Playdates

I decided to take a break from vacation pictures to get caught up on everything else. We've had a few playdates in the last month or so and have had a lot of fun playing with friends.


Here is Jackson and our friend Hudson. It's the best picture I got of the two of them-babies are hard to photograph sometimes!

We also went over to my friend Dana's house to play. Here is Ashlynn and the boys posing.

We had my friends Dana and Ashleigh over to play with their kids Hunter, Allison, and Ashlynn. Hunter and Cooper are only a week apart in age which is fun for them. Allison is only a few months old and is so cute!

Here is Cooper with the shark cupcakes we made for the playdate. (don't look to close, they're very sloppy). My Aunt Amy got me a book called Hello Cupcake! for my b-day last year and I have never made anything out it! It has the cutest ideas for cupcakes and all are easy to do (well, not that easy, but use very easy things-you don't need fancy supplies or anything). So we finally decided to make something and Cooper picked the shark cupcakes.

Ashlynn eating a cupcake with baby Ally in the background.

Dana holding Ally (Ally is Ashleigh's baby, not Danas-just to clarify :))

Cooper and Hunter posing.

All of us (except Ashlynn, she wasn't feeling the picture!) Ashleigh, Ally, Dana, Jackson, me, Cooper, and Hunter

I had to throw this in, this was the first time Jackson pulled up in his crib!

I watched Eliz and Ben last week for Laura so she could have a day to get stuff done. It's always fun having all the kids together! The kids are really into Toy Story right now (at least Cooper is) so I thought it would be fun to make the alien cupcakes and watch Toy Story 2. Here is Cooper's cupcake... cute huh? :)

The kids enjoyed their cupcakes!

and then had fun watching the movie! (They had to watch on this little screen because the DVD wouldn't work on our regular player. They still were glued to it!

Elizabeth took this picture so of course I had to post it. She's getting good, look at how they are centered!

We also did a few fun things with ice.

Jackson's getting brave! He's watching the kids play.

Time for a photo-op!

Our latest playdate was at Laura's house on Friday. Laura invited quite a few of our friends over so it was a full house with lots of kids. So much fun, and very wild!

Here is Jackson with Kayson. (My friend Kristi's baby). He's only a month younger than Jackson so they are going to be great friends.

We actually got a picture of ALL of the kids together. Let's see if I can label this:

Back row: Ben, Jackson, Kayson, Zach, Ashlynn, Jill

Front row: Jane holding Jena, Elizabeth, Cooper, Josh, Drew holding Amelia, Jake holding Elise. 15 kids! We missed our good friend Allison who recently moved to CA, she was with us in spirit though!

Cabin Days

The next few days at the cabin we had fun just relaxing, swimming in the lake, and spending time with our friend Stephanie. We don't get to see her very often because she lives in London, so it was so fun to spend time with her. Her parents and my parents went to high school together, and they both have a cabin on the same lake. Very convenient for seeing eachother! Stephanie and her husband Rich actually very generously let Ryan and I stay with them in London when we went to visit a few years ago. So that was the last time we had seen them! It was wonderful to catch up now, especially because between the three of us we have 5 kids!

(By the way, if any of you read my sister's blog, this post is practially identical to her last post. I should probably just link to hers and save myself the trouble! :)



Stephanie's son Will is around 15 months old.

All of us girls with our kids.

While they were playing outside, my dad found a turtle. The kids were all very brave and held it. I did NOT hold it. Yuck.

Fishing was one of their favorite activities. The lake was so calm and peaceful!

Cooper's all ready for the first boat ride of the season!

Buddies on the boat.

Now Grandpa is helping Cooper fish.

