I caught Nick and my Mom both looking at their little gadgets at the same time… this picture still cracks me up because neither one of them knew they were being photographed:

Happy Labor Day weekend! Don’t forget to take some time on Monday to stare resolutely into the future:

In looking back through our pictures from the boardwalk, I am realizing that unlike her wobbly dad, Anna loves to spin around on things.  Here she is with one of her girlfriends on the Spinning Bears.  This is a strange ride – you sit in side the belly of a giant teddy bear and spin it around while the whole ride spins in a lazy circle:

Normally I would clean up the red eye in the pictures, but in this case it seemed better to leave it as is:

The girls also went on the mini whip race cars… another situation where the red eyes seem to fit the scene:

Anna also likes to crash. Although Anna has almost grown out of the kiddie bumper cars, she got at least one more year out of them:

The kids are getting bigger, and we’re not doing as many of these little rides as we used to.  Anna is tall enough for the big bumper cars, for instance.  So it was sweet to see her making the rounds of all the kiddie rides one more time.  The big rides can wait a little longer….

Anna and I have a longstanding tradition of going on carousels together.  And the carousel at Gillian’s Wonderland in Ocean City is special.  For one thing, it’s a place we get to visit just about every year at least once, and sometimes a couple times, over the course of the summer.  This carousel also has the distinction of still offering brass rings – a real rarity!

This time we got a couple of characters to join us:

Nick seems to have learned how to smile the way I used to as a kid:

And I think Maddie was on the phone with her mom in this call:

The carousel ride is always a highlight for us!

Here is our crew out on the Ocean City boardwalk… you’ll note that we have an extra kid in there… hi, cousin Maddie!

No summer would be complete without a little time at the beach.  Here’s young Nick kicking back on the guard stand after hours:

More to come this week!

We started out the week with Artist Anna, so it seems fitting to end the week with the arts as well.  While in Atlanta, Tom not only took us to the glass blowing workshop, we also went pottery painting one afternoon.  Here’s our gang hard at work on their pottery and glass projects.

Happy weekend!

Our kids also got to spend some time with Grandma Frances, whom we also had not seen in five years.  When we first showed up at her house, she thought Nick was me – he really is that tall these days!

Another picture catching up from our Southern swing… we had not been to Atlanta in five years, so some of these cousins weren’t even alive then.  Our kids had a ball hanging out with their Georgia kin.

I got hold of another batch of pictures from our trip down South last month.  I’m quite fond of this picture of Chelsea with Tom.  Everybody always talks about how much Chelsea looks like her mom, but when you see Chels and Tom together you see they can’t deny each other, either.

Earlier this summer, Anna took a couple of classes at an arts center near us.  A couple of her best works have been on display at the center this month, including this beautiful self portrait:

She posed for a picture with her picture, and if you look past the goofy face the real Anna is making, you can see that she got quite a lot of the details of her own face exactly right:

The kids in the class also made puppets.  The panda bear puppet in the upper right of this photo is hers:

While it’s no surprise to see Anna doing beautiful work – the girl is a virtuoso duct tape artist – it was great fun to see her branch out into other media.