summer love.

I'm so behind on all the pictures and stories that I want to share on here that I almost by passed these pictures...but looking at them again, I just couldn't skip them. Jayda and Isaiah are such good friends...you can tell just by looking at these pictures how much they care for each other.

Today was another example of their friendship. We went to the library (Isaiah, Jayda, Jonah, Levi and I), and friendly little Isaiah sees a couple other little girls. He says, "Hi, is that your brother?" to the older little girl, and she says, "No, this is my sister." Isaiah then says, "This is my brother, his name is Levi, and this is my Best Friend" and points to Jayda, and then says, "and this is my friend." and points to Jonah. It was so sweet. They really are best friends.

and Happy Father's Day Daddy!

We had a nice day together as a family on Father's Day. It was nice to celebrate the special day doing fun things that Mark enjoys.

First we surprised daddy with a few special gifts and cards. Isaiah gave him the one he made...
and Levi gave him one too.
Next he opened his two gifts -- I think he really liked them and was a little surprised to get them! An Ipod nano and a Jason Mraz cd.
Next, Isaiah and I had work to do...finish up the cake we promised daddy!
Then off to church and then the ball diamonds to visit Mark's dad who was umpiring on Father's Day. When we got there, they needed more umpires, so Mark umpired a few games while I took the boys home for a nap.
Daddy promised Isaiah a really big piece of cake if he took a good nap...he did good - look at their HUGE pieces of cake!
Then the boys had fun being boys...
and then we played in the rain...

What a great day.

Happy Father's day Dad!

My sister and her daughter, Liahna, came to celebrate Father's day with my dad on Friday and Saturday before Father's day.

My dad got out the cribbage board and lots of cribbage games were played.

My mom (and dad) got to spend lots of time with her grandkids.

The cousins got to play.

My sister taught Isaiah how to "make a pizza" and "fly places" using her preschool gymnastics experience! He thought it was really neat when she did it, but much less cool when I tried to do it again with him a few days letter.

And the little ones munched on raw carrots while we played farkle.

My sister left Saturday afternoon at naptime for Liahna so she could take her nap in the car. Later after Isaiah and Levi napped, my parents and our family went out to find a few treasures.

Happy Father's Day dad!

playing in the rain!

The weather here has been pretty crazy--lots of rain, HOT temperatures, thunderstorms, and tornado warnings! Thank goodness we have central air conditioning! (which we thought was broken the other day!! but luckily the breaker had just tripped when the power went out!--and thank goodness for friends who know the things to check before we paid the repair people $79 to come see what's wrong!)

Anyway, with all of the crazy weather, we've been doing crazy things! One really fun thing we did the other day was play in the rain!! It was a really, really warm evening rain, the temperature had to have been in the upper 80s to 90s and it was just HOT. I mentioned to Mark that when I was a little girl, my sister and I LOVED to play in the rain. My mom would let us run around outside with all of her tupperware containers and we would try to catch the rain...we'd put them on the rain spouts all around the house and run around and around the house trying to fill up the bigger containers. Let me tell you, we had a blast doing it. If I remember right, it was one of my sister and my favorite activities as a kid, right mom?

So after telling Mark this, he decided that he needed to run out in the rain with Isaiah. And boy did they have fun!!

Then he asked me to get them a few bowls. After a few seconds, he said, "what was the point of this again?" ha ha...I guess filling up bowls with rain water isn't quite as exciting when you are older than 8 years old.

I decided that I needed to go play too.

Levi happily watched all of the fun from the front step...
Until daddy came and got him and he got wet too! It was tons of fun...then the tornado sirens went off and we had to go inside to the basement - bummer.

The pictures are a little cloudy because it was so hot that my camera lens was fogging up!

Happy Birthday Dakota!

Our nephew, Dakota, turns four this month! It's hard to believe he's that old already! It seems like just yesterday he was born! He had his birthday party last Sunday to celebrate his special day! The party was at a big picnic shelter at a park south of town. We all had a great time!

It was a big party--lots of people wanted to help celebrate--here's a picture of all the kids!

Grandma Cindy was in charge of the games... First they played "duck, duck, gray duck" (same thing as duck, duck, goose). Isaiah didn't quite get it :) so daddy came in to help! Red Light

Green Light
The Birthday Boy.
Our sweet little Niece Khia - Dakota's little sister.

Isaiah and Dakota are good friends...they love it when they get to play together! Here they are looking for polar bears... after this Isaiah came running into the shelter area saying, "Everybody hide there are polar bears coming!!!"Happy Birthday Dakota!

Isaiah says...

Isaiah is a funny little boy...He is so smart ... and understands so much... I thought I'd share a few of the funny things he has been saying lately.

1-- A few weeks ago Mark picked Isaiah and Levi up from Laura's and had them in the car on the way home. Isaiah said, "Let's go geocaching." Daddy said, "we can't buddy, we have to go home and eat supper. And the GPS is in mommy's car." Isaiah says, "I'm going to count to three daddy." (Like he's getting in trouble---we use the one, two, three method on Isaiah and it usually works pretty good).

