Grandpa's Visit

Continuing our Summer of Family, my dad came to visit last weekend. We LOVED having him here, though Ali and Logan were confused as to why Grandma wasn't here too. They're a pair, right? (Funny side note: Mom went to my brother Michael's place while my dad was here. People in Michael's ward think our parents are divorced since they never visit together! They are not, I promise. They just like to divide and conquer!)

Ali liked Grandpa's "furry mask" (his goatee!):

Here is Eli with Grandpa. The kids were having another parade and this was their addition. I'm not sure why, but the sight of this made me smile:

Two cute guys:

Come again soon, Grandpa!

The Summer of Family

I have decided to call this summer "The Summer of Family" because between April and July of this year, our family will have seen 6 out of our 8 combined siblings (and their families), as well as both sets of parents (though lucky for us seeing Jason's parents really isn't that hard to do), and both sets of my grandparents! We so appreciate the Barlows, the Todd Eldredge family, and the JD Quillen family for coming to Illinois and to Emily and both sets of my grandparents for coming to Colorado while we're there to make this such a great summer. We're sad that we don't get to see Michael and his family but we're glad that we won't see Jesse because that would mean something went wrong on his mission:) Maybe next summer we can catch up with those two.

So anyway, here are some pictures from the Barlow's visit. As always, it was so fun to see how sweet those big cousins are with our little kids.

Hooray for The Summer of Family!

Our First Garden

I heard of these garden plots you can rent right by our house for $15 a season and I thought, "Wow! What a fun family thing it would be to plant a garden together!" I'm not sure "fun" is the word any of us would use to describe our experience so far, but I'm hoping that will change. (In fact, when Logan looked over my shoulder as I'm writing this he said, "I did not like the garden anyway. I cried and I wanted to go home!")

And honestly, so far it has been a lot of time getting the ground ready and doing other things that don't show great imediate results. I hope they'll be excited about it when we start to see things growing from those little plants and seeds we put in the ground.

 

This whole gardening thing would work much better if we could just have it in our backyrad. That way they could "help" for as long as they wanted and then wander off without me having to worry about them stomping all over someone else's garden. But that's not an option right now, so this will have to do.

Wisconsin Dells

Everyone from around here always talks about "The Dells"  as a great weekend getaway spot. We'd never been, but when Jason's sister Crystal and her family came to visit a few weeks ago, they wanted to go down for a couple of days so we all tagged along. And we LOVED it. I was ready to move into the condo we stayed in. It was about as big as our house, had a lovely patio with a seating area and whirlpool tub that overlooked the lake through floor to ceiling windows that ran the whole length of the condo. Loved it. When they dragged me from the room, we spent two days playing at four different water parks (three indoor, one outdoor) and we found that there were things there to do for everyone in the family from Grandpa, to the teenagers, to the little kids, to Eli. Here we are loving the zero-depth wave pool:

Logan surprised us by asking to go down the big water slides as soon as he saw them, surprised us again that he LOVED them, and continued to surprise us by saying, "Can we go again?" every single time he got to the bottom. He went at least a dozen times, twice with me who--not surprisingly--got a little dizzy from the dark and twisty ride, and the rest of the times with his fun daddy (which, by the way, is how he frequently refers to his dad).

"Again?"

Right before her cousin Josh moved two years ago, Ali developed a little crush on him. Time and distance has not changed her heart, and she loved every minute that she got to spend with him.

Ali was much more timid about everything, but she found lots of ways to have fun that she felt comfortable with. Her favorite thing to do was to get in a tube, place it at the very zero-ist part of the zero depth pool (where the water just barely lapped the ground), and would sit there or walk along the edge of the pool.

In this picture Eli had just gotten splashed in the face, but most of the time he LOVED being in a tube out in the water. On the lazy rivers he was just very chill, taking it all in, but in the wave pool he would grin as he bobbed up and down.

Truth be told, though, most of the time, Eli could be found on my lap.

Though he did love this swing.

It took Jason awhile to convince them to go out into the deep water with him, but then they loved chasing their cousins around the pool with him.

Ali called these green floaty-things lolly pops. She had lots of fun going from one lolly pop to another, and this is one of the things that she has already reminisced about a lot. She felt very proud of herself for being brave enough to try and strong enough to do it.

"Where's Eli? There he is!"

Ali was in this pool watching the boys play basketball when Grandma came up to her. Ali looked at her and said, "Grandma, is that you?" That girl makes me laugh, though I guess we all do look a bit different wet.

After a fun couple of days, here we are ready to head home.

And MINUTES into the car ride this is what I turned around to find:

That's what I call proof of a good time!

No Pants

About every other night when I go in to check on Eli I find that he's taken off his pants. As long as he doesn't take off his diaper too like his sister and brother used to do I don't even care.

Memorial Day

This Memorial Day was warm enough that Grandma and Grandpa pulled out the little pool for the kids to play in. Aside from the fact that sometimes they would get wet when they weren't intending to (gasp!) they loved it. Ali was the only soul brave enough to sit in the water, and only after about an hour of play.

Don't let Eli's face fool you--he had fun too. This is just the face he makes lately whenever I pull out the camera.

Logan mostly had fun putting all the water toys in a paper bag and was quite sad when the bag got wet enough that it broke. Grandma was the hero of the day when she magically made a new bag appear!

Any day when we get to spend time as a family enjoying good food and nice weather is a great day, and this was no exception!

Bull Face

Check out our Bulls fan, in front of the Bulls pennant he found and requested to have put up in his room, making his tough Bull Face (notice the Bull on the pennant--see the amazing similarity?).

Book Houses

Logan and Ali have started making book houses. They use them as houses for their toys--animals, cars, robots, etc. This is another example of how Logan rarely uses toys the way they are intended to to be used.

They used 73 books to build this mansion, and I'm sure would have used more if I hadn't finished showering and come to see what they were doing!

I can't say I always love this new fascination, but I do love the creativity it shows.

Make Up

I have to say, I don't think this natural beauty needs any make up to enhance her features, but she sure loves playing with the make up she got for her birthday. But I think we'll have to work on her technique before we let her out of the house wearing it.