Mommy enjoyed immensely.

Evie explores the zoo via art camp!

This week Evie has been getting her hands dirty (literally) at art camp, where the theme has been all about animals in the zoo! Here she adds some green "leaves" on the tree mural that was used as the backdrop for their performance on Friday. She came home with many, many masterpieces to add to our art gallery.

The week culminated in a performance to the families on Friday - here is a sneak peek of their rehearsal. Each day they focused on a different part of the world and the animals that lived there. I can't tell what she is trying to be here, though...

Then the big day came! Evie is not a big fan of getting her face painted so she got a turtle on her hand instead. She also seems a little nervous as she was biting her fingernails a little, despite being "so excited!" as she called out to Mommy.

Evie gets ready to start. She was the youngest kid in the class but held her own. One of the funniest moments seemed to be when she loudly protested when another child got too wild with waving his arms to stop hitting her. It was pretty funny.



In the play, the kids were zookeepers who traveled around the world to find animals to bring back to their zoo. Evie paid attention for the most part and could act like most of the animals. On their stop in Africa, they had an obligatory dance to the "Circle of Life".


Evie wobbles like a penguin at their stop in Antarctica.



I'm not quite sure if Evie's exaggerated yawns were supposed to be another animal or if she was expressing boredom... but she seemed to love jumping like a kangaroo!

What Evie did on her summer vacation...

Well, Mommy and Daddy have been slacking a bit on taking pictures over the last week or so, but life hasn't slowed down a bit! Evie has been in art camp this week, so we thought this would be a good time to post some pictures of her experiences at the various camps, classes, and adventures she has been on this summer. Evie has been a busy bee, but we have been grateful to give her some fun experiences that don't revolve around PBS Kids shows... and thankful to her teachers who took some fun pictures!

Back in June/July, Evie went to a two-week DINO camp at the Beverley Hills Preschool in Alexandria. Here she is with some of her fellow campers after a morning of playing in their deluxe wooden playground, eating a popsicle. The popsicles were one of her favorite things about camp, I think!


Evie traced a dinosaur and wrote her name on her artwork, but to really mix it up she wrote her name backwards. The teachers were way impressed.


One day they had a dinosaur dig! Evie was a paleontologist and used sticks to search for t-rex bones in the sand. Then she used a brush to clean off the sand.


The preschool had a fantastic playground with super fast slides and wooden structures like a castle and rocket ship. Evie loved starting her morning there so that she barely noticed when Mom left after drop-off. Here she is leaping over the sprinkler to stay cool.


Evie and her friend Bryn play in the kitchen area of the playground. Looks like sand pizza for lunch today!


On the last day the kids helped build a volcano and watched it explode!

Using our imagination...

Evie and Mommy got dressed up on Saturday for their special adventure to see the play "Aquarium" at the Imagination Stage in Bethesda. It was great fun because everyone got to play a part in the play - Evie helped "plant" her flower, make waves in the ocean, and ring a cowbell. We also got sprinkled on when it "rained"!

Evie poses by the car used for "The Wind in the Willows". Maybe we'll see that play when she gets a little older.


After a big morning and another fun playtime session at Ba's and Opa's, Evie quickly fell asleep on the armchair while watching Thomas. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...