Lazy Days of Summer :-)

I love summertime! The kiddos and I have been spending lots of time at my parents pool. Even Baby Girl got in the pool for her first time. It was adorable. She loves her baths, so it was no big deal, she didn't even flinch. Isn't her swimsuit just adorable?

Sis reminds me of myself when I was younger. I LOVED swimming, and could swim for hours. Yup, so does my daughter. She swam for 4 and 5 hours straight a few days last week. She never wants to get out. She still has to be by the side, or use a ring or floaties. But by the end of summer, she just might be swimming on her own :-)

My mom even joined us some last week. My sister was also there, so she had "Baby Girl Duty" inside and mom and I had "pool duty" :-)

Bubby loves swimming too, but gets a little bored quicker than his sister. He will go in after an hour or two and watch a movie, and come back out to go swimming later.

I love that grin of his :-)

Fathers Day 2010

A week late, but better late then never, right? So here's my Fathers Day post. :-) Jer had a great Fathers day. He got lots of love from the kids, and some special homemade presents. Plus some shoes, a book, couple of DVD's, and a new hair cutting set (since his had died). We gave him his presents, went to church, took a few pics, and went to Jer's parents house for a dinner. What a great day! :-)

My parents came to our church for Fathers Day so spend fathers day with me and my sister :-)

Here's me, my daddy, and my sis

Bubba is all daddy's boy!



Baby Girl, celebrating her first fathers day with daddy!

PaPa and Baby Girl

PaPa with 4 out of 5 of the Grandkids (Bubby had gotten in trouble and was crying and throwing a fit)

Daddy with his 3 Kiddos

Hope you and your family had a great fathers day as well!

Summertime fun at Crown Center

Happy Monday, y'all!! Hope everyone had a great Monday. The kids and I did. We were swimming at my moms for 4+ hours this afternoon. We are all a little darker and a lot exhausted! :-)

Back to the reason for this post......we had some summertime fun this past weekend. I just love summertime. Sleeping in....lazy days.....swimming....picnics.....late nights......ice cream breaks.....VBS (can I get a 'amen'?!)....and lots and lots of family togetherness! :-)

This past Saturday was one such occasion. My parents, along with my sister, brother in law and their 2 boys and our kids all went up to Crown Center to have lunch at Fritz (you know, the greasy "restaurant" with the trains that deliver your food? fun stuff!), and make a visit to Clifford the Big Red Dog. They got to see Clifford, and visit the Clifford exhibit there at Crown Center. Lots of fun! Here's some pics for your viewing pleasure! :-)

My parents with 3 out of 5 of the grandkids

And welcome to the grease pit Fritz's!





Sis and her cousin, J

PaPa and Bubby

And we're off to see Clifford!!!

Here are the cousins (minus Baby Girl, who was sleeping peacefully in the stroller, we didn't want to disturb her) :-)

And off to the Clifford exhibit.....

After we left the exhibit, Sis requested ice cream. Of course none of us could turn that down.....

.....and the kids enjoyed a few rides up and down the escalator. It doesn't take much to entertain us......

And if my pics looked like we had soooooo much fun, you don't have to miss out, the Clifford exhibit will be at Crown Center thru September (i believe) and Clifford the Big Red Dog will be there every Sat in June. :-)

Swimming and a Day out with Thomas

My sister and I like to do a kid-swap every so often and watch each others kids and give each other a break. Last weekend was one of those swaps. I took her kids on Friday, and gave her the "day off", and Jer took off work early and we took the kids to our neighborhood pool. The kids had a blast - we ended up staying there for like 5 hours. Tons 'o fun! :-) I seriously think those kids could live in the pool.....throw em a hot dog or a slice of pizza every now and then, and their good to go! :-) (never mind their bathroom issues....eeek!)

Anywho, here's Jer with the 4 kids....

And little Miss Gena.....her first outing at our public pool. She snoozed thru the whole thing :-)

And on Saturday, we wake up to cloudy skies. (and if you are from this area, you know it has been cloudy and rainy here like, nearly everyday it seems like. You'd think this was April again!!! However, it was NOT raining when we woke up.....

So we racked our brains of something to do. Well my sister in law had told us about this "Day Out with Thomas" that was coming to an area close to us. And best of all - it was free admission - which was a MUST when we were bringing along 2 extra kiddos! So we loaded up our 3 in our van, along with my 2 nephews and went to check out "A Day out with Thomas".

Only about 10 minutes after we left our house, the heavens let loose and it started raining.....like torrential downpour kind of rain. Needless to say, we continued on our trek, in hopes that where we were going it would not be raining or it would quit soon. We stopped at a Taco Bell for lunch about 5 minutes from the park, where the Thomas stuff was at, and it was still raining, extremely hard!

So my husband, the always-thinking genius, decided to stop at a gas station, and buy a thing of trash bags (you know, the small box for like $7....?), and cut holes in them to use as ponchos. We had driven an hour thru the rain, packed everything and was ready, we were gonna do this - rain or .....flood!

Unfortunately, the whole Thomas thing was outdoors, which would be great if the weather cooperated. However, most stuff was under tents in the grass.....which made a HUGE muddy mess, EVERYWHERE! It was awful. We got there in the rain, with trash bags over us, tromping thru the mud in the tents, and the kids were all obsessing over their messy shoes and feet, none of them could of cared a lick about any of the train tables set up in the tent. We all just stood there looking at each other - it was quite humerous now, looking back at it.

Matthew eventually started playing with some of the trains on the train tables set up. None of the other kids ever did. They weren't too impressed....

We finally made our way over to another tent, where a magician was putting on a magic show. So that got the kids' attention.....

Finally.....the rain stopped and the sun came out - much to all of ours relief. So we ditched the trash bag ponchos, and went on our way.......

The kids ended up seeing a magic show 3 different times, they liked it so much, here they are, laughing at the hilarious magician...

Before we left, we got their picture with Sir Topham Hat....

And of course, we can't leave without a pic of Thomas! (we skipped out however on the train ride - too expensive!)

And the wonderful camera picture-man was kind enough to hold out his hand with a card just as Jer took this photo.....

And here they are leaving....

In the end, the kids had a good day, once it quit raining and the sun came out! :-)

nevermind :-)

I'm just changing the look/feel of this one......keep this address, this will continue to be our family blog :-)

One major change though - it will now be open to the public, so you don't have to sign in, give a password to view my blog. We'll see how this goes....

I'm moving

I'm moving blogs once again. I need something new. Something different. Something fresh. You get the picture. Am working on it now and will announce my new home "address" soon. :-)

My new blog will be public, for all to view, therefore I will not be using our real names. I'm thinking of pseudo names now. Ideas?

Do YOU have a blog? Leave me a comment! I want to visit you! :-)