extra kiddos

  The little family Pete and I are helping out with the daddy with cancer were back for the weekend. Good times were had by all! I am happy to report their daddy had his stem cell transplant and is day +15 and is doing well. We are hoping he is headed home in the next 5 days or so. The kids did a great job this weekend of playing and getting along! They all got to pick strawberries, play dress up, make your own pizza party and after 7 baths everyone took a time out to watch a video in the big bed.

Little Tarron had not had table food really yet so we broke him in well! He started with Cheerios that we broke in half, after 3 cheerios we advanced to whole Cheerios and by Saturday night we were on to pizza, grapes, pears and Cheerios! talk about a happy boy!!

Then on Sunday a couple friend of ours and their three kids joined the fun. The swing set was a fun time for all. Again all 10 kids did a great job of playing and getting along!! Fun times here!

Ms. Chloe and the Zoo

Ms. Chloe our other summer babysitter started last week and on her second day the kids had convinced her to go to the zoo. From the pictures it looked like they had a great time! We do not usually see open peacocks so that was fun. They each got a seed sticks to feed the birds and never have we had such good luck with the feeding sticks. It was hard to pick just four pictures to share as Chloe really got a lot of neat pictures! There are not as many of Brie, as you can see from her face she was not quite sure about the whole thing. PJ by far was the most attractive to the birds as we have many many photos of him with the birds!

 Maggie was able to get up close and personal as well, we even have one picture where the bird is taking a bite of her finger. The poor thing looked more than surprised in that photo so I opted not to share.

 Makayla usually has good luck, a couple years older just means more patience and understanding!

Big THANKS to Ms. Chloe for having such a good time with them at the zoo!

Locks of Love

 A picture of the group before the big haircuts. We buzzed PJ's hair a couple weeks ago, while I have photos of the event I completely forgot to put them up on the blog. Sorry little buddy!

A

 Maggie has been wanting shorter hair for a very long time! I finally gave in and she donated her pony tails to Locks of Love! She was very excited to be helping another girl who would have hair because of her. Talk about a major cut! She just smiled the entire time! and is so proud of her new doo! The salon we went to was fabulous! they took care of everything! Maggie should get something acknowledging her donation from Locks of Love.

 Makayla too decided to go short again as well! I did not realize how much hair she was about to have cut off! I really like her hair cut though.

 Brie cheese just needed to have a haircut again. I only cut her hair a few times a year. I am hoping this time around her hair will seem more full and thick. It always amazes me how just a couple inches can make such a difference!

 Here is the group shot after the cuts! So cool and comfy!!

We often get comments on the how much Makayla and Maggie look alike. While Pete and I do not see it as we see them together all the time I suspect with similar haircuts we will be hearing a lot more of how much they look alike! They were both so happy tonight after their showers as they were able to wash their hair in half the amount of time! Talk about cute girls! love them!! (we brought Makayla's hair home and put it in the strawberries and garden as human hair is supposed to repeal rabbits, deer, and some bugs! I hope it works! I think our bunny population doubles every night!)

Red, White, and Blue pictures

 I am such a fan of the red, white and blue pictures. While this was not one of my favorite outfit combos, nor photo sessions here are a couple of the ones taken.

 What a bunch of goofballs!
I cannot get this last picture to flip, sorry! It is one of the better ones we got out of the numerous ones taken!

Maggie at 7

Maggie turned 7 a while back and though I did get her photos done I have done nothing else. I have not sent out one Thank you note, nor any photos from her 7 year old picture session. I was given a disk of her photos and so I thought I would share this way. We were able to get a few natural smiles which are hard to come by with this one!

butterflies

The big girls got butterfly houses in their Easter baskets, yes that was in March. We finally ordered the caterpillars and they arrived and we were able to watch the whole life cycle. The caterpillars grew to be 4 times their original size and they did exactly like the instructions predicted. The kids were able to watch a couple of the butterflies actually emerge and stretch their wings the first time. We had to place fresh flowers in they habitat and feed them sugar water. Those butterflies actually got excited when you gave them fresh sugar water!  Once the butterflies emerge they encourage you to set them free after 4 days or so. This was a very cool little deal and one that I would be willing to repeat sometime!

 These are the pictures were got while setting the butterflies free.

