Elliana is Seven!!!

I can't believe that seven years have gone by already....looking back, it has been a great journey and I just can't wait to see what God has in store for our little girl. Here are some highlights from her big day...

We let her choose one friend to do something fun with so she asked a classmate/neighbor to join her at Build A Bear and lunch at Red Robin. The girls had so much fun together!! And it was so much fun hanging out with them, too!
Their new furry friends! I love how they lead the kids to put love into their stuffies and get them all stuffed and sewn up.

Elli chose "Red Robin Hood -the place where you get a balloon" for lunch so we headed straight there after our time at the mall. The girls thought they were so grown up being able to order for themselves and choose milkshakes, too!

The girls were excited to come back and open a couple gifts before they played together and watched the new TinkerBell movie. What a fun day, especially with no school!

Once Daddy got home from work, Elliana opened the rest of her presents so here are some comical shots from all that. We hurried and ate dinner and had cake so that we could go to Incredible Pizza for a fun night of games and mini-golf and Jess' favorite, the bumper boat/car things. (She finally grew enough to be able to ride them this time around!)

The cake this year was Princesses....she had talked about doing a Barbie cake but fell in love with the light up Princess cake. Apparently, you are never too old for a Princess party ;) She had a great day and we are all worn out from all the fun! Thank you to all of you who sent special gifts and fun messages for Elliana. Wish we could have had you all here to have a big bash and enjoy this girl turning seven! Love to you all!!!

Another Toothless Wonder

This Jess is so brave! She is an excellent tooth-puller, too! It is always fun to hear the great declaration, "Mom! Look!!!"

Within a week of eachother, the second tooth is out and now she is whistling away when she talks! Elli just lost her two this summer so it makes me again realize just how close in age our girls are to each other.

It is tough being a boy

I can post this now....a month later, now that it is all healed! It was so painful to look at and go through that it took me awhile to post this. I don't know if it is tougher being the parent or the kiddo in this case! I'm sure Owen would say that his role was the toughest but boy, being a parent is painful! We tried that liquid band-aid stuff on his eyebrow...Quent wanted to "cover it up good" and applied a bit too much. Well, his eyelashes got stuck in the stuff (which is basically superglue) so we then had to cut those loose so he could blink. Such trauma!! Thank goodness, he is recovered and so now we wait with trepidation for the next big fall. Boys are tough!

Was my last post really in July????

So we must have just been crazy busy for my last post to really have been that long ago! And looking back....yes, we were crazy busy! But it was so much fun. We had a great visit with my sister and her family and my parents at the beginning of Aug. and then a great time in WI with Quent's brother and his family and his parents. And then school started....it has been good, bad and ugly! Really!!! The ugly part is all the sickness that goes with two being in school bringing home all the germies that love to plague our family. Not much you can do about that, though. We had a quick visit with friends over Labor Day at the Indy Children's Museum. My camera battery died halfway through the Barbie exhibit so we didn't get all the other wonderful shots from there but the girls and I had so much fun!

Can you tell they were so excited about BARBIE???

They had it set up so cool!

The really cool sculpture running up the center...it was a great museum!

Our little take home Barbies!

Looking at the different Barbie eras

The paparazzi needs a haircut, I know!

Doing their fashion show!

Jess loved all the pretty dolls and displays!

Great hands on activities...

....they loved it all, of course!

I really wanted the light fixtures!

Jess loved the doll in the green dress....

.....and Elli loved the one in the white!

Almost a tooth-less wonder!

She lost her front tooth last night! The other one is close behind...probably within the week. It is always funny when we hear the exclamation from one of the girls....Quentin and I look at each other with the silent but all knowing question, "do you have any dollar bills?!" We need to have a tooth fairy cash jar with as many teeth these two are loosing. The best part is reading the notes and finding the gifts that they leave for the Tooth Fairy. Last night, when I was exchanging the tooth for money (very silently so as not to wake up the sleeping beauties) I looked over at Jess' pillow and saw that she had very hopefully placed her wallet on the pillow, just in case the Tooth Fairy was feeling extra generous!

Poor girl... sun-burnt, scraggly long bangs and missing her front tooth!

Jess told Owen to open his mouth last night so she could see if any of his adult teeth were coming in! And then she tested to see if any of his were loose! These kiddos keep us on our toes!

Splashing out in the yard

Hot summer days are meant to be spent in the cold water! We have had fun using the water toys outside when it gets really hot out...and we have had lots of hot summer days so far! Here are some fun insights into the goings on around our house!

getting ready to run out of the cold water stream

enjoying the cool water

Don't know how I got this picture......

Such energy and excitement!

This just makes me laugh....they were running around so happy and wild!

Love getting them off the ground running

They have loved these squirt shooters!

They had fun splashing each other

You should have heard the laughing and giggles!

I love this concentration face!

Loading up for more water wars....watch out neighbors!!!

Love his mooshy, sleepy after-nap-time mellowness!

My soon to be Kindergartener!

Can't believe this girl is going to be in first grade at the end of the summer!

Summer Homeschooling

We have been doing a little homeschooling this summer to keep the kids minds sharp and to minimize the summer arguing. It has been going really good....the girls are not convinced that they need to do school work but Owen sure does want to do what they are doing! There are only about five more weeks of summer left so we are not going to go full force every day, but we are going to fit it in between trips to the pool to keep cool!