Yard Work

We love to be outside at our place!

Enjoying the swings on the playyard:


Trike riders:


Watering work:


Relaxing after the hard work of play:

The Far-Away Grandma

This is one of our pics from Grandma Vicki's visit. She's a hard lady to catch on camera, but we caught this one when they were "on the run". :-)

We all had a great time with our visitor. Grandma came to stay for part of last week and the kids kept her busy non stop. Showing her all their favorites activities outside, their favorite games and toys inside, millions of books to read, and some fun new art projects to try that Grandma brought with her. Long walks and a visit to the zoo wrapped up the whirl wind trip!

Here's Viva modeling her cat face that she made with Grandma Vicki, it's a close up or you could see she also has a cat tail!

Bentley and his Faves

Right now Bentley insists on sleeping with his blanket, 2 dogs, and 2 M&Ms guys. Sometimes he throws a few cars into the mix. Sometimes he carries his "stash" around all day with him. That's a lot of comfort objects for 1 little kid! :-)

Thankful Thursday #10

Woohoo! We've made it to #10. Double digits of thankfullness. :-)

This week we are...

thankful for simple pleasures, enjoying puzzles and crayons. Enjoying relaxing at home and just hanging out!

happy to help. All of the kids are very eager to help water the plants outside. It's a daily highlight for them. :-)

enjoying the slightly darker nights. It's only been a month since summer solstice, but it seems quite a bit darker during the night, and thus easier to sleep.

going to enjoy fish! Matt enjoyed a Kodiak fishing trip earlier this week and brought home lots of halibut and salmon. The kids will love it!

More Words of B

Bentley provides me with some funny conversations on occasion. More than just once in a while, actually. He cracks me up (not normally intending to, I'm sure) on a daily basis. I love 3 year olds!

As we're driving down the road to get home, passing Fred Meyers (which is more than 1/2 mile from the house still):

"Mommy, let me out here. I want to walk the rest of the way home." (Yeah, right!! Crazy kid)

Chastising his little sister who is jumping on the bed:

"Viva, you better stop that right now. You are going to break the bed, and then you will have to sleep on the floor. Mommy will NOT buy you a new bed if you break this one."

In his bathroom, after using the toilet:

“Mom, this toilet paper thing isn’t working for me,”
“when this roll is gone I want you to go buy a shelf and put the shelf here" (points right next to the toilet)
“why’s that Bentley?”
“I can’t reach it very well all the way over there on the wall!”

In the bedroom, at night time, Jake screaming because he's displeased about going to bed:

“Jake, lay down and go to sleep. After you go to sleep 2 times you can go sleep with Grandma, just like me!”
Viva pipes in “me! Me! Me!!”
“No, you get to go sleep with Mommy. That’s how it works”
“Ok"

Some of Bentley's favorite expressions inlude:

at a lull in the conversation: "What else do you want to talk about?"
on the phone we often hear this conversation stopper: "That's all I'm going to say now"
every night at bed time I hear: "No airplanes or helicopters coming, right?" (We guess that he saw a video on youtube that he perhaps should not have?!?!)

Siblings

Belated Father's Day!

Yes, we did celebrate Father's Day this year. No, I'm not the world's most on top of it blogger. :-)

By the time we get home from 3 hours of 9 am church the kids aren't always willing to pose. But we did catch Viva with her Daddy!


We had Tim & Ty down for dinner. Matt picked the menu - spaghetti & apple pie. I was thinking I was on track (I made the spaghetti sauce the night before in the crock pot!), but then around 4:30 when I went to start on the pie I was reminded that you normally peel the apples in apple pie. 16 of them. And I am not the world's fastest peeler - it's just not one of my kitchen skills. :-) Luckily Great-Grandma helped peel and my Mom helped chop. It's great to have helpers!

Here is one of the pies. If you look closely you can see the little apple cut out on the top of it. Cute, yes? :-)


After dinner Bentley introduced Grandpa Tim to his favorite Wii games (including Kung Fu Panda, I believe). We had a fun evening enjoying all the dads in our lives and it was great to have so many of them with us - Uropa, Opa, Grandpa Tim, & Matt. We appreciate you guys!

Barbecue Time

This past Sunday we had the chance to host a family get together! Some of my Grandfather's relatives (and thus relatives of all of us!) were on a family vacation to Alaska, so we gathered up the local tribes for an afternoon to get together with them. There are a lot of us - the picture below was taken after a number had already left!


The kids had a great time running wild through the house (okay - just the main floor - but still!) with the older kids, and it was a good chance to catch up with everyone we haven't seen in a while. It was a gorgeous day so we were able to make full use of our back deck, too!

Thankful Thursday #9

This week we are...

so excited to have Grandma Vicki visting us. The kids are having a blast and have upped their energy level about 200% so they can show her how fun they are! :-)

glad we live in Alaska. As always. Why in particular, this week? Because although we are enjoying our heat wave, it is nice to know that this is just one season of the year. Turns out all I need is a little heat to remind me I (and Matt, and the kids - all of us get grumpy when we get hot) wouldn't do well in Arizona.

happy that Grandma Karen is back in town! She was out of town dealing with a death in the family for the last month, and we have missed her. Genevieve was ecstatic to see her last Friday, Bentley went running out the door on Tuesday, and Jake? Even Jake wants in on the action - we'll see if he follows through when we give him another chance at a play date sometime soon!

proud to be Americans! Grateful for all those who serve our country and help protect our freedom!

having fun connecting with friends new and old. We saw cousins Felicity, Tiernan, and Danarra, who we haven't seen in ages, and the kids had a great time in the sprinkler. I connected with an old friend from homeschooling who brought over some new young friends (aka her children) for my kids. We had a blast and hope to get together again soon. We've also had fun at the park with Daniel & David. We're now at 8 straight weeks of Wednesday at the park - we're on a roll!

to wrap it up - we are still loving summer and so thankful for all our many blessings. Life is good.