This picture is far away but has a kind of funny story to it. Laura, Tom, and the kids were all way out in the lake swimming and I decided to swim out and join them. I didn't really think about how I was going to get into the paddle boat once I got there. So I try to heave myself into it but I can't, then I start laughing so hard I really can't. So Laura stands up and helps to drag me into the boat, but it puts her so off balance that she falls in. I'm laughing so hard I can't drag myself completely into the boat so I'm hanging half out of the boat with my "you know what" being displayed very obviously as I'm hanging off the boat. Then Laura hoists herself into the boat and we're both half hanging out the boat laughing. Facing my mom. Who is on the dock with a zoom lens. Once we finally get in we hear her laughing and turn to see her snapping away with the camera. Thank goodness for digital cameras, I deleted those babies immediately!
This was one of the only pictures I saved to remember the event, and the ONLY one I would post online :).

Jackson takes a turn steering the boat!

Me and my boys.

G and G with their grandkids!

Me, mom and Laura

The tube was a big hit with the kids. Elizabeth really loved it, and so did the boys. Ben wasn't too happy about it at first (can you tell in this picture?)

but he definitely got braver. And look how brave Cooper is! I was so proud of him, he loved it.

Tom and Ben are giving a thumbs up. I had to post this picture because I love Ben's thumbs up :)

Standing up even! He has such a proud look on his face.

Jackson's watching the action.

This was the driver. Checking his email. He did this a lot of the boat ride, I thought it was funny!

The kids taking a bath together. If you check out Laura's blog you'll see a picture of the kids from our first year at the cabin, taking a bath together. They were so cute!

Mom had matching towels for all of the kids. Bear towels because it's the bear cabin! This is a scary bear!

and a cute baby bear.

Our First Day of Vacation

We just got back this week from an over two week vacation up north. We went to my parents' cabin in WI, and then to G and G S's house in KS. We had SUCH a great time. It was wonderful to see so many family and friends. I took a lot of pictures so I'm going to break up our vacation post into a few different days.

Our first day on the road! Jackson and Cooper were troopers in the car. Cooper did amazingly well; he entertained himself very easily. Jackson had a harder time. He'd get bored after awhile and just cry and cry. His favorite game right now is to drop toys, so I'd hand him one and he'd throw it, hand him one, throw it, etc... Then he'd cry. So I made him this tray for the car, I thought it might help.
I hot-glued a bowl to the tray and that helped out a TON. On our drive up Memorial Day I would just throw a bunch of cheerios on his tray and he'd get maybe 2, the rest would go everywhere in the car. The bowl definitely helped. Then I put some velcro and velcroed a few toys to the tray so they'd stay better. It worked well and the first time he played with it, it kept him entertained for probably 30 min! But then the next time I gave the tray to him he just picked the toys off of it and threw them. Oh well.


On our first day of vacation we went to my Aunt Amy and Uncle Jim's house for the day. My grandparents, Uncle Scott, and Uncle Ross all came too, as well as my parents and Laura, Tom, and the kids. We had a great day! Here are my cousins Emma and Evan, along with Cooper eating a snack. Laura and the kids didn't arrive until late afternoon so I don't have too many pictures of them.

They have a really cute chair in their yard so I had fun taking pictures of the kids on it.

Another picture of cutie pie Emma. She is going to be five in November so she's about 6 months younger than Elizabeth.

And of course cutie pie Evan! He turned 2 in February.

Here are my boys!

After playing around in the yard we took a break for cupcakes. Evan enjoyed his:)

My mom got all the kids matching shirts so we attempted to get a picture of them together. Emma took off during this one...

but came back for this one! (Emma, Evan, Ben, Jackson, Elizabeth, and Cooper) It was a job trying to get all of them together as you can probably imagine. We did a lot of photoshoots with groups of kids on this trip as you'll see.

Amy and Jim live on a lake so the kids had lots of fun throwing rocks into it.

Jackson graduated from an army crawl to a "big boy" crawl on our trip! He still does the army crawl if he wants to get somewhere fast, but he's getting better at regular crawling.Some of the adults relaxing on the deck.

At the end of the day Ryan flew back to TX to work for another week before joining us at the cabin, and I drove with my parents to their cabin in WI. I'll post the next set of pictures soon!