Jam Packed Birthday Month

July is a crazy month around here - there are so many birthdays!  Grandparents (all but 1!), cousins, friends, even my grandfather!  It definitely kept us busy!  We got to spend time with each of the birthday girls and boy on their actual day this year - it was fantastic!

 Here are the crazies with Cee Cee while we were celebrating! Love this picture!

And the delicious cake!  There's nothing better than a Darlene's cake - we currently have one here (but not for much longer) from my birthday!  YUM!

And I love this picture of my Meme playing with Ryan!

And Jack loves to hop up in Uncle Will's lap and give him huge hugs...so sweet!

And just 5 days later, we celebrated Brad's momma's birthday!  And guess what - another Darlene's cake!

Ready to blow out the candles!  Great picture - except all the stuff on the counters behind her.  Oops!

And a cute picture of the kiddos with Grandma!

And just the next day, we got to celebrate Papa's birthday!  We ate at a delicious BBQ place not far from our house (and we snuck in his favorite...chess pie)!  Love this picture of this crazy crew!

And I happened to notice this amazing outtake - ha!  Each of the kids' expressions is priceless!  This outtake was the first picture I took - and then they finally cooperated and the cute one was the last one I took!

We had fun celebrating these folks!  It doesn't hurt that it all involved yummy food and cake or pie.  :)  And of course the company was fun too!

 

4th of July Trip

Welcome to a new edition of blog catch-up!  Here we are making plans for Thanksgiving and I am just now posting about the 4th of July! Ha!  Enjoy :)

 

We all loaded up (and when I say all, I mean everyone...including Sadie) to visit some great friends in Virginia!  Everyone did great on the drive, thankfully!  We only play movies on the DVD player in the van when we are on roadtrips, so it is our saving grace when we are in the van!

The first full day we were there, we hung out around the house.  It was nice to relax and do nothing and visit!  Here is a picture of me, Katie, and one of their boys!

Then the next day was the 4th!  Katie and I matched!  Isn't that the sweetest? Ha.

All 3 crazies were sporting their patriotic goods!  Goodness how they've changed since July - especially Jack and Ryan!

And a family shot!  Love this picture!

Ryan even cooperated for a selfie with me! (PS: I see this picture of me and can definitely tell that I've lost weight.  Wow!)

Sadie had the time of her life on our trip!  She was outside and playing as much as possible.  She did have to stop and take a break in the shade from time to time!

That morning, we all drove around and went to an overlook that was beautiful!  I happened to get this picture of all 5 kiddos together.  Love it!

And Brad and I actually got a good one together!

And this is one that will be in a frame once I make time to change pictures out - the whole crew!

That evening we headed out to get ready for some fireworks!  It was so neat to see them over the fair!

Another picture of me and my girl - and our blue eyes! :)

Then it was finally time!  The fireworks show was amazing!  The kids loved them - even Ryan was in a trance watching them!

The next day we hung out and played outside - so great!

Katie with the boys - who knows what they were up to.  Probably up to no good!

The next day it was time for us to head home - we always have such a fun time with them and hate to leave!  Here are the big kids before we all loaded into the car to begin our adventure!

And we stopped at Sonic on the way home - its just easy!  This guy got out of his carseat so he could stretch out some...he loved acting like he was driving!

We can't wait to see our friends again - hopefully before next summer!

 

Summer Catch Up: June Edition

Well, hey there! Welcome back! I thought I'd take a moment and work on my summer update.  I won't post a ton because that would just be incredibly long.  But I thought I'd share a little bit from each month over the summer (mainly for when I print this bad boy into a book)!  I know I did a little bit from June with the boys' birthday parties, but I wanted to do a little bit more!

 

June brought the beginning of "summer school" for Jack!  He went to the preschool in our neighborhood 3 days/week for the summer.  It was amazing. :) Here is his first day!  Just looking at this (5 months later - wow!), he has changed so much!

We also had the beginnings of walking!  Ryan started walking behind push toys quite efficiently!

Katie and I got to enjoy a day of fun together.  I remember that day like it was yesterday.  I can't wait to do this again!

We ventured to Cheekwood for some fun!  Love Katie's side ponytail!  We will definitely be doing this again soon too.  It is so fun there and the kids love the treehouse and trains!

We celebrated Ryan's first birthday!  It was a rainy day, so Brad was picked up Jim n Nick's to bring home.  The main reason was that Ryan loves their cheesey muffins.  Well, Brad got home and they didn't put the order of muffins in the bag.  I called just to let them know AND SOMEONE DELIVERED TWO DOZEN OF THEM TO OUR HOUSE THIRTY MINUTES LATER.  I may have told them it was my son's birthday and he loves them. :)  It was so sweet.  And clearly Ryan was excited!

Katie had vacation bible school at our church!  I love that our church has such a great program for kiddos.  And VBS at our church is a big deal - including all of the volunteers, there were over 1300 people involved (including all of the kiddos attending)! Wow!

We ate some delicious BBQ at Edley's and followed it up with Jeni's ice cream to celebrate the birthday of a friend!  Such a fun night out.

And another VBS shot.  Katie and Hannah Jo have been friends since they were 15 months old.  Amazing!

At the end of the week, they have a family night and have a "family worship" where we learn what the kids talked about all week and sing all of their songs.  And there are bounce houses and Chick Fil A and food trucks and fun!

One more of Katie and HJ.  Sweet girls!

Brad and I went to a get together with his work folks - it was great to see some of them and meet others.  And a fun afternoon out!

And Jack turned THREE!  Sweet boy.

On his actual birthday, we had neighbor friends over to play and have cupcakes.  We got Jack this little bounce house for his birthday and all the friends made a tunnel for him to run through and be the first kiddo on there!  Fun memories!

The crew!  Ryan was there too, but I didn't trust all of them on the bounce house with him :) And all of them didn't end up bouncing at the same time.  We usually did three at a time, which ended up being girls and then boys!

Blowing out his "3" candle!

We took quite a few walks this summer too!  It just so happened that there was some construction on the other side of the neighborhood, so that was what I used to convince Jack it was a good idea to go!

And we celebrated Father's Day!  The crazy crew with Brad before he opened his goodies!

Then we walked to the pool, swam and played, and then walked home.  Whew!

We ate dinner with my Dad that night.  And I got a picture of just us!  Love it!

And then we got a picture of Daddy and the kiddos dressed cute.  Except Ryan wouldn't have any of the smiling :)

Katie and Jack did swim lessons!  And they did amazing!  Jack went from clinging onto me like a koala bear to, a week later, jumping off the diving board!  And Katie did well with learning strokes!

Here are a few more from that week - Jack finally relaxed in the water enough to float on his back!  And it was hard to get picture of Katie - she loves going under water and swimming there rather than staying on the surface for the strokes that need to be there. 

Katie learned all about Shopkins at Hanna Jo's birthday party.  And the obsession is still around now - 5 months later!

Brad and I celebrated 9 years of marriage!  Wow!  Here we are at dinner.  This is one of my favorite pictures of us in a while!

And we got to have an evening out with friends the day of Jack's birthday party!  It was so fun - I always love getting together with friends and having adult time!

We had a girls night at a local boutique - it was after hours and we brought wine and they supplied appetizers.  We got to shop and try on and laugh and then save some money on the things we decided to get!  Doesn't get much better than that!

And Katie lost another tooth to finish up the month!  She is still holding steady at 3 teeth, but the top two front teeth are super loose - I hope she loses them before Christmas so she can sing that song!

Check back to see what all we did in July and August!  And any other fun things I may have missed over the Fall -- including our Halloween!  I am going to get caught up by the end of the year for sure!