Cantigny Park

 This summer has seriously been passing at lightning speed!  We are barely holding it together, but having so much fun in the process!  We've had a great 4th of July week, with a lot of friends, family, bar-b-ques, parks, bike rides the zoo and swimming.  Tonight we ended with our first 6 person, family bike ride.  We had Ella on the trail-along, the youngest two in the Burley and the rest of us on bikes.  We rode to Chipotle for dinner and then back.  Seriously, so much fun!  My 5 year old trailer talked my ear off the WHOLE time and made me laugh pretty hard.  "Mom, what are you thinking about?  I'm thinking about how Lalaloopsys are real."  Or, "Mom, I now have a pool pass card, a library card, but when am I going to get a Target card?"  Good try Ella!!!

These first two are of our bike riders.  Our kids ride their bikes everyday!  We also only had a scooter thing for Everett and we had fights for the bikes.  We finally remedied that this week, Deli has a new bike and has passed this one on to  Everett.  Win, win for everyone.  (These shots were early morning, still in pajamas shots).

 This past week we went to Cantigny park, which is close to our house.  They have a bunch of "retired" tanks there for the kids to climb and play on.  They also have a couple of museums, a lot of gardens and great hiking paths.  We spent a good part of the day there and had a great time.

 Just hanging on the tanks.

 Still waking up from his nap in the car and supervising the action.

 Kids missed the memo to smile and look at the camera, good try anyway!

 Kids checking out the koi pond. 

 Overlooking the peace garden.

 Enjoying the fountains of the rose garden.

I'll have to post more pictures of the rest of the summer later, but this is one day where the camera actually accompanied our adventure, which is sometimes an accomplishment for me!

Happy Birthday Ella!

 This past weekend we made a quick visit to Minnesota.  We went to celebrate Ella's 5th birthday, and also support Lucy, who got baptized!  The weekend went too fast, but we had so much fun, and it was such a great visit! The first picture is of Ella opening her birthday presents, in jammies, first thing in the morning. 

Ella chose to visit a local bookstore on her birthday.  It's called Wild Rumpus and is such a cute store!  They have chickens, cats, chinchillas, an iguana, a tarantula, rats, birds and probably a couple of other things I'm missing.  All of the kids had fun picking out a book, looking at animals and reading with Grandpa. 

 You may notice it was May 2nd and we are all wearing coats!  It was crazy weather, but we still celebrated afterwards with ice cream at Sebastian Joe's. 

 The next day we had a fun trip to the trampoline park, which all of the kids LOVED!  During nap time Adele and I went and visited Jesse's new barber shop.  We were very impressed by all of his hard work and how great it looks! 

 That night we bar-b-qued, played games and had fun with Jesse, Kjerstin and Grandma Karen.  We all enjoyed celebrating our Ella and being together!!!

On Saturday we went to Lucy's baptism and spent time with family.  Sunday ended up being a gorgeous day and we all had a hard time leaving!  We are excited to be going back for a week in June!

Happy Easter!

 My pictures are all randomly in here, but oh well!  The top picture was from our last big snow.  Josh helped build a ramp for the girls and they spent a good couple of afternoons sledding in our backyard.

Below is from this past Sunday.  We dyed Easter eggs.  We were still in pajamas, and forgot to take pictures of the final product, but at least we got some documentation!

 We struggle to get good pictures around here.  The morning of egg dying I kept getting very squinty eyed, closed mouth smiles, while those are great I told the girls to open their eyes and smile big.  The following pictures are what I got.  (I think Ella is mocking me :)

 More sledding pictures.

 Last week Josh took the girls out for a date.  Adele so badly wants to learn how to play Hockey and Ella dreams of being able to twirl on ice skates.  We figured to make either one of those a reality they probably need to learn how to skate.  I showed up 50 minutes into their ice-skating session and was fairly confident they would be tired and done.  Boy was I wrong!!! We had to pull them off of the ice after an hour and ten minutes, and they kept asking when they could come back and do it again!  Cute girls.  Buddy also got to have a little ice time.

This last picture sums up about 50% of the past month and a half.  We unfortunately have had a rough go around, health wise, for the last little bit.  Between these three we have had 3 cases of strep throat, 3 ear infections, 5 flu episodes, too many colds to count, bronchiolitis and everyone currently has pink eye.  It has been special!  We have had many days where we spent too much time on this couch trying to nurse someone's ailment.  Not to mention I have had enough with Dr. office's, co-payments, prescription pick-ups and disbursement of medicine!  It's a problem when you can pull up to the Walgreen's drive through and they ask if you want "the usual."  ;)  Spring can't come soon enough! 

Just a little catch-up!

 I haven't been a great blogger!  These cute kids are growing up so fast and I need to do some documenting!

We haven't had a lot of snow this Winter, but we've sure utilized what we have had!  We have a teeny hill out our back door that the girls have loved sledding down!  They also have enjoyed just being out and playing in the snow.  It's nice that I can send them out and watch them while I make dinner!

 This cute buddy doesn't get nearly enough pictures taken of him.  I know this is silly, but when I had Everett I wondered if I would be able to bond with him like I had with my daughters.  I feel like Ella and Adele are my best friends, and I worried about my ability to do that with my little buddy.  Boy was I WRONG!!! My heart could not love anything more if I tried!!! SERIOUSLY!  He is such a joy in our family and in my life.  He and I have an amazing bond, I just hope it endures, even after he finds a wife and stuff. ;)    I truly feel so blessed to be his mom.  He is at one of those stages that you just want to freeze.  He is growing up, he is smart, funny and overall a happy little buddy!  More than anything he loves balls.  He loves shooting basketballs in his hoop, or racing around the kitchen with a hockey stick and a tennis ball.  He also enjoys playing catch and throwing balls in the sink while I'm trying to do dishes.  I LOVE my little buddy!

 Cute Ella!  Ella is also smart, funny, loves doing crafts and enjoys being with her family.  She enjoys anything to do with school, playing school, talking about school and doing quiz questions.  She is also a good rule follower and older sister to her siblings!  She is also a girly-girl (I don't know where she got that).  She has better fashion sense than I, and recently started drawing eye-shadow on her princesses when she's coloring....say what?!?!

 These next couple of pictures are from a Valentine's party we went to at a friend's house.  They let the kids make their own pizzas and their own cookies.  They loved it!

 These next three pictures are of a playdate with Adele's friend Lainey.  We met Lainey at swimming lessons.  Lainey has since become Adele's best friend.  They truly are kindred spirits and are so similar!  They love each other so much.  I love how well they get along and how happy they make each other!  It doesn't hurt that Lainey has really fun parents that I like playdating with too. :)

 Adele is truly our goofball.  She comes up with very mature/witty jokes on her own already.  She is ALWAYS up for a good time, including anything that will keep her active and keep her laughing!  She also is our master snuggler.  She is so much fun to be around and adds such a fun dynamic to our family.

This last picture helps depict why one of our nicknames for Everett is "dopey dope".  He gives you this stare with these dopey eyes and cheeks.  We love it.  We love him.

That's just a little update.  Mostly for journaling purposes, and to get a couple of new pictures up on our blog!

***disclaimer.  Adele is wearing the same dress in all of these pictures.  No they are not from the same day.  She just really loves this dress!  It's a sad day when it has to go through the laundry.  Good news is that we're getting our money's worth out of it!

Happy Birthday Sweet Deli!

This year Adele's Birthday fell on 12-12-12.  We had a birthday at 12 with the theme of the 12 dancing princesses.  She had a blast, and it was fun to do!

 The pictures are of the set up and the birthday girl getting ready.

 Tiaras and wands ready to be decorated. Castle waiting to be colored and played in.

 Princess stories waiting to be read.

 When the guests started arriving our intro activity was coloring the castle.

 Some excited girls waiting for guests to arrive.

 More coloring of the castle.

 Decorating the tiaras and wands.

 Cousins!

 The sweet princesses that came to celebrate!

 Marie made Adele this awesome apron for her birthday.  Adele has been so excited to help in the kitchen ever since she got it.  She asks to help make eggs just about everyday!

 The party was a success, the girls had fun, and I was exhausted, check, check and check!

This last picture is of Ella with our neighbor Brenda.  Brenda has lived across the street from us for the past five months.  She was up here from Mexico trying to go through the process of gaining citizenship, so that when her husband graduates from college they can come here to live.  We LOVED having Brenda as our neighbor.  She was the girls (and our) favorite babysitter and she was so great to us.  We formed a great friendship in 5 short months from the unique opportunities we had to serve and to be served.  Fortunately for her she was able to return to Mexico a couple of days before Christmas to be with her husband and daughter.  We had her over for dinner the night before she left.  We will miss her, but hope to see her again!