Videos!

This is a video of Jacob just being silly. He loves the camera and has certainly learned how to cheese it up!

The kids playing in the mud!

Jacob learning how to eat with a spoon!

Megan swimming by herself while on vacation!

Megan going down the slide this past winter!

Sweet Pictures

Summer is certainly here and we are exhausted! This summer Megan started swim lessons and on the first day she did all kinds of "first's" like jumping in the water, putting her face in the water, and floating on her back. She really likes the lessons and there are 2 teachers for 3 kids which means it's basically a private lesson. She is also starting gymnastics and loves it too, she is constantly doing somersaults in the living room, complete with "ta-da." This week she has VBS at night so she has been exhausted...yet still fighting sleep.

Jacob continues to amaze us with his abilities and strength. He already hits and I fear biting is in his future. He can throw a small ball across the room and moves his hand like he's dribbling a basketball. Yesterday he did a perfect somersault which he practiced and practiced. It seems he is very persistent and sticks with something until he can figure it out...sometimes with stomping of feet and screaming but he gets there!

Here is Megan sleeping sound after a crazy busy day at Panera for a bagel, Menard's for playing (who knew they had an awesome playground for the kids to play on!), swim lessons, and VBS. Notice in the picture she is not just snuggling one friend...she's snuggling 4 friends (mommy penguin, baby penguin, Caillou, and flamingo)!

The kids helped put the silverware away. Jacob threw it in and Megan placed it correctly...until Jacob knocked over the whole thing and Megan feared for her toes!

I found them under the desk brushing teeth the other day...later in the day I realized Jacob turned off the power strip that goes to the computer.

Yet another smile...yet another sticker on his forehead...placed by sister!

Mud Mud Mud

Today we spent the morning and afternoon at "Aunt Jenny's" (sorry Mike!) with Michael's mom, Luke, and Adam. As you can see this kids had a blast playing in the mud. They had quite the mudslide! This is what summertime is all about! This picture doesn't even come close to capturing the fun. After the mud the washed off and went down the slip-and-slide.

These kids worked up an appetite...ice cream will help!

Jacob came across a deserted bowl and took it upon himself to taste the sweet treat too!

Jacob was not in the mud mood but he enjoyed playing with the water, he managed to soak me twice and I have no idea how Luke managed to stay out of Jacob's wrath!

Friends!

This last week we had some friends over to play. Megan and Schyler enjoyed playing dress-up as you can see!

Stella and Jacob enjoyed playing together too! It was cute to see them interact, share toys, take toys, smile, pout, bring each other their respective blankies, etc. When Stella woke up from her nap, Jacob smiled his biggest smile yet and came over to sit on my lap with Stella...they same think happened later on when Jacob woke up, Stella smiled and came over to sit on my lap, it was cute!

Cute!

He is perfecting his "cheese" smile!

Jacob wasn't so sure about her feet coming near him!

I just love this picture! Stella had no problems getting on the ride-on toy...Jacob had never really showed an interest until he saw her do it, he spent the next 2 days learning how to get on and off and ride the things! I'm not sure what this says for the future because right now he seems pretty competitive!

Cheese!

Vacation Time!

Vacation was wonderful. This was our first family vacation and we went to Branson. We stayed in Kimberling City and drove into Branson all but 2 of the days. We loved our condo (#97), it was Ozark Mountain Resort and we were lucky enough to get a semi-secluded spot complete with a deck and bbq grill (Thanks Dad and Susie!)

We spent a lot of time in the pool which the kids absolutely loved! We also window shopped at the outlet malls. We found the best creek at Stockstill Park that we went to 2 or 3 times. This place was not busy at all and I think we were the only out-of-towners...definitely a place to go if you go to Branson. The playground was awesome and the park had a jogging trail, tennis courts, baseball field, etc. Megan didn't want the playground she only wanted the creek! Of course we forgot to take pictures of the creek. We forgot to take a lot of pictures, I guess that's what happens when you leave the world behind!

The first several days in the pool Megan would not let go of our necks but finally she gained the confidence and took off on her own. We were very proud of her and she was ecstatic as well. The last day we were there an older girl was playing with Megan and the next thing we knew Megan's entire head was soaked and she was crying...apparently the girl though Megan would like to be dunked. Luckily Megan recovered and got back into the water and still had a good time!

This was the small kids pool where Jacob purposely tried to let go of us and dunk himself!

Here are the kids playing cave under the kitchen table, this occupied them for quite some time.

While playing cave a sweet look between the siblings! Ahh, notice the pink paci in Jacob's mouth, poor kid, when it was time to leave for the trip we looked all over and could only find this pink paci to take with us! He didn't want a paci for so long and then he finally started using this one and they don't carry it many places anymore hence why the pink paci was bought in the first place!

We decided to try Dixie stampede with the kids. To get tickets to this show we thought we'd attend a timeshare presentation so we could go to the show for free. OK, so other people have done this and got tickets to tons of shows and it only took a couple of hours...we stopped at one of those ticket outlet places and after 45 minutes we were set up to go see the presentation...once we got to the place the kids went into a childcare place with the other kids and we were there for 3 and a half hours. We kept saying no but they just wouldn't listen. So we figured it out the we basically "made" $10 an hour because the show tickets were around $100. That made us feel a little better but it definitely was not the way to start out vacation, we felt horrible for the kids (even though they seemed to have a good time) and we were exhausted, a whole day wasted...never again! In the end we did enjoy Dixie and the kids loved seeing the horses in action and cheering for the South (our side won of course!)

Here we are at the fish hatchery. Megan was putting her hand in the mystery box where she pulled out a snake skin...after that she didn't want to play that game anymore! She enjoyed the hatchery outside and she especially enjoyed feeding the fish!

Jacob and Michael looking at the fish.

Megan standing in front of the fish.

Jacob's attempts at feeding himself some applesauce! He really enjoyed it, he seems to do better with his left hand so we'll see what happens!

Here are the kids in good spirits!

Here is Megan fixing Michael's hair, complete with ponytails and clips! He is such a good sport about this kind of thing.

On the way home Megan finally fell asleep (her second nap of the entire vacation). She is snuggling her first Build-a-Bear flamingo that she named Homee and her penguin. The car rides weren't too bad although Jacob revolted the last 45 minutes but overall they did great.

This vacation was wonderful and it was great to leave our worries behind and really get away from everything. We didn't have access to the internet for a week and we managed so that was good! Megan is already talking about our next vacation and we can't wait!