Dillion's 3rd Birthday

Jim's co-worker Will invited us over for their son Dillion's 3rd birthday party:

After Dillion opened all the presents and went outside to play, Will took out his Dillion's wooden train set and built a huge train layout even though Dillion wsa nowhere to be found.  It's good to be a grown up kid sometimes!  (And not to let Will get made fun of all by himself, Jim added the engineering expertise and worked on superelevation design so the train would stay on the tracks around the curves, which of course brought out eyes rolling from everyone!)

Topsail Beach and Wilmington

We took a beach weekend trip to Topsail Beach with Avery in late June, she has her own pop up tent to stay in to keep out of the sun and heat.  We went with Grandma Woods (Colleen's mom).  The water was a nice warm 84 degrees, the water color was blue green, and it felt wonderful.

Afterwards we went into downtown Wilmington for dinner at Two Guys Grille, we walked the historic riverfront area

And then took a trolley ride through the historic part of town to hear about the history of the city.

The next day we had a quick picnic near Lake Crabtree in the county park:

Then we had dinner that night in downtown Apex at Anna's Pizza:

It was a great way to enjoy Grandma Woods' visit!

4th of July

This year for the 4th of July we went to the Koka Booth Amphitheater in Cary again.  The North Carolina Symphony plays for a few hours then they shoot off fireworks over the pond behind the stage.  We brought our picnic gear and met up with our cousin John & wife Meredith who live near us, plus cousin Beth from St Louis who was visiting John (her brother).

We all dressed red, white, and blue:

Avery was wearing a very star-spangled dress:

Colleen made an American Flag cake:

Here is cousin Beth holding Avery (with cousin John making an ill-timed facial expression!)

It was really crowded at the amphitheater, you can barely make out the symphony on the stage way in the distance!

The weather turned out great and we enjoyed picning outside with our cousins!