2-- For some reason I typically let Isaiah pick out what jammy's he wants to wear...He usually has a hard time deciding and almost ALWAYS picks the spiderman ones (we now have 3 pair because of this--good thing he's popular and I found them for 50 cents at a garage sale!)...I'm not really sure why he thinks Spiderman is so great--especially because I'm not sure he even understands who/what Spiderman is...One night he picked a spiderman T-shirt that isn't really jammys but we use it for bed...and so there are no pants that go with it...so I picked a pair with dinosaurs on them and brought them out for him to put on...he looks at the jammy bottoms and then looks at me and says, "THAT DOESN'T MATCH!!!" He has been so into matching and finding and pointing out things that match. If he sees two red cars he will say, "those match!" or if he finds two shirts that both have a truck on them he'll say that they match.

3--The first day of our kitchen project I had to work all day so the boys were at Laura's house. When Mark brought them home, the kitchen sink and all of the kitchen counter had been ripped out. Isaiah saw it and in a very concerned voice says, "Who did this?" he was quite upset about it. After some explaining and showing him the new sink, dishwasher, etc, he's more okay with it. He's also very interested in the "worker" who's fixing our kitchen and LOVES to watch him (I've been home Tuesday and Wednesday) he keeps peeking in to see how he's doing. Thankfully the contractor that we hired is very nice and likes it when Isaiah checks in on him!

4--Isaiah is really starting to be more affectionate and express himself...The other day we were at the park and my mom met us there. He saw her and went running and yells, "I MISSED YOU!" For a long time he's said "I love you" back if you said it to him, but now he is often the one to say it first.

5--Isaiah has been crawling out of his crib (yes--crib still!:) and coming into our room in the morning for the past few weeks...one of these days we'll put the toddler rails on!...a few mornings ago he crawled in with us (and Levi) and snuggled for awhile. Mark asked Isaiah if he dreamed about anything and Isaiah says,"yeah, birds." "Birds? What kind of birds?" Daddy asks. "Bluebirds." he said. "Oh...did you dream about anything else?" "Yeah...bees" ha ha ***since this day, we've asked him several more times what he dreamed about and he has ALWAYS responded with birds, and if we ask what color they are always blue.***

6--This past weekend we went out geocaching and ended up going to one that was really tough. We'd been looking for a little while (maybe 10 minutes) and couldn't find it. Finally Isaiah shouts out, "Come out, come out, wherever you are treasure!!" Too cute!

7--After the Buck's game I forgot to take out the baseballs that the boys received from my friend's mom Jan from the diaper bag (Thanks again Jan!) Isaiah found them in the bag one day at Laura's house. He showed her the balls and said, "a deer did this" as he pointed to the autograph where the Buck's mascot had signed. It took Laura a minute to realize what he was talking about... ha ha.

He's such a fun little boy, I could list stories all day long of how cute and sweet he is...

neighborhood picnic

When we moved into our new neighborhood, we knew we liked it because of the beautiful nature around our house, the bike trails are just a few minutes away, there are two very nice parks right around the corner, and it is a great location in town...

and then a few weeks ago we got an invitation to a neighborhood picnic--and I liked our neighborhood even more! They amazing thing is, this neighborhood has been having an annual summer picnic since 1916!!!

The picnic was this past Sunday at one of the parks right down the street. We had a fun time and met lots of our neighbors!

The party started with the adults talking and the kids playing...

Levi showing off that he can walk up and down the tables...

funny thing, in the picture below is the husband and wife that owned our house before us--they just happened to be at the park while the picnic was going on!
Next it was time to EAT! Everyone was to bring any dish they wanted to share...there were lots of good things--Yummy!

After everyone was stuffed full, there were games for the kids.

A race!

Isaiah was doing pretty good until they got to the other side and were supposed to run back...he just kept running, after he heard us yelling for him to come back, he turned around and finished the race (in last place!!:)

Silly boy.

What a fun Sunday afternoon!

our new kitchen!

When we moved into our new house, there was just one thing I wished I could change about it--the kitchen...and more specifically the fact that it didn't have a dishwasher (to wash/disinfect all the bottles and sippy cups that come along with having 4 little ones around here!). I told Mark from the beginning that I loved the house but if we bought it, I wanted a dishwasher ASAP. So a month or so ago, we agreed to make a few minor adjustments to the kitchen to make room for the dishwasher and utilize the space a bit better. The kitchen is quite small so it is important to make the most of all of it's space.

My mom's friend's husband does home repair/improvements on his own so we asked him to come over and look at it with us. He agreed to make the changes we wanted for a really reasonable price...so we asked him to start as soon as he could...which was this past Monday.

He was able to tear out the old counter, sink and peninsula cupboard thing and replace it with a couple new cupboards, new counter, sink, faucet and install a few new tiles all in one week!

Before:

Day 1: Getting out the old...counter, sink, faucet, and cupboard.
Day 2: adding new boards for the new counter to sit on & installing new cupboards. I was home with all four kids that day--Isaiah and Jayda had a good time checking out what the "worker" had done while he was gone on his lunch break.
Day 3: fixing the tile floor.
No pictures...I forgot that day...oops!

Day 4: Installing the new counter and sink.
Day 5: the day of plumbing...installing the dishwasher, garbage disposal and making the sink work (without leaking--Day 4 he had the sink plugged in but it leaked).
The finished room!
(well, almost, he has to come back tomorrow to do a few finishing things but otherwise it's all done! Except the part of a wall that we need to paint--see the 2nd picture)
The boys had fun checking out the new cupboards...
We love it!! What a huge change it made for us!