White sand, blue sea...

We had a fantastic time in Mexico!! Relaxing, learning more spanish, eating and drinking, riding a golf cart around Isla Mujeres, visiting a sea turtle sanctuary, going to an eco-park & snorkeling & walking through jungle paths and jumping off cliffs, renting a car and driving inland to see the ruins at Chichen Itza, figuring out the local buses and ferries, reading, napping in the cabanas by the crystal clear blue sea, walking along the soft white sand beach under a full moon, weathering the sweltering heat and humidity and the rain and wind of tropical storm Dolly - all of it was fantastic!! Here are a couple of photos :)

Heading to Camp Grandmum

The whole family is headed up to CT tomorrow. It'll take us 2 days to get there but we've got tons of audio books and stuffed animals to keep us entertained! We've got lots of fun stuff planned: 4th of July celebrations (always interesting from a British perspective), Fireworks at Limerock Race Track, catching up with friends from high school, playing with cousins, swimming, tree climbing, making fairy houses, eating berries, driving the tractor... the list is endless. We'll keep you posted!

Overtime for the Tooth Fairy

Hannah lost her 11th tooth on Thursday evening and Nina lost her 2nd tooth on Friday morning. Busy time for the Tooth Fairy!

More sewing crafts

Mark got the girls a Barbie sewing machine so that they could do their own sewing projects without ruining mommy's brand-new Singer. Nina and Hannah both designed and embellished dresses for their stuffed animals. It was fun but I think mom needs a rest from all these projects?!

Visiting Olivia and Jim in Alabama

We spent Father's Day Weekend in Birmingham, Alabama, visiting Olivia and Jim. (Olivia is Amanda's mom's cousin). It took us 4 years to get over there for a visit but we finally made it!! Alabama is really quite beautiful - trees, valleys, mountains, lakes and rivers. We went to the Barber Motorsports Museum for an insider tour (Jim works there - a dream job for anyone interested in any kind of racing - Mark was drooling over the Porsches). We hiked down to a creek and caught tadpoles. We had dinner with Josh and Marie (Olivia's son and his wife) and played with Cutie Pie (she was our cat for a little while until Olivia and Jim graciously adopted her and gave her a home in cat paradise - she has the run of the neighborhood and lots of little animals to catch!!). It was a lovely visit and hopefully it won't take another 4 years before we go back :)

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Well not quite the center but it felt like it!! We went to DeSoto Caverns and had a a tour of the underground caves with all the stalactites and stalagmites. We got to experience total darkness (which would leave a person blind if they stayed there for 12 days) and walked through little passageways and huge vaults. It was really fun!

Biker Babes

We went to the museum where Jim works and got to ride a Cushman motorcycle in the basement of the museum - very cool!! We also got to ride around the motorspeedway (in the van not a motorcycle!) outside. Totally awesome! We were really lucky because both of these things are stuff that everday guests don't get to do. Mark stayed at the museum with Jim to look at the largest collection of motorcycles in the world while the girls all headed back to Olivia's house and the creek.

Playing in the creek near Olivia's House

Catching tadpoles in the creek near Olivia and Jim's House. We let them all go before leaving :)

"Cool" Summer crafts

Ok, so the temp here is in the upper 90's already... Which means, that we're slaves to air conditioning until we get used to the heat or it gets a couple degrees cooler. I just got a new sewing machine (which is awesome!) so we've been doing sewing/fashion projects. Hannah and I made a dress using our imaginations and Hannah made flip-flops because of course every outfit needs shoes :) She handknitted the straps and designed the soles herself. Nina made a quilt blanket - the top panels are actually all handstitched by Nina! Pretty "cool" huh? :)

Do you know what YOUR brain looks like?

We often participate in studies at the Bauer Memory Development Lab at Emory and this one was a pretty cool one. Hannah was shown series of photographs and then went into an fMRI scanner and was shown another series of photos. Some of the photos were different and some were the same and she had a controller to indicate whether she had seen the photo before or if it was new. While she was doing this, the fMRI takes photos of her brain. The purpose of the study is to see the pathways that are used during memory recall in children. When we were done she got a CD of the entire fMRI. That's a full scan from left to right and top to bottom of her brain along with a series of images that are animated showing the actual firing of the neurons. It was incredibly fascinating! And, very difficult. She was so controlled and lay perfectly still for almost 45mins in the scanner. She was given total control over how much she wanted to do and made it through the entire thing! The next day we took the CD into her class and showed them the process of the brain scan and the results. How many people have a complete scan of their brain in action at age 8??