Happy 4th of July!

Mark closed the church offices until 1 pm today in honor of the gorgeous, unseasonably cool weather that we've had this week!  It was such a treat to have Nick with us this morning.   We headed down to the mall for a picnic right between the Lincoln and Washington and in the middle of the White House and the Jefferson.
 It was a great spot in the shade under the tree the boys love to climb.  

Since I leave again on Friday for another work convention, I thought I'd go ahead and post these a little early.  I'll be back on Monday, and then on Tuesday we plan to go to the Capitol Lawn for the dress rehearsal concert for the 4th and then on the 4th we will celebrate by watching the fireworks from the CHBC rooftop.
We hear that you can see the District fireworks, the Virginia and the Maryland fireworks from there.  Exciting!

Mothers Day

Hands are full.

Heart is full.

Furnished Photography Family Pictures

We took our annual family pictures a few weeks ago at Fletcher Park 

with Katherine Fallis of Furnished Photography.

We know her from her PCM days, and she has served so faithfully at Providence.

She was Hudson's Sunday School teacher last year and she's Emmaline's this year.

She did an amazing job.

I highly recommend her 30 minute mini-sessions for families with young children. 

 It was the perfect amount of time, and she's wonderful with kids.

I actually have a little over 100 pictures,

but I tried to narrow it down to a few favorites...

Thank you, Katherine.

The Roarks love you!

Halloween 2011 : Two Pirates and their Parrot

All Three

Court of Carolinas

Soooo, that was a long blogging hiatus.

Whoops.

I think I'm enjoying having "free nights" a little too much.

Since I'm not doing cookies while the house is on the market,

I am not up until 1 am icing cookies every night.

And our house stays clean.

It's quite amazing, really.

I had no idea how insanely busy I was with the cookies.

So, we've watched movies, I've gotten clothes ready to consign, I've gone to bed at 10 pm,

and I've had a head cold, so I've been lazy because of that too.

We had a house showing tonight, so we picked Elijah up from school and stayed out

until the showing was over.

We went to a park and played, then headed to Freshberry's for yogurt for dinner,

and then walked over to Court of the Carolinas on NCSU's campus to let the kids run around.

With the craziness of cleaning up before going to pick up Elijah, I forgot my camera.

So here's a phone pic instead.

Chris and Ashlea's Wedding

This weekend we flew to Chattanooga for Chris' wedding!

I don't have many pics of the rehearsal dinner or wedding, as I was slightly preoccupied...

I have more from the rest of the weekend, and I'll blog those soon.

In the meantime, here they are... drum roll...Chris and Ashlea Roark!

(At the rehearsal dinner.)

And here are the Three Stooges.

Emmaline, wake up, you've got a long night ahead of you!

We stayed until 11:00 at the reception, which was the latest they've ever stayed up!

The kids left drenched in sweat from all the dancing they did -- what a fun night!

Emmaline actually fell asleep dancing with Papa at the very end.  

I hope to snag a few photos from the photographer, so I'll post those sometime.

Congratulations to you two -- we love you!

Gators and Friends

We went to Gators and Friends this morning -- it was a really neat place!

They have a petting zoo type of set-up, where you can feed and pet the animals.

Then they have certain times where they feed the alligators and it's a "feeding frenzy" time.

Then you can hold a baby gator afterwards!

Of course it was hot (103 actually), but it was still so fun and worth it.

The boys loved it; I think they actually pet just about every animal.

Hudson was a little leery of holding the baby gator, but Elijah was all about it.

Emmaline wanted to be in someone's arms the whole time; she didn't want to be too close to anything.

Thanks for the fun outing, Grandad!

And here's a lot more...