Ok so we’re a month late in the posting - but the Gay Pride parade has become a bit of a tradition around here. In fact, this year’s parade was Grace’s third. Always focused on the most pressing issues of the day, this year’s parade can be summarized by the following: Gay Pride in NYC = Mazda of Lodi, New Jersey and Diet Pepsi. Grace and Lucy joined their friend Owen to bask in this, and other important lessons:
Lesson #1: Gay men are tall and colorful.
Lesson #2: Babies at Gay Pride parades are shoo-ins for beads:
Lesson #3: You don’t have to dress any differently than your average tourist to march in the parade.
Lesson #4: Three babies/toddlers under the age of three can never, ever look at the camera at the same time for a picture.
A birthday party where “swinging” is involved has two very different meanings depending on your age - and Grace and Lucy wasted no time getting into the spirit of things while wishing Grace’s friend Jacob a happy birthday. Here Lucy entertains the masses by posing for her own version of the World War II ”I want you for the U.S. Army, Enlist Now” poster:
Grace, meanwhile, is becoming quite the thrill seeker - here she is trying to do a full 360 on the swing:
Grace and Lucy did decide, eventually, that they should join the actual party. There are certain things about Grace that make her dad think they’re definitely related - like spending less time coloring your planter than you do coloring your tongue during the party’s group art project:
And there are other moments, like delicately selecting a carrot from the vegetable tray when there were about eight perfectly good un-eaten pizzas for lunch, that make her dad wonder a bit… (FYI: the boy to her left is the birthday boy)
They may have been born in New York City, but Grace and Lucy apparently know that the “Kentucky farmgirl” gene resides somewhere in their DNA. A brief upstate trip to Sprout Creek Farm in Poughkeepsie was all Grace needed to know she wants to spend a lot more time among the goats, chickens and pigs. As for Lucy, she felt so at home, that she slept through the whole experience.
Lucy seemed to take the “pope” posting of a few weeks ago seriously - despite sleeping through the farm tour, she seemed to come alive upon meeting a priest:
After more than one year being classified as a “turtle”, Grace has officially graduated to the much more prominent classification of “Dolphin” - Lucy, however, will remain a “tadpole” or as her graduation t-shirt said “tapole”.
Grace and Lucy weren’t the only ones to “graduate” so here are a few class shots:
The end of summer also marked the end of French class, which Grace celebrated by making an art project without having bathed first:
Few things are as delightful as spending a little time with your older sister (who has a considerable thicket of hair) - particularly if you’re at an outdoor concert, just ate an excessive amount of rice cereal and realized that your parents forgot to bring anything to wipe your face with:
Under the pretense of “Grace, let me give you a hug” - Lucy found a way to get cleaned up while showing a little affection for her sister at the same time:
You can tell how well two people get along when they can both laugh at the fact that one just placed close to one pound of something akin to spackling compound in the other’s hair:
Eventually, the girls where able to enjoy a little bit of the music from Raul Midon who gave a free concert in the City:
After an outfit change, Grace got to spend a little quality time with Mom:
And in case anyone’s curious, here’s what Raul looks like:
