Our Virginia Trip!!!

So my sister Nikki lives a mere 9 hours away in Virginia.  So each summer one of us drives to the others for one or two weeks of awesomeness!!!  It's gotten substantially better on account of our kids are older now. The first 2 years were...well...let's just say that having lots of kids the same age all learning to share, and not beat each other up created a lot of sad children.  But now they're sooooo much older and it's GREAT!  Here are some of the highlights.

Okay--so we went to Lowe's for the cutest kids workshop EVER. It's totally free and they give the kids the apron and goggles to keep!  They each got a little blue print and all the materials to build a dump truck.  My kids LOVED it and I'm totally going to do more of this at home.  It was fun :)

Hooray!!!

Nik lives by ALL sorts of wonderful parks. One day we took a bike ride to the close by elementary school to play on the playground....IT WAS SOOOO HOT!  And no lie, when we planned it 5 minutes prior it was overcast and amazing. But once we got there Kade played for a bit and then sat by the school just waiting for the rest of the kids to realize how FREAKEN HOT and lame it was to still be playing in the Death Heat.  It took them lots longer then him--so that was rough.  But here's the group on the way home...I was going to try and get them to all group up for the shot, but then realized I'd probably be shot by Kade's laser kill eyes so I just took one for the memory....it for real was really hot.

Nikki's all 'cultural' and 'classy' and does stuff our little family of boys (aka bodily noises are funny group) don't usually get subjected to.  An example of this is our trip with the kids to the Symphony!  We'd told the kids we were going to go and they were excited. But then we changed our minds---and they were sad....so then we had a family discussion and since they all were quite excited by the idea we were back on!

 It was a free 45 min. concert.  I knew I wouldn't be able to stay inside for long with Rhett but thought I'd give it a chance anyway. It was SILENT..so even little 'mmmm's' were crazy noticeable.  We left within the first 10 minutes.

Turns out it was 85 minutes. Which was WAY more then 45 minutes for kids.  Nik said they all started getting sleepy eyed and a little more anxious around that 45 min. mark (which surprised me cause I totally thought that would start earlier for my boys--woo woo little ones!)  But they TOTALLY MADE IT without any problems.  And I met a darling women from Italy out in the hall with the only other 16 month old in the place so Rhett had a blast too.

Here's Jaxie spraying off the boys with a squirt bottle.  I love her SOOOOO much.

Making Cookies!  I love this Michael!  "In case you hadn't noticed" begins 50% of his sentences--ha ha--he's so funny!

Another free kids workshop at her local craft store.
  

Luke's favorite part of the craft.

Lunch time.  For real--they're sooooo cute!  Plus, every time a camera comes out, Jaxie immediately tilts her head and is all cutesie for the shot!  Ahh-she's so cute!

So this is what we looked like in 2007 with our young'ens ...it was a little harder then :) and  this is mostly what it sounded like.
(also, Jax was alive then...but she was only a few months old so she was sleeping lots still)

And here's this year..besides Rhett no one tried to escape the picture! YAY.  

Here's a little video--it's kind of slow at the end (little interviews with the kids...) it's really more of something for grandparents. So don't feel bad not watching the whole thing :)

Summer Fun and Sad Farewells

And summer begins:

The summer has been a summer of saying so many goodbyes! LAME!  

First my friend Jenny left...seriously--her family was so so fun and Luke LOVED her daughter Juliana.  He proclaimed it many times apparently in their primary class.

Here are the kids after going out to dinner.  We all went to this frozen yogurt place that is soooo yummy.

The first day of summer the boys invited some friends from the neighborhood over for some backyard mini pool fun...this was a pool from last year...and had lots of holes in it turns out...so it lasted just this one last time.

Luke and Rhett were playing outside one day and Rhett had a nasty habit of always messing around a little with the mud in the garden, so I stripped him down to his diaper and let them do their thing...but since Luke was in the equation this time, the hose was added.  They got so so nasty.

So I hosed them off and they played on the tramp. Woo woo!

