August

Hi! No, we haven't fallen off the face of the earth, we've just been having a crazy busy summer! I'm catching up on about 6 weeks of posts today! (along with getting a massage and enjoying lunch with my hubby!)

This post has some random pix from August and will be followed by several more posts of August and even some July activities! In the past 6 weeks, I took a trip to Italy, my parents visited for a week, we celebrated Makayla's 3rd birthday, we've spent 2 weekends up north, and we've had a multitude of picnics and trips to the park! This weekend I am on call and we are taking it easy at home...or at least that's the plan! :)

Makayla just loves going to the park, especially if we bring our picnic basket and picnic blanket for a picnic! She has her favorite parks and usually negotiates with me to go to the one she wants! Here are some pix at the park in our town, Freedom!

Here's Lydia and Grandma going down the slide!

Lydia on another slide!

Lydia getting a drink of water with Grandma! Makayla is "helping" Lydia! She likes to be the "helper" lately, even when Lydia doesn't want any help doing something!

Makayla also DOESN'T want help with anything she does! So here she is getting a drink all by herself!

When it was time to leave the park, I told the girls that we needed to wrap up and head home. I told them that when we got home, we could have some left over birthday cake! Lydia heard the word cake, began nodding her head yes, and took off running "home" for cake! Unfortunately, she was headed the wrong way, but did did give us a good laugh! You can see her way across the the grass, running!

Here's a random photo of Lydia making one of her silly smiles!

Here's Makayla chillin' on the couch!

Here are the girls playing with their baby dolls! This is one of their favorite pass times lately! Makayla has a whole "school" area where she cares for about 8 dolls. They each have their own bed/crib/cot and she takes turns feeding them and changing their diapers! Lydia is pretty content to play with her favorite doll! She takes it in and out of the stroller and whispers "shush" to her baby!

Here are the girls and Grandma! They spent a few days with Grandma and Grandpa while Chad and I went to work!Here's a family photo with my parents (Grandma and Grandpa) and Chad's parents (Nana and Papa). This was taken the night of Makayla's birthday.

Here's Makayla holding the first cucumber from our garden. She had fun picking it, washing it, and eating it. However, after eating several pieces, she spit a piece out and declared that she does not like cucumber! Now she's waiting for the tomatoes to ripen! :) Lydia likes to put her own clothes on! However, everything gets put on like pants...even shirts! Below, she's very proud of herself for putting her PJ shirt on!

Here's Lydia with some pigtails that she got at school. It was quite the fight to remove them from her hair, so we aren't going to do pigtails again for a while! I think she has learned from Makayla when it comes to not wanting me to touch her hair!

Here's Makayla hiding behind all the leftover balloons from her birthday party!

Lydia has recently discovered that she can open doors. I think the front door was the first door she learned to open, but she is starting to stand on her tiptoes and reach most door handles!

Here is Makayla swooping in to tell Lydia, "no!"

Unfortunately, the neighbors swing set was damaged by some straight-line winds in a recent storm. :( The photo is below. While Makayla was playing on our swing set, she turned to my mom and asked, "Where's the wolf?" My mom figured it out, can you?

Makayla and I like to chat about her day after I read books to her at night. I usually ask her about school and who was there and what she did. Sometimes she tells me some crazy stuff and sometimes I have no idea if she is telling me the truth or just making stuff up! One Saturday night she told me all about school and who was there and what she did that day. Hmmm...I guess she is a good storyteller! :)

One day Makayla came up to me out of the blue and said, "sometimes I'm naughty and sometimes I'm nice!" I couldn't argue with her on that one! :)

Beading Fun

Makayla got a supply of beads and string for her birthday! We decided to make necklaces one night! Of course, Lydia had to help! We started out at the kitchen table, but both kids were climbing on the table to get at the beads, so we moved down to the floor. Lydia enjoys sticking her hands in and feeling the beads....which can be rather messy! She's also a bit clumsy, so she ended up stepping on the round dish of beads and flinging beads all over the kitchen! Then, she started walking through the beads and began crying when she had beads stuck to the bottom of her feet! You can see her picking beads from the bottom of her foot in the photo below!

Luckily, Makayla ignored most of this ruckus and continued to make her necklace! I managed to make 2 little bracelets as well! When it came time to clean up the beads, I had two "helpers". There were brooms, dustpans, and even more beads flying around the kitchen! Luckily, we got most of them swept up...but by this point, I am definitely done playing with beads! I grabbed my little sweeper vac to finish up the job and of course, part way through vacuuming, the battery dies! Grr! So I just turned off the lights and we all left the kitchen...with beads sprinkled around the room!

