a new (well, to me anyway) editing technique on some of my pictures. Gives them a soft, almost erethral, dreamy kinda look to them. Apparently, it’s supposed to work best on landscape type shots, but thought I would give it a try with the bicycle and gate. Also used some urban acid on the bike. What do you think?

Ok, so I don’t have any pictures of him doing it (yet) cause you have no idea what a fiasco it is lugging the "good" camera down to the beach. And the pool at the beach club is the only "big" pool he’s allowed to go into with swimmy diapers. Anyway, he’s been going in to the pool every beach day with either John or myself, wearing a swim vest. He was doing OK, just enjoying being in the pool, but sinking even though wearing the vest or flipping over (saying "slippery" while doing it). So we really couldn’t let go of him, even though he would push away from us. But…today he got it. He can totally swim by himself without holding on (of course, still wearing the vest). He loves going back and forth to the stairs. He jumps into the pool from the side yelling "cannonball"- just like the big boys. He even went under a few times and even though he didn’t really LIKE being under, he didn’t cry or anything. So brave! Nelson and I were talking about the difference we saw in the big boys when they were first starting to swim and Timmy, and I said it was night and day (they used to be really scared of the pool until they were tall enough to stand-they would scream if they went under like someone was cutting off a leg). Nel’s reply…it’s like night and marbles. That’s how different. I guess having the big boys to emulate and seeing how much they like it makes it a lot easier for Timmy. And he totally KNEW he was doing it alone- he had this big, proud smile on his face everytime he swam. And yelled out "I did it!!!". So cool.

So the boys started their first "official" golf lessons now that we joined a country club. And they are LOVING it. Even though it seems kinda ‘snotty’ to belong to a country club, it really is a nice place and the people are all very nice and friendly. I was surprised too. But the pools are super and all the boys love them, and now adding golf into the mix dosen’t hurt either. I must mention the great time they had riding around in the golf cart- it may have been the highlight of the day. Apparently, they are doing pretty well at golf. They can’t wait to play the course for real. It might be a while til that happens though-I don’t think they can hit the ball very far yet. They also started swimming lessons there, so maybe they will finally learn how to REALLY swim. I mean they can be in the deep end of the pool for hours and not drown, but they don’t really know any of the strokes. They mentioned joining the swim team there, but that would be slightly difficult since they don’t know how to swim. Maybe next year. And don’t you just love the golf gloves?

A long, long time ago when we first joined the beach club, we met identical twin girls: Colleen and Erin. I don’t know if it was the twin thing that drew them together, or just the fact that they really liked eachother, but since that first summer when the boys were one and the girls were three, they have been stuck together like glue. Every single summer their mom and I say "this is the last summer that they are going to play together". We figure it’s gonna get weird with the whole boy/girl thing, but thankfully it hasn’t. In fact, they are tighter than ever. It’s funny cause each twin has their assigned twin. Jack & Erin (red and red, 4 letters and 4 letters, calmer and calmer), Patrick & Colleen (blue and blue/green, 7 letters and 7 letters, drama and drama). We don’t know how they picked out the right one, but they did from the very beginning. The girls are way into the Mets as are the boys, so they play a lot of beach baseball. And they went to their very first Mets game together tonight. They were soo super excited about that.

There were so many times over the summers that I took both the boys and the girls for walks up and down the beach together and you can only imagine the looks and questions I got walking around with two sets of twins. I bet John got a few of those tonight at the game! Here are some shots…twins x2 at 2 and 4, and again at the boys 1st communion in May at 7 and 9.