Fruits of our Labor

My early Birthday present
Mission complete!

After many hours of cleaning gutters, mulching, pruning, planting, and purchasing a new table set, I believe the frontyard is finally complete. Memorial Day?...More like Labor Day if you ask me (although Jon did most of it in 90+ degree heat, thank god we have a pool to go to now!)

Memorial Day Weekend 2011

Playing trucks on the beach

Last one out...imagine that

Silly Ali

Sunscreen Face

Hot Mama

It was the first "summer" weekend in the new neighorhood and it was AWESOME! We kicked off the weekend with a cookout with the Panetta/Hardick family Friday night, then topped it off with a beach party and community pool over the rest of the weekend. Our neighbor across the street has a beautiful beach and invited us to join in on thier annual Memorial Day festivities and we quickly agreed! Brody spent 6 hours non stop in the water/sand and all of the younger teenage girls took turns taking care of Alison while Jon and I enjoyed some adult beverages from the beach. We had a BLAST! The four of us also walked over to the pool and enjoyed watching Brody play with tons of kids his age in the small 2 ft. part of the pool, I think he died and went to heaven. Ali and I played in the toddler pool while Jon watched B from the sidelines. We truly had a fantastic weekend!

New Shoes

Alison already has more shoes than Brody (as it should be!). The newest addition to her wardrobe are pink sandals from Nana for her Birthday. She also got a white pair but it was hard enough getting a picture of her with the pink ones on!

Best Buds

B and his Tomahawk and Ash with her wand
Enjoying the flick

Friday night we celebrated Mandy's birthday with dinner at our house. After Alison went to bed the big kids stayed up and watched Cars. Brody got "tucked in" with Ashley and they shared pretzels. It was SO cute! Brody even gave Ashley driving lessons on the gator (which didn't end so well for him as he fell out of the back!).

New Ali videos

I especially love the video of her trying to put on her sunglasses!

Bad day

Bar-BAY-Que Festival

Bryan and Jon in the tasting tent
Sleeping beauties

Last Saturday we met up with Uncle Nate and the Murrays to enjoy and judge the regional BBQ contest at the Naval Stadium. We had a GREAT time and even enjoyed some adult beverages when the kiddos finally fell asleep!

Some new updates

My new do
Getting ready for take off

Screaming (as usual)

Brody protecting his game

My new favorite toy

We have been very busy down here with the new house and such so I have been very bad with posting new pictures and news. Alison has been very busy herself and has suddenly become very mobile. She has decided that she is not happy just sitting idly by and now wants to be part of the action. She also had 2 teeth pop through on the bottom with 2 more on the way on top. She can say (and mean) mama, dada, baba, and hi and she definately can say them VERY loudly! For the words she can't say, she can show us the sign for it like "all done" and "more" and waves bye. Its so exciting (and also very exhausting)!

Alison Video

I have a new video of Alison that was too big for Blogger so I put it on Youtube. Search for jeslynrock1 at youtube.com It should show up (since I couldn't upload a link). Enjoy

Silly Brody

A co-worker of mine gave me a dinosaur costume and low and behold it was a HUGE hit! Brody put it on and drove his tractor in it in the front yard with the intention of scaring the boys next door. It was hilarious! He is so weird!

Alison's 10 Month photoshoot

Alison had her picture taken for her baptism and just for fun. She was so photogenic and loved getting her picture taken. The photographer finished in 20 minutes and told us that had never happend that quickly before! These are just a few of the best (I think)!

The National Zoo

Cranky Alison

A rare moment at the zoo unfortunately

Acting like a gorilla

Looking for the animals

Making muscles at the Panda exhibit (his favorite)

Hogging the "gobbles" (goggles, or binoculars)

Peering at the Panda with gobbles

The gorillas put on quite a show for everyone

I braved the DC Zoo today with both kids along with the rest of Maryland, Virginia, and the District. Brody loved seeing all of the animals but was sad to find out that the giraffes don't live there anymore. All in all it was a beautiful day and we had a great (albeit exhausting) day there.

The NEW Playground

Its finally done (20 hours later). Daddy did such an awesome job building it and the kids absolutlely love it (especially the table and fort). Brody is especially good at the rock wall.