I love summer for so many reasons like, no school, longer daylight, more play time with kids, swim every evenings, beach vacations, rosé wines, grilled corn on the cob, summer fruits, cute beach cover-ups, etc… but mostly because my parents come stay with us during the summer!

When Chloe was a little younger, she would ask me,
“When you get older, are you going to only speak Korean? like grandma?”
“Are you going to become beautiful like grandma?” I hope so!

Chloe mastering the “Dab”. What is this?

I ordered Maryland style blue crabs from Fresh Direct for lunch today.

Roasted Beet salad with goat cheese

Watermelon and mint juice to wash it down. 🙂
Happy 4th!

We are at our friend’s annual 4th of July pool party this afternoon.

It’s always a feast here every year.

Kids only came out for a bit to grab a bite and are back in the water.

Time for dessert.

Thank you Judy and Ken for your amazing hospitality!

We went to Tarrytown in NY to check out farmer’s markets and had a delicious lunch.

Truffle ravioli and steak sandwich

Grilled watermelon salad

Crab and avocado salad

After church, we  went to Fishkill farms to pick cherries

Eating while picking

Picture taken by Shane

These are super sweet!

After a little while Shane quit picking. It was a hot day so he decided to sit in the shade while chloe was hard at work.

Ice cream to wrap up the hard work. Boy it was hot.

School is out as of last tuesday and kids came home with all of their works they did at school! I especially loved reading their writing note books and here’s some of the pages from Chloe’s book.

I. Was. Amazed.

Her book started with all the details from her Italy trip last summer and all of her creative writings were super super impressive.

She also wrote about Turks and Caicos. 😉

One of my favorite that I read in this note book is this one called, The Book. It’s a spot on description of how she feels when she reads…

The Book
As you flip page after page of the smooth cream colored pages, the crisp smell of newly made paper is like the smell of cookies after a longday.
The intense pictures are so lively, the words are as black as the darkest night. The story absorbs in your mind, like a paper towel does to water. The book brings you intense feelings. You hungrily devour page after page. When you’re done, you get another book and get absorbed in the story. Like a kid at a toy store, a book is actually a jewel in disguise.
All the characteristics of a book are better than money, jewels or gold.

I mean… :*)

Today, Andrew went golfing and my parents are using my car (yes. they arrived this week!) so I’m home with kids without a car. So we decided to walk to our town library which took us about 40 min. to get there. When we got there kid picked out a few books and cooled off, reading for over an hour. Then we stopped by a gas station to buy gum and walked back home. We talked about how when I was in elementary and middle school in Korea, I used to always walked to school every day. Haha, something that sounded so foreign to them. 🙂

I made them a cool lemonade and they read some more on the porch. What a lovely day it was!

Chloe got a nice play date at our town lake, thanks to her friend’s mom! She also sent me videos and these pictures to me so I can be envious while sitting at work. 😉 Hee hee, thank you!

First day of summer break is looking pretty good.

My parents are here for the summer! Yay!

We couldn’t be happier that my parents are back visiting us from Korea. Kids really wanted to stay home this summer and for the first time since they are born, they’ll have a summer break where they will lounge around the house and be bored, thanks to the grandparents!

They’ll continue to swim everyday and do some sports and camps here and there but for the most of the summer, they will be chillin’ at home…

Squid ink pasta for dinner

She’s wearing a dress today and it took a lot of negotiations. It’s very rare these days to see her in a dress… She thinks I’m always too fancy and she tells me often that when she gets older she won’t dress like me. Hmmm. No offense taken.

I used to say she’s allergic to pants because she always gave me a hard time about putting them on when she was younger. Now, she’s all about her shorts and t-shirts!