Here's a photo of the final product...the kids were more interested in picking at each other than posing for a photo!

P.S. I had to come back to this post because as I was sitting in the kitchen working on these blog posts, Chad kept walking around the kitchen saying things like, "Ow!" what is that?" and "there's beads all over the place!" We played beads last night and I haven't gone back through and vacuumed yet! LOL! :) He must have stepped on 5 or 6 different beads...

Up North

We've had a few more recent trips up North to the Evers' family cabin. There is a sandy beach nearby that we started going to and the kids love it! They also love the fun snacks that mom packs and the kiddie cocktails from the bar. The minute we get to the beach, Makayla is "hungry!" All of the sudden Makayla disappeared one day and I quickly located her in the bar, waiting for me to come in and buy her a kiddie cocktail. They have a rainbow of different colors and she specifically ordered blue that time! After the kids eat their snack and drink their drink, then they will go play in the sand and water! Makayla loves to swim around and she loves playing with her cousin, Brock, who is wearing the green life vest.

Here we are having a camp fire!

When we make s'mores, Lydia usually just eats chocolate, but here she was trying a marshmallow!

Bug Hunt

Makayla got a bug vacuum for her birthday, so we decided to take it out and look for some bugs!

I was very surprised how many bugs we located on our hunt around the house! We even found a frog! Here is a cricket that we caught!

Here is an ant!

Here is some winged thing!

Bay Beach

My company picnic for P&G is at Bay Beach Amusement Park! My co-workers were generous enough to give me their unused ride tickets and lunch wristbands, so we were able to bring my parents along and we had plenty of ride tickets for the girls!

Here are Lydia and Grandma enjoying some ice cream!

Here's Lydia chillin' with her ice cream cone!

Here are the girls on some various rides! Makayla was a bit nervous to go by herself, but was much more confident when Lydia rode with her. Lydia seemed to enjoy the rides, but she almost always hung on tight with one or both hands. You'll notice her hanging on in almost every photo! Neither one of them smiled much, but they definitely had fun! Maybe we'll get a few more smiles next time that we go!

We all waited in line for this train, but when we got to the front, Makayla decided she didn't want to ride, so she and Chad bailed, my Dad took some photos, and my mom and Lydia and I took a little train ride! We are in the back of the train!

Look Who's 3

Makayla turned 3 on August 2nd! She was sooooo excited that it was her birthday! The day before her birthday, we made some pink and purple Minnie Mouse cupcakes. Makayla specifically requested pink and purple cake! Makayla had a blast putting the Minnie Mouse decorations on the cupcakes!

The cupcakes came out pretty cute and I put together a box for her to take to school to share with her teachers and friends!I intentionally sent Makayla to school on her birthday because I wanted to make sure she took a good nap before her party. I knew that she had never missed a nap at school, so I figured keeping her in her routine would be best! The morning of her birthday, she woke up and immediately looked around and asked, "Where's my birthday?" :) We got her all dressed up in her birthday outfit and she practiced holding up 3 fingers! She told me, "I'm not going to take a nap today" and I just thought, "it's a good thing you're going to school today!"
Of course, I go to pick up Makayla around 3pm and her teacher says, 'just to warn you, she didn't nap today!" Ack! Just what I didn't need. The teacher proceeded to tell me that Makayla was so excited about her birthday that she couldn't focus on anything else all day! Wonderful!

We opened up a few gifts with my parents and within 15 minutes, Makayla was having a meltdown and we had to put her down for a late nap! Here she is before the meltdown!

Ooh! A princess crown and earrings!

Ooh! Princess shoes!

Makayla napped through most of dinner and then she got up to join the rest of us for her party! We had my parents and Chad's whole family over to celebrate!

Here's Makayla cake...she requested a pink and purple cake with polka dots!She was pretty excited by this cake! (which I did not make, by the way)

Here's Makayla blowing out her candles! She got a little nervous when we were singing to her so she had to hold my hand!

Mmmm, this bow is yummy!

Here's Makayla opening a gift!

Here's a super cute dress that Makayla got for her birthday! Note that she is wearing her princess shoes! :)

All in all, it was a super fun day! :)