I love this man!

Then Kelly and Jason's awesome family moved. We will miss them and their AMAZING dance moves for sure!  (They're champions at Just Dance!) We all went to Red Lobster..mmmmmmmm---for real, Jess and I could eat their coconut shrimp in pina colado dipping sauce ALL DAY LONG!!!

(notice Adam is in the background in his pretty pose)

Afterwards we hit up Baskin Robins and had some crazy funny conversations-HA!

This group is a freak'n HOOT!

It's funny...cause besides one other pic, this is the only family picture we have of all 5 of us...it's really pretty.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESS!!!  He turned 31 this year!  I honestly can't believe how amazing he is. He surprises me all the time by just getting more and more awesome.  I mean enough already!

He truly is amazingly hardworking, loving, kind, thoughtful generous man.  LOVE YOU JESS!

Plus--this was like 'it' for his birthday. A store bought cake and then...eating it.  LAME.  Sorry JESS!!!  We've turned into such lame birthday people.  How did this happen?  How do you have fun birthdays? Mine's coming up...so...we'll see if we get any ideas before then.

Next Sarah and her family left. BOOO.

We trained and ran a triathlon together, ran a few mud runs together, went on a cruise together---our kids played sooooo well together, and her family is AWESOME...we miss you guys.

Here are the kids out on the tramp....Kade's doing bunny ears to Abby....I think he kinda likes her...a lot. So that was fun to watch :)

Here are the boys at their going away party.  That's as far as Jess could reach turns out.

They also did this fancy pyramid that Jess was maybe a little reluctant to do.  Look at the look on his face of pure joy. (its NOT the face of Cari...I can't believe  you made me do this)

I may have grabbed Megan's face right before we took this shot for no apparent reason....

Miss you Sarah!

  I took Luke to Adventures Crossing the other day and it was awesome. He's been waiting for a full year to be able to drive these go karts--you had to be five, so we finally went and he was hilarious! 

Here is is next to his immediate best friend.  After this ride they went on all the rest together.

 Luke was timid at first.  A little short to reach the peddles which was tricky for him--too short to actually ride the ride turns out, but the attendant didn't care and I was so glad that he didn't--it would have broke Luke's little heart.

He ran into the bumper pads and the guy had push him off since there was no reverse...and I had to put it up because of the uncanny resemblance to a recent picture of my own :)

Must run in the family

We also played inside at the arcade. With his last token he played one where you spin a wheel (like wheel of fortune) and you get the amount of tickets that you landed on...BIG MONEY!!!  HE LANDED ON 100! WOO WOO!

And with his TONS of tickets......ha ha--he loved it though.

Okay...so..I know this looks bad.  And it was.  Me and Jess were trying out a new parenting thing to teach our kids to work.  Jess bought Kade a game he'd been wanting for his D.S. We told him that if he wanted to earn it, he would need to work for 10 hours.  I gladly handed over weeding as the job of choice cause 'there's always weeding'..unfortunately, Kade didn't want the game quite BAD enough to weed....ever.  And since I had already mentally handed this over...it turned into this. HA HA---CLASSY!!!

So he earned some time here and there, and I offered a DOUBLE TIME day for him to help me in the garden.  It was a lot of work, but worked out real nice!

This plant here has since died.....turns out watering IS necessary. So now I'm seriously considering a welcome mat, or a nice sign that says, WELCOME.  Cause that's way easier to take care of. :)

Luke loves playing with camera's.  This one was on my camera...I kinda love it so...here you go :)

Rhett is soooooooo grown up!

Luke LOVES playing in the rain. So Rhett joined him this time.

4TH OF JULY

"It's not often a Mormon party gets shut down by the Po Po"

But this year ours was! HA!

For those who are concerned.  Street fireworks are not legal in Grovetown.  Yes you can buy them at Walmart there--but you can't light them.  Only sparklers.  Luckily we were almost done lighting ours. Unluckily, we LOVE watching our neighbors, uh, 'more elaborate' fireworