The Family Blog

Yeah, it's really me. I tell ya...summer is a busy time. We've been enjoying ourselves and the days we are home for quiet time, I often prefer doing something other than blogging.

I have a bunch of stuff and pictures and such, but I'll tell ya right now, either my newly installed Microsoft Office or maybe it's Photobucket had been giving me issues with any picture that was vertical rather than "landscape". And I'm not going to be fixing them all this time if that's the case again. You'll just have to turn your heads. Sorry. :)

Perhaps the annoyance of it all will cause me to try to figure it out and fix it. But not today, folks!

Here's just a random picture of Easton to start things off:


And Autumn wearing a new dress. I actually bought it on clearance right after she was born. She's got much cuter stuff now but I was trying to be frugal having to outfit a little girl and I bought this for cheap.


As I've mentioned before, we've been so blessed with the hand-me-downs that Miss Miss had quite the festive 4th of July wardrobe. She started on, like, Wednesday with this outfit:


And moved on to this one with a little flag on the front:


See that little hand? That's Russell's little boy "A". We got to meet him but I probably shouldn't be posting his picture all up in Internet-land so he's getting blurred. But he looks like Russell's mini-me. :)

We had a nice time meeting him last week for some swimming. He fit right in. Literally:


I was telling the boys in advance that we were going swimming that day with a new kid who is Russell's little boy but not Lauren's little boy. Easton said, "Is there more to that story?" Ha! Indeed.

The boys borrowed "A"'s inflatable light sabers and holstered them in the backs of their shirts during some Tom & Jerry:


While I gave a very exhausted baby girl a short nap on the floor:


Gramoo probably will not like me sharing this picture but I think her moose hat and her expression is too fun:


That night back at home, Dalton had a very special package waiting for him. We've got some great friends out there and one of them found this shirt and picked it up just for Diddles:

He was so excited. Thank you again, Jessica! He's wearing it over his jammies there but wore it for real the next day:

Total cuteness!


Miss A making a breakfast biscuit mess before getting cleaned up and into yet another festive get-up last Friday:

Both boys wore that shirt for their first Independence Days as well. Easton even wore it for his second too!

Saturday we started off the day in a "Daddy's Little Sparkler" number that you can't see so well:


We were waiting to hear from some friends visiting from out of town. Turns out one of the kids was running a fever so we had to cancel. A little bummed, Easton drew a picture of the fun we would've had. He and D and Paulie all holding hands on the front:


And Autumn (with a bow) and Paulie's two sisters (one with a flower) all holding hands on the back:


We played dollies instead:





(There's a baby in the car seat on the front of the train.)

Sunday was church (as well as the 4th) and the kids were in some red, white and blue:






They're so cute!!!


Our friends Tracy and Michael and Wyatt and Emily came over for dinner and fireworks:






It was pouring rain so our friends were about to leave because we were certain there wouldn't be any fireworks happening. We were wrong!

We stood in our garage and sat in the backs of our cars to watch (we have a pretty perfect view of the town's show from our front yard).

The next day our out of town friends from Saturday were healthy enough for a get together so we met them at a park:






And then we walked to put our toes in the creek nearby:


It was intentional that my kids were all in yellow but a happy coincidence that Paulie was too:

Despite the rolled up shorts everyone still got quite wet.





Tuesday Jason surprised me with a "spontaneous" day off. I'd been hinting/asking for such a thing for awhile and made a good case for it on Monday. So exciting! We just had our regular Tuesday sorts of things, but with him!

Autumn tried on some shoes from my dad with her cute little outfit:


They're too big for now and she was perplexed by them so off they came:


Wednesday was Easton's first day of Vacation Bible School at our church. We took him to that and the little ones and I went grocery shopping. In the afternoon I made them pool noodle light sabers. Even Autumn!


They're a huge hit. Literally. Had to take them away temporarily that first night because of too much people hitting.

Thursday was P.J. day at VBS and Miss Tracy surprised my boys with Toy Story Silly Bandz. Yay!


I'll save Friday (today) for another time when my camera is fully charged. We've got lots more to cover! Enjoy the weekend everyone!