 Maggie's butterfly is sitting right on the edge of the container. Makayla's is flying at her right shoulder or on the left middle side of the photo. All eight butterflies seemed very happy to be free. They flew around our strawberries awhile and landed in one of our trees for awhile as well. If you click on the tree picture you can see the butterfly middle, rightish, toppish area of the photo. :~)

strawberries

We had a few strawberry plants last year, this year they have spread and this year the kids are collecting 7 to 10 strawberries a day. They are thinking it is the coolest thing ever! We have blueberry bushes planted in there as well but they are struggling a little. Hopefully next year they will thrive and produce some berries for us as well!

fun with friends

 We had friends come over for dinner and we have not played at our house forever so the kids had a great time! We were able to get a couple good pictures! I am sure the girls slept well that night. We were very happy to have our friends over being able to catch up again!

Grandma

My mom has been in and out of town several times in the last month or so and we seem to keep forgetting to take photos! Not this time, we caught her! Mom came in for an overnight and played with us for awhile. We always LOVE seeing her and hate to see her go. She has such a pleasant spirit about her that it really does rub off on us when she is here. A huge THANK YOU to her for all the work she does while she is here and the time she spends with us! We LOVE LOVE LOVE her and we always look forward to when we get to see her again!

Day 9 and a big bike!

 So poor Miss Lauren day 2 of her first full week and PJ is on day 9 of no training wheels and she called me at 10 am. "We have an emergency!" not a call I have ever gotten nor one I want to get again! I mainly got "it seems like a lot of blood, it is bad and face". I had her bring him to my office and a good thing she did. PJ had crashed his bike into a concrete wall on a bridge and tried to permanently change his smile. The cut from the inner corner of his mouth out and down was impressive. Again let me clarify it is not good to be impressive in medicine! Anyway I have a fantastic doctor down the hall from me and he does a fantastic job with plastics and he made PJ's smile go the right way again. We ended up with too many to count stitches in three layers! The little man was a trooper and did a great job, even fell asleep as he put them in. I did feel badly for Lauren because who wants something to happen when you are in charge, but once again we were thrilled with how she handled everything! We all knew she was a great nurse! The above picture is right after we got home and the two of them were reunited!

 The picture to the left was the next day. The one to the right was the day we went in to have them removed.
 The last picture is of PJ today, 2 days after having the stitches out. Again a huge thank you to the doctor that helped PJ out! In a short amount of time I do not think you will be able to hardly tell there is a scare there!

Miss Lauren!!!!

 MISS LAUREN IS BACK!!!!! YEA!!!! We are fortunate to begin our summer with last summer's fantastic babysitter Ms. Lauren!! The kids were so thrilled to get to hang out with her the first couple of weeks of summer vacation! The little Brie has added a new dynamic to the days, but I think they managed to have a little fun along the way.  Lauren graduated in May and had a little time before accepting her new job and was willing to take the kids for a few days. We are so grateful and feel so lucky to have her back  in their lives. She is such a positive and energetic  example of being happy and living life that we are in heaven again! The kids have kept her busy with movies, checking out her new place, water activities,  park trips and who knows what else. Ms. Lauren is taking her grown up job soon so our days with her are limited but we love the time she does spend with our kids none the less. Thank you so much Lauren for being you which is a whole lot of awesome!

Cousins

 I skipped a weekend post sorry. Jill and Eric and boys came into town for the weekend to run warrior dash with us. Mark and Carol also came in to watch the crew while we went on our adventure. Once again Warrior Dash was a blast, however no pictures this year as it was raining cats and dogs the whole time! We were all so wet and cold that we all just wanted to finish and dry off and warm up!! Lots of mud and rain but oh so much fun! definitely a must do again next year! Pete did the race this year as well and had a good time!! Mark and Carol did a great job of keeping the crew under control as well. It was a very fun filled weekend in spite of the relentless rainfall! As you can tell by the silliness these cousins can always have fun!! Thanks for the visit everyone!!

Father's Day

We had to do an early Father's day celebration as Mr. Pete was going to go buy his own present that I had in the closet! So Memorial day weekend he ran to the store and we quickly threw together an impromptu happy daddy's day! Yes he was pleased with the sandals we had gotten him and he also did not have to go shopping! Then on June 16th we had a low key day, getting things done that needed to be done. After all the work was done we were able to sneak away and go fishing for a little while in the evening.  We could ask for a better daddy for our house. He is such a great example of love, kindness, and patience! May God bless him and us that we may have many many more Father's Days together! We all love you Pete!