Holmes and Sam (also 4-years old) have been thick as thieves from the moment we arrived. Our friends, Ben and Tyler, live across the street from Weir Farm National Historic Park where American Impressionist artists found their roots. It is one of two National Historic Parks devoted to visual art, and it’s where we learned all about how to avoid ticks (stay on the path!).

We searched for all the painted bears in the park to earn our Junior Park Rangers badges!

Meryl searched out the names of various flower species using a new feature on iPhones that provides flower names a part of the backend image information of a picture. It’s pretty cool!

Rounding up the rear and making shade in the sun:)

Fun times with Sasha! Our friends live close and it was fun to meet up locally! Turns out, the same firefighter who captivated cousin David in his youth is still firefighting and is still captivating to our youth!

I take a lot of pictures, I can’t help it.

Cross-country travel, leftover pizza in a bag, way too many chips for all of us, and another car ride to our friends’ place in Connecticut…the adventure is on!

Meryl made a bird feeder out of a zillion popsicle sticks and a lot of glue…and it’s working! Hello, birds!

We have a Second Grader! (With significantly fewer teeth.)

Meryl lost her tooth while sleeping last night! Talk about finding a needle in a haystack this morning. Luckily, it was hiding underneath her belly here:) And lucky her, she got to add a tooth sticker to the classroom lost tooth chart on the last day of school!

Last day of school field day of games and fun! We’ve loved learning with her teachers, Shannon and Amy (Holmes gets to go to school with Shannon’s son and now we get to be parents together!). And then Meryl took us up to the top of the Volunteer Park water tower for the views and a happy quiet moment to recognize her big day.