Maggie's 8th birthday party (finally!)

We finally got around to celebrating Maggie's 8th birthday in the middle of July (2 months later, but hey, it was still lots of fun!)

She invited a few of her closest friends over to swim, have a sleepover, and see a movie the next morning!

We ordered pizza at the pool...

Did some jumping on the trampoline...

Ate some delicious ice cream sundaes...

Put on unicorn face masks...

Decorated some flip flops...

Got a *little* bit of sleep that night...

And saw a movie the next day (Aladdin - it was really good!)

It's nice that Maggie has a good group of close friends that she likes to hang with.  Such polite and friendly girls that will most definitely change the world one day!

Happy Birthday, Mags!

4th of July fun!

Our little family is starting to really enjoy the 4th of July!  Our kids typically have been pretty nervous/scared about fireworks, but have let us buy a few more of the 'big ones' as they get older.

They still love the quiet ones though!

Smoke bombs are always a hit and are soooo much fun to run through!

And we bought the sparklers with the extra-long handles so they thought that was pretty neat!

Colin doing some sparkler dance moves

Eli took all the 'loud' fireworks and hid them so we wouldn't set them off :)

Our neighbors from a couple houses up the street stayed up late with us one night

The next day we went to Grammie and Granddads for a bit and the kids wanted to paint some USA pride on our cheeks.  Maggie did mine and Colin did Eli's face paint!

Maggie with Olivia and Dave's girlfriend Jordan

All the grandkids at Grammie and Granddad's (minus the Texas Tesons)

Family pic 2019

Eli even wanted to start lighting the smoke bombs so Maggie volunteered to help him

We had a wonderful 4th of July holiday and spent quite a bit of time with friends throughout the week.  We are blessed!

Ordinary Days in June

The Texas Teson clan was in town for the older boys to attend a summer camp, so we got to hang out with the younger ones at Grammie and Granddad's house.

 A fun lunch at mom's work one day - they have a 'kids eat free' lunch program at work and about once a week, our nanny Katie would bring the kids up and we would have a quick lunch while I was on break.  This particular time, her sister Holly came too!

A picture with my cute boy while we were watching Eli at tball 

Chad's parents invited us (well, we kindof invited ourselves) to their house for some fishing and country living.  They live on a ton of land in Clinton, MO and we crashed their place one weekend.

The girls...

That poor gator ran out of battery REALLY quickly from all of it's use

A couple fishing pictures - we didn't catch too many (it was really HOT outside and we couldn't keep all the kiddos out there for too long), but we had a lot of fun while it lasted!

Getting some "barn-sicles" with Chad's family

And...we visited some friends one weekend and had a little 'accident' happen while we were there.  Involving a deck nail through a fingernail.  Pretty traumatic but the other kids did great and we were so glad we were there to help out while the Gramlich's took Reece to the ER.

The kids got their summer swim team picture (proofs) back

Maggie 8 years old

Colin 9 years old

Boating with friends on Riss Lake

Our good family friends, the Barchers, live in our neighborhood and also have a boat on our lake.  They are so kind to offer to let us come out with them, and we have taken them up on that a few times this summer.  We happen to have kids that match up in age/gender so that makes it extra fun!

The girls on the paddle board

Jameson and Eli - the best of friends/enemies (3 years old is hard!)

We even did some fishing!

Fun times at the lake - right in our own neighborhood!