Catching Up

I'm way behind on my posting, so I'm going to try to get up to date here.  This post is of events from last week.  See the little imp in the picture above?  He was bringing me flowers from the yard :)

Isn't he sweet?  I get some every day, but that particular day we grabbed a baby food jar, added a little water, and placed the two flowers he had brought me into the jar.  He was so excited that he kept bringing more and more.  Pretty soon, I had about a dozen yellow dandelions, three in the puffball stage (which unfortunately decided to shed all their seeds inside the house!) and one rock for good measure ;)

My daughter has been working on sorting and packing up her things for storage.  She heads to college this fall (goodness - in about two months now! and I haven't started her quilt yet - yikes!!)  Anyway, she was packing up some things in boxes and labeling them for storage.  Her brother decided he could help her with the labeling.  What's in this box?  Squiggles, apparently.

On one busy night, my daughter was going to start unloading the dishwasher, but got sidetracked, and left the door of the dishwasher open.  I heard something in the kitchen, and walked in to find this - the three year old "helping" with the silverware.

See?  He put it all in the drawer. :)  (Unfortunately he sometimes does this with every piece of silverware he finds - dirty or clean).

He had other plans for the silverware rack from the dishwasher.  Can you say car wash?

The eight year old worked all day on making a sign for Grandpa's arrival.

Each letter is an animal.  When his aunt and uncle and cousin arrived, there was an addition to the sign for them too.

When he started the sign, I told him his "J" (the first letter of the second line) was backwards.  He didn't want to start over, even though he only had "Ja" done, and said, "It's okay, J--- will understand."

Grandpa got here a few days before everyone else.  He made quick friends with everyone again.

The three year old suckered him into reading several books, including his current favorite - The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle.

We've also been playing a lot of dominoes.  Normally pinochle is our game, but my daughter has had to work most of the evenings and the eight year old hadn't learned to play yet, so we're a person short.

It has been fun though just to gather everyone around the table - even if they are too little to play :)

(Don't tell him he's too little to play).

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 The three year old got into the action trying to clean up before my sister and her family arrived.  You'll notice the cord to the vacuum is not plugged in.  I told him we had to plug it in to turn it on.  He ran and jumped on the couch.  When I told him it was okay, I wouldn't plug it in, then he got down and pushed it all over the room.

 We had a great visit.  Their little girl is adorable!!  The little cousins had a good time getting to know each other.  We don't see them very often, but we get a treat this time around - I will be down there in about 3 weeks for a visit :)

 We spent a lot of time just sitting around visiting.  We played some games - cards and dominoes too.

 Aren't they just the sweetest things?

 My sister was playing with our baby, when her daughter noticed and thought she needed in on the action :)  It kind of looks like she's strangling him here, but she was actually pretty nice about it.  I think she was more curious than jealous.

 The older boys took full advantage of their uncle's energy and willingness to play on the floor with them.

 We found this Incredible Hulk sleeper at a yard sale and were trying to get him to do the muscle pose, but he was more into being silly.

 Sunday evening we took the kids to the pool at the hotel everyone was staying at.  The babies are natural little swimmers.  They loved it.  And after we had them bathed and dressed, we went back to the pool area to round up everyone else, and both of the babies were squirming around trying to get down and back to the water.

 When I put my hands under the baby's arms, he just straightened out and started to kick.  Natural swimmer :)

 He loved the water.  I was a little worried that the chlorine would mess up his skin, but we used vasoline right afterward and he was fine.

 How cute is that?

 The three year old was a little more reluctant.  He had to be eased into it.

 His very patient uncle had him blowing bubbles, laying on his belly, splashing and sitting on the step up to his neck deep :)

 He also played with the eight year old - jumping in together, swimming around, splashing and chasing each other.  Tons of fun!

Such a great visit!  I can't wait to see them again in a few weeks.  We get to swim there too.  The place my Mom lives has an outdoor pool, so I imagine we'll all come back nicely tanned  =)