Imaginary friends are driving us insane!

Annika has imaginary friends.
They are actually imaginary sisters.  She has two of them, and they live in an imaginary yellow house and Annika drives an imaginary yellow car to visit them every day.  She tells us about her visits daily and in great detail.
We are so tired excited to hear about her sisters ALL THE TIME!
"My sisters like blueberries"
"My sisters' house is bigger than ours"
"My sisters LOVE ice cream"
"My sisters have yellow hair with purple polka dots"
"My sister cut my leg with a knife" (Yes, I know!)
"My sisters have more toys than I do"
"My sisters love to dance" 
"This mess was made by MY SISTERS!"
and on and on and on and on and on and on.....

One day Joseph was trying to get our DVD player to work, because it wasn't reading a "Barbie" DVD that someone gave us.
Annika, of course, brought up her sisters:
"My sisters have a DVD player and their DVDs always work!"
G was sitting on the couch, playing iPad and he just says: "Then why won't you just GO to your sisters' house and watch it there?"

Exactly!

By the way, her answer was that she doesn't have a car to drive there.  She parked the car at her sisters' house and then they dropped her off at our house.  So, someone needs to drive her there, so that she could pick up the car.  But, oh!  We don't have a map, so we can't go there anyways, because we can't get there without a map.  Where does she come up with stuff like that?

Today she asked me to take some pictures of her.  She then critiqued them and picked the ones she liked best.  The pictures you see here are the ones that were her favorite.

At a friend's birthday party on Saturday:

We've had a couple of exciting trips in the past two weeks.  I will try to post about them in the next couple of days. I took too many pictures!

We are also planning a road trip very, very soon.  I still need to plan all of our activities (including going to a wedding at a Children's Museum!!! Awesome! Awesome!) and book hotel rooms along our route.

We are staying super busy this beautiful summer!

Dance and wild flowers.

On Sunday we went to a birthday party of G's former preschool and future Kindergarden classmate at a dance studio.
Annika was so stinking adorable in her leotard!  I could barely stand it!
She is finally old enough to be accepted to a couple of local dance schools and we are in the process of picking one.
Here are just a couple of pictures.  They are not very good, as I was trying to take pictures from the waiting room (they asked for parents not to come to the dance room) and I also want to try and not post pictures of any kids that aren't mine, so picking good pictures to post here is almost impossible.
G is in an orange shirt and Annika is in pink.

MVI 2280 from Ksenia on Vimeo.

This spring I sprinkled a packet of a wild flower seed mix that is supposed to grow well in New England.  They are blooming now!  I am one amazing gardner!!!!
I have no idea what kind of flowers they are, but they are pretty.

Ecotarium

Last week we went to Ecotarium in Worcester for a couple of hours.  The admission was free through the Reciprocal Admission program.
They had a fun "Alice in the Wonderland" exhibit, where the kids spent the majority of their time.
This was Joseph's first and our second trip to the museum.

Experiencing hurricane wind.  G didn't love it.  He said he was afraid that he would fly away.

Looking at waves:

Her friend gave her this dress.  It is size 5/6, but she had to wear it.  Also, she is refusing to smile here.

Bees.  G wanted to see the Queen Bee, but we couldn't find her. 

The only one in our family who isn't afraid of standing on a glass floor.

Ready for a train ride around Ecotarium.

Cuteness!

Cheshire cat.

My BIG Alice girl.

Tennis

We try to squeeze some tennis practice whenever we can.
Last Sunday we stopped at the tennis court of G's future elementary school.
There are 4 tennis courts and they were all empty (probably because it was 90F again).  We practiced balancing the ball, serving and hitting.
Here, they are playing with standard compression balls, since I didn't have the low compression ones with me at the time.  The kids have a much easier time playing tennis with low compression balls, since they are lighter and softer.

Balancing the ball on the racquet.

G is getting so good at hitting the balls!!!

We didn't play for long, because of the heat.  Thankfully, the temperatures finally went down to mid-80's and we got some nice rain.