Beach Time-Family Style!

Our annual beach trip to Topsail Island was great fun. Kate loved every moment and Jeff and I had a great time. Aunt Jennifer bought a pool for the girls to use and it turned out to be a great set up with the umbrella. Kate and cousin Scarlett went from playing in the sand to the surf to the pool to snack time and back again which gave the parents some time to relax for a while. Kate was very brave by the end of the week-she enjoyed catching some waves with her daddy.


Kate also enjoyed some quality time with her cousin. Here she is making a "silly face"! They are so sweet!

Picture Time

Happy Fourth of July!

We were at the beach over July 4th. Kate enjoyed watching the fireworks at the local park and having her first experience with sparklers.

The Main Event

The main event of the summer was Uncle David and Aunt Meghan's wedding. It was a wonderful day and we were so happy to be a part of it. Here is Kate getting ready with her classic hands on hips pose.

The Happy Couple

Kate and Her Escorts

The First Dance

Kate was a maniac on the dance floor, for that matter so were her father and great grandmother!

Indianapolis Zoo-Our Explorer

We visited the Indianapolis zoo. The above picture is just pure Kate in a Dora the Explorer moment. She studied that map for what seemed like forever! You can see her binoculars below. We had fun.

July Birthdays!

We celebrated two great birthdays in July-Daddy's and Aunt Gina's. We celebrated Jeff's on the morning of David's wedding day-complete with Dora balloons. Gina came down the NC for birthday-palooza the week after the wedding.

It's not a birthday at the Costa house without birthday hats!
Kate helped Mommy make Gina's special birthday pie and helped to blow out the candles, of course!
Too much partying...

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there, especially to our two moms who taught us so much-including how wonderful and important it is to make special memories with your children. THANK YOU for all the special memories you have given us. If you love your mom and/or are a mom, you should check out this video by Taylor Swift called "The Best Day" . (It is a country song, but it's good and I dare you not to cry).

We had a Mother's Day outing to Pullen Park today. It turned out to be a gorgeous afternoon. Kate loved it-the playground, the boat rides, the train ride, the wildlife-everything! Here are some pictures of our adventure. Yes, we were pretending to be Dora the Explorer half the time-watch out for Swiper the Fox!

Here she is climbing the stairs, for about the twentieth time, to slide...
Piloting her boat...
Train ride, all aboard!

Paddle Boats

Daddy was nice enough to paddle his girls around the pond at the park. It was quite the adventure. We saw two snakes (yuck!), four turtles, and many ducks and birds. The snakes were swimming around the dock used to get on the boats. They were almost a deal breaker for me. Although they were pretty big, my biologist father would be so disappointed if I let swimming snakes scare me off, so away we went. Kate sat up front with Jeff and I was in the back making sure Kate stayed seated and keeping a look out for snakes! Yes, I'm a wimp.

One of our wildlife finds:
Thanks for all your hard work Jeff!
I have to thank Dora for setting such a good example for children. Kate had no complaints about wearing a life jacket or staying in her seat because Dora says to stay safe every time she and Boots (the monkey) get on a boat. We had a wonderful adventure!

Superstar!

Need I say more... 

We're Back...

I know, I know, how long has it been since I've posted? It has been so long that blogspot has tons of new features that make it even easier to compose this things! I'm going to follow my friend's advise and TRY not to let a calendar month go by before I update because I've heard loud and clear that you all do miss having updates. Jeff told me the other day that I only needed to do two things to be the perfect wife-tell him "I love you" every day and update the blog. Since I'm pretty sure I do the first thing on a daily basis, here is my attempt to finally be the perfect wife! I'm just throwing many pictures at you without a lot of commentary, but hope you enjoy. A lot of these posts have been sitting in here as drafts and I'm finally posting them, so they go back all the way to Christmas!

Paint the Earth

To all my Chapel Hill girls (Go Heels!)-remember our outings to Paint the Earth? Well here is my little artist doing her own version. She took it really seriously, I don't even think she got any paint on Aunt Gigi's old painting T-shirt that was passed on to us, although she did get it all over her arms.

Hola-Hola

Sadly, my Grandma, Yolanda Hurtarte, died at the end of February after a long, courageous battle with cancer. Kate called her Hola-Hola and still asks about her, but she will tell you that Hola-Hola is with Jesus. We have missed her dearly. Fortunately my aunts from Canada and Guatemala were able to be here and it was neat to see all of them together. Here they are from left to right-my Mom and Kate, Sandra, and Ana.

Uncle Dave

David came to visit over his spring break in March. Jeff enjoyed relaxing with his brother and Kate enjoyed showing off her new playroom and playhouse.

Valentine's Day

We had our neighbors over for a Valentine's Day dinner. Here are Kate and their son Jack enjoying a gourmet meal of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.