Last night we went to the barbecue of the YMCA across the street. We met Eric, Lori and Eric there and saw several people we knew.

Nora and Eli spent some time in the bouncy castle, but then it started raining with thunder and lightning so most activities were halted. We went to the pavilion in the back where the food was and had a nice hamburger and hotdog. A taste of summer.

I spoke with several people from Y itself, including someone who is working on the redesign of the building. They hope to have a plan by the end of the year, which is exciting.

Today I voted for the first time in a U.S. election and it felt great.

I've always enjoyed following politics. For years Sasha and I have followed the Presidential campaigns and watched many debates, and since a few years I also started following the local Arlington politics more closely. I became U.S. citizen in January and today I could finally cast my vote.

The boys woke up around 6.00 am. That's too late to really go back to bed, though also too late to really feel rested. In any case, I was at the polling station at 7.00 am I was voter number 8. The election was a Democratic primary for the Arlington County Board. There were six candidates running for two open positions. The general election will be in November. The candidates were all quite similar to each other; I ended up voting for Fallon and Cristol.

Someone asked: "was it everything you hoped for?" and yes, I am very happy that I can vote now and I was really a bit emotional when I left the polling station.

The last time I voted in an election, then in the Netherlands, was over ten years ago.

Sasha and Nora were sitting at the table and I wanted to show Sasha something. All of a sudden Nora says: "I also wanna see!" -- in perfect English.

We pretended that we didn't understand -- never mind the fact that Sasha and I mostly speak English together, haha. Clearly, her English is getting better and starting to creep in her regular life. Obviously we want her to be fluent in English, but her speaking Bulgarian and Dutch well is also very important to us and the only way to make that happen is have her speak those two languages exclusively when she talks with us.

Her Dutch is very good though. Here are some of the things she just said:

"op maandag als baba Snezha komt ga ik een taart maken want Meneer Prascho wordt weer jarig"
"in die koffer, in die tas, zit nog meer Duplo. Ja. In die tas zit nog meer eten. Er zit[ten] ook nog aarbeien voor taart.

(I guess it is time for her breakfast, haha). She makes jokes in Dutch too. Asides from saying "maar weetje wat het is baby", she made her own joke words: sneeuwpoepje and hagelslak

We started reading to the boys. They enjoy it.

Nora wouldn't want to miss it either!

Nora started swimming lessons last week. Sasha is taking her four times per week to the YMCA across 13th Street.

The lessons are in a small group of four kids and Nora is the youngest. She really enjoys it.

Those cute bunnies enjoyed our lilies.

Tonight we placed the boys on the play mat for some tummy time and Leo started rolling over from his tummy to his back. He must have liked it because he did it five or six times in a row, much to our delight.

Leo and Adrian will be 100 days old tomorrow! As I'm writing this they are sitting in their bouncy chairs, smiling at me. They will nap soon.

The 100-day milestone is pretty much the last one in the Excel sheet that I put together when they were just born. It's amazing how quickly they grow.

Here are a few pictures.

The boys now really enjoy it when someone plays with them. They smile and they coo and it's a lot of fun to interact with them. Nora feels that too. In the beginning she needed some encouragement to talk to them, but yesterday over dinner when Leo was on my lap and I was talking with Sasha, I noticed that Nora was talking to Leo.

Earlier, when I was holding Adrian to practice sitting up, the boys were facing each other and they started cooing to each other. They definitely notice each other now, which is very cute.

Today we took out a big part of the ivy in our front yard. It was creeping towards the neighbors and it's always encroaching on our lawn so we decided to remove a good chunk of it.

Bruce came out when I started and he loaned me some of his tools, including a big pickaxe which was very helpful.