A Visit to the Fire Station

Two of the fire stations in our town were hosting open houses this morning.  Since Elisabeth had never been to one, we decided to go for a visit.  Actually we were all excited to go for a visit!

The kids all loved sitting in the truck and exploring.  They sat in both the front and back seats of the truck, checked out the outside of the truck, and looked in an ambulance.  Of course, our kids wanted to ask a million questions to the firefighters and see where they lived, so I asked the chief to give us a tour of the Fire House.  He was very kind and seemed excited that our kids were interested in seeing more, since none of the other visitors had asked to go inside.  He gave us a great tour and answered all of our questions.  It was a fun morning!

VBS 2013

This week Abbie and Carter went to VBS at their preschool.  They were SO excited to go each day and had lots of friends there!  They sang the songs from VBS at home all week and just had the best time!

After the last day, we met up with a bunch of our friends at CFA for lunch.  It was the perfect way to end a fun week!

Summer Fun

Today our sweet friends, the Bynums, came over to play with us!  We enjoyed all things Summer.  The kids played in sprinklers, rode bikes, threw water balloons, colored with sidewalk chalk and ate popsicles.  It was quite the day!  The fun didn’t even end when they came inside.  We had a yummy dinner of pizza and chocolate chip cookies.  I would have to say it was just about the perfect Summer day spent with some of our very best friends!

Piggie Tails

Elisabeth wore her first pair of piggie tails over the weekend!  She looked absolutely adorable with her hair fixed.  Stephen and I just don’t understand how are two little very blond-haired children have such thin hair!  Both Carter and Elisabeth have very thin hair.  I don’t think there is much hope for Carter, but I am still hoping that Elisabeth will get more hair.  Right now the back is growing fairly long but the top and front is just not growing very fast.  Piggie tails ended up being the perfect hair style for her!  Too bad she refuses to stand still for even a second so it is nearly impossible to put them in.  I don’t even attempt to have them even.  I just wrap the rubber band around while she is walking!

I took a few pictures of her with piggie tails yesterday.

She is just the cutest!

This is her “cheese” face.  Whenever she sees my camera she makes this face.  She also blinks in 90% of my pictures!  I think she anticipates the flash and is always closing her eyes.  It drives me crazy!  I am not sure which “cheese” face is worse, Elisabeth’s or Carter’s.

She dumped out all of the puzzle pieces from this bag.  At least she was attempting to clean up her mess.  However, she was not successful.  I think she put three pieces in the bag before she moved on to another mess!

Abbie happened to be playing at a friend’s house yesterday afternoon, so I let Carter play some games on Disney Junior for a while.  Elisabeth really wanted to play with him.  She kept hitting the key board as she looked over his shoulder.


She looks like she is standing there so nicely just watching him.  Ha!  She was actually about to start trying to climb up in the chair with him!  Our littlest baby is really growing up fast!

Dog Days of Summer

We are right in the middle of our summer and trying to stay busy!  It is not easy keeping Abbie and Carter busy while still trying to let Elisabeth get as much sleep as she needs.  She was forced to go down to one nap a day once summer started because we just couldn’t fit two naps in.

This week Abbie and Carter kept busy with another camp.  This time Abbie did cheerleading and Carter did basketball.  They both had a great time at camp this week and at least it kept them busy during the mornings. 

On Wednesday Carter played a little exhibition game while Abbie cheered so Mimi and Bebe came up to watch them and go out to lunch with us afterward.  We always love when we have visitors during the middle of the week!  All of the kids were super excited to see them as usual!

Thursday was the “official” end of camp game and cheerleading program.  Stephen met Elisabeth and me during his lunch break to watch them perform.  They both looked so cute!  It was a great way to end a week of camp!

Elisabeth worked on her latest trick all week, climbing the stairs!  She LOVES to climb on them.  If someone comes down the stairs and doesn’t immediately close the gate, she will be on the stairs in a second.  She crawls up the bottom half but them holds on the railing to walk up the second half.  I guess she wants to be a big girl!

Friday night Halle and Lauren came over for a mock slumber party.  They played, ate pizza, went for frozen yogurt and watched a movie.  It was quite a party, the only thing missing was the “slumber”! 

The girls had a lot of fun playing dress-up in Abbie’s old ballet costumes while I managed to keep Carter and Elisabeth away from them. 

Of course, they all ate dinner together, with Carter right in there with all the girls.  At one point the kids were all telling each other their middle names.  Lauren didn’t want to tell everyone what hers was.  Carter chimed in with, “You can tell us Lauren.  We are all friends here.”!  He thinks he is just one of the girls!

I had a 15 minute head start with the big girls at the yogurt shop before Stephen brought Carter and Elisabeth in his car.  As we were all outside eating our yogurt I heard a kid yell “Hey guys!”.  For a second I was thinking “Who is this strange kid screaming across the parking lot?” and then I realized it was Carter.  He is a mess!

We all came home and the kids cozied-up in the playroom to watch the latest American Girl movie about Saige.  It was the perfect way to end a fun evening with friends!

We managed to stay busy and survive another week this summer.  Only five more to go!

Sun, Swimming and Slides

This morning we took the kids to the “big” pool.  I think the last time we had taken them there was two or three  years ago, way before Elisabeth was even born!  At the time they were too young to really enjoy all of the fun features of the pool, including a long lazy river and a big waterslide.  Not this time! 

Abbie has always been an amazing swimmer and is perfectly comfortable in any pool.  Carter was not as proficient at swimming, but his lessons this summer have really paid off.  He is doing much better at actual swimming strokes and is confident in the water and able to swim in any pool.  It makes taking all three of them to the pool by myself much easier!  Now that they are good swimmers, I thought it would be the perfect time to take advantage of the “big” pool.  It is basically a mini version of a waterpark, perfect for young kids!

The pool has a shallow area with a playground, a deeper area for swimming and diving for rings, a lazy river, and a waterslide.  Abbie is tall enough to ride the waterslide, but  I wasn’t sure if she would want to do it.  She is not the most adventurous child and definitely the least adventurous of our three kids!  She was hesitant at first, but when she found out we could go down together in a double tube she agreed.  And she loved it!  She only went down once with me and then wanted to do it on her own.  I was so proud of her!  Of course, Carter wanted to ride the slide, too.  Unfortunately, he is technically about 4 inches too short to do it.  I figured as long as he could fit in the tube and he is capable of getting out of the water at the end on his own, then why couldn’t he ride it.  I agreed to let him try it and none of the lifeguards ever measured him.  He was thrilled!  We only allowed him to ride in one of the double tubes with us.

Elisabeth spent most of her time walking around the shallow kiddie area.  She even managed to climb up a rope ladder all by herself on the playground!  I don’t really know why I was so surprised she was able to do it, she is a very good climber!

The kids had a great time and we spent about two and a half hours there before it was time to come home for lunch.  It was definitely a fun day!