We had, all around, a really good weekend.

Saturday morning, we took Penny to the library, and she played with trains and blocks and stuff while Matt and I looked for books, and then she picked out a new Lit Kit for herself. (A Lit Kit is a bag with 4-5 books on a common theme, and a stuffed toy to match. They're grouped by rough age level.)

The new Lit Kit has a wolf theme, and a largish wolf puppet stuffie. Penny is in love. She's slept with the wolf twice already, and two of the wolf books have completely supplanted Curious George and Clifford for her bedtime readings. I'm beginning to worry that she'll pitch a fit when it's time to give them all back to the library (especially the stuffie), but I guess we'll just wait and see.

Saturday evening, we went over to my parents' for dinner. Mom made stuffed shells, which I haven't had for ages, and since they'd been to the local Greek Festival on Friday, we had baklava for dessert. Mmm.....

Sunday was a pretty standard morning, but then in the afternoon, we had our next-door neighbors Melissa and Ray over for hot dogs and watermelon and to let the kids play in the pool.

Penny and Ray are both huge water fans; they were ready to leap into the water as soon as they saw it.

It took Ray a little convincing that pool-rules are different from bath-rules, and that it really was okay to splash. But once he got the message, he was very enthusiastic. (Penny, of course, needed no convincing at all.)

It was not quite warm enough for a long run in the pool -- by the time half an hour had passed, Ray was shivering with every breeze. So we dried off and went inside for a while so the kids could play dress-up and amuse themselves with running between the living room and the kitchen for a while.

Penny treated us to a small concert, wherein she played her piano and sang the ABC song, and then a couple verses of "The Wheels On The Bus." We applauded enthusiastically, of course. She's really into singing lately -- she'd done a longer concert for my parents, including all five verses of "Where Is Thumbkin?" and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." I'm loving it.

I took a little movie of her singing, but then accidentally deleted it while I was trying to delete the abortive attempt previous. Sigh. I really have to learn not to try to delete things from my camera at all, until they've been downloaded.

Also, my camera insisted that the memory card was full, and while I know I took several movies of the kids playing, I didn't think I'd taken that many. This morning's download confirms that I had less than 75M of data on the card, for a 128M card. I think I'm going to need to buy a new card before I go to Cancun.

Ray is having a growth spurt, I expect. He's a skinny little kid, but he ate two hot dogs, a bunch of blueberries, and -- I swear -- at least six wedges of watermelon. And he was asking for more, but Melissa cut him off.

The play was good for Penny's appetite, too, though I think she wound down after only four wedges of watermelon.

It was a blast. We really must do it again.

--Liz