4th of july fun!

Well I'm finally into my pictures for July!

We had a lot of fun hanging at our house and having friends over for the 4th!

I bought ice cream bars (which is a special treat at our house!) and Eli was in heaven!

Good thing Colin was there to catch all of his melted ice cream!

Colin is doing a lot better at wanting to light the fireworks, but we still don't do anything too noisy or loud as Maggie and Eli are not excited about them!

We're fine with that since it keeps the cost of the fireworks low and we can do them before it gets dark out, before bedtimes!

Our neighbor came over and took this picture of us while doing fireworks in our driveway

Eli was sad about a loud one we did (meaning, it fizzled and crackled some, it was definitely NOT loud!)

Maggie had glow sticks on with our older neighbor Zoe, whom she just adores!

So fun!

Then we had some friends over to swim and eat on the 4th!

Such a cute group of kids!

We had a lovely time visiting and the kids all played really well together!

Love this picture of Colin and Eli

We went to Grammie and Grandad's for dinner and the kids all played outside (with the REALLY big kids, too!)

Water balloons were so fun!

The Teson cousins at Grammie and Grandad's house

Happy 4th of July!

Eli got some snake powder on his face - he was a mess!

Maggie and Eli, lounging in our driveway eating some yogurt

and one last cute picture of Eli holding a sparkler!

Happy 4th of July!!!

Trampoline parks and picnics

At the end of the school year, we promised the kids that we would let them bring one friend to a trampoline park for a couple hours since they did so well in school this past year.

Maggie invited her friend Aubrey

Colin went with his buddy Finn

Such big smiles!

Colin played so much dodgeball that his arm hurt the next day :)

We found a turtle crossing the road and heading into our neighbors yard.
We named him Raphael.  

Then we went to our neighborhood fishing club dinner, complete with lots of yummy barbecue and side dishes.  Tons of desserts, too!

We love that our neighborhood has so many fun activities for families to take part in.

The kids only caught a few fish that night, but had a great time.

Swimming with cousins and friends

I had to take a day off work one Friday since our summer nanny was unable to watch the kids.  So....Tiff and I planned time for Meemaw and her to come up and swim some at the pool.

Meemaw's so good at floating :)

Colin did a great job of encouraging Gordon to work on his swimming skills

He was such a good big cousin

We were at the pool for over 3 hours and they swam the WHOLE TIME!

Cousin love

We packed snacks/lunch so the kids were happy!

The pool wasn't busy at all when we were there - so nice to spread out!

Eating some snacks and drying off

Then Colin got to invite his friend Finn over to spend the night.

They had so much fun playing with that silly penguin raft!

A quick pic right before we headed back home

And then later Colin and Finn returned to the pool for more jumping around.

It always amazes me how much energy they have :)

Ordinary days - end of June 2018 (swimming, friends, and car washes)

I participated in KC Corporate Challenge again this year.

The kids were able to come up and see me swim one night (the swim meet takes FOREVER and often I am not home before 11 PM).

I had the cutest cheering section!

 Plus we had a great group of swimmers for CMH

 I said good-bye to one of my dearest nursing friends - she's off to work in the ER now that she's an Family Nurse Practitioner!

 The kids have been swimming up a storm lately - they have practice daily and then swim meets once a week.  We've had tons of suits and goggles all around the house!

Colin and Maggie got to swim against each other one meet when they combined the boys and girls relays into one heat.

 There was one meet where it was unseasonably COLD and we had to pull out our college swimming parka jackets.  They were put to good use!

Plus, our favorite person Claire was able to stop by and cheer the kids on!

 Eli was being a turkey and didn't want to join in on the picture (but I got him off to the side anyway!)

Night swimming is so much fun!

 We've been visiting lots of friends houses lately - so fun having dinner and chatting with other families like ours!

 We used one of Brian's father's day gift cards to Jack Stack BBQ one Saturday.

SOOOOO good!

 The kids wanted to wash our cars and of course, we allowed :)

 They did a pretty good job, too!

And I got this sweet picture from daycare a few weeks ago - Eli with his cousin Bennett.

So nice to have them together during the days!