Some new Stuff...

I have been getting out my sewing machine and for the first time decided to try a pattern, and I made Elizabeth this dress!
I was pretty happy with it, even though I had to redo lots of it, many times! :)

I think she was excited to be wearing a dress that her mommy made her! :)

While Tom's family was here we got a picture of all the siblings who were in town, we got 7 of the 10! Pretty good!

Tom and his siblings, with their parents, John and Carole. I actually got my camera out when we had dinner at Maria's house. The kids had fun playing games inside,

and out.

Our group, hanging out.

Maria and Craig even had a slip n slide for the kids to play on.

Ben didn't want to play on it ?? but Elizabeth had a great time.

Tom's younger brother, Mark, and his wife Annie recently found out they were having a baby, so we had a little mini baby shower for them.

We also got this fun thing! Not really fun, but exciting for me! :) It's a safe room/tornado shelter! It has worried me for many years that we didn't really have a safe spot to go with the kids when the tornado sirens went off. It took a lot of twisting Tom's arm to get him to agree to get this :), but luckily our county was offering a rebate for half of the cost of shelters, so that helped finish the twisting! We're ready for storm season!! (Now hopefully we just won't ever really need it!)

It's HOT outside!

So for the past 10 days we have had some members of Tom's family in town...and I didn't bring my camera except for maybe one night!!! Bad me!!

Before Tom's family got here we headed to a Jump Place to burn off some energy in the air conditioning.

I love Elizabeth's expression - pure excitement!!

Love the red socks?! :)
Ben was getting air down this slide - he was making his mommy nervous!

Amelia, Zach, Josh, and Drew met us there.

Our friend Baylee met us there, too. It was a great, cool afternoon.

Another day we invited all of Elizabeth's Daisy Scout friends over to play, with their siblings.

The girls had been to our house twice - once for camping and once for a meeting, so the girls didn't get to play. I think they had a blast playing with everything!

We're running out of things to do in this 100 degree heat!! Fall can't get here soon enough!

Big News!

This isn't the biggest news, but it's pretty cool. When we were on vacation Elizabeth's fish had babies! By the time we discovered them there were 11 left. I don't know how many got eaten by their mother :( but we have a lot left! I was cleaning their tank so we put them all in the bowl so you can see them easily. They are so good at hiding in the tank, we thought we only had 10! We're going to need to give some of these guys away or we are going to have this problem again and again!!
The biggest news is my baby girl got earrings!

She has been wanting them so badly for a really long time. She has debated back and forth for a long time whether she was brave enough to do it.

Yesterday when we were shopping with our family Elizabeth decided to do it! Unfortunately I didn't have my camera :( so I didn't get any pictures of the actual event. She didn't even cry! I was very proud of our brave girl.

End of our Trip

We had a great end of our trip in Wisconsin. We had a campfire,
and did lots of fireworks. Here they are playing with the snappers, they love them!

About to snap!

We also did silly string - our kids favorites. Our friends Katie and Kellen came to visit with our friend Nikki. They hated the silly string! I guess we should have explained that sticky string was going to be shooting out at them...we didn't really think to prepare them!!

Get 'em Ben!

We like to see who gets the messiest!

Then they chased each other around throwing more of the silly string at each other.

Later, the kids enjoyed the cabin crunch Grandma always makes.Fireworks time!

The crowd watching Grandpa do his work.

Sparkler time! (By the way - did anyone else get new sparklers this year, some wooden ones? I think they were supposed to be safer (not as hot) as the metal ones, but these just dropped the hot ash everywhere! We didn't like them!)

2 at a time!

The 2 girls, Katie and Elizabeth.

Sparklers are my favorite thing to do over 4th of July! I love them!!

We also enjoyed cupcakes,

boat rides,

(Coop looks a little worried about something! :)

and paddle boat rides!

The girls also enjoyed lunch on the porch, away from all those boys! :)

And that was our trip! We drove home the 16 hours with Janet and her boys who were still in the Twin Cities. It was a long car ride, but we made it home safe and sound. No more long car rides for us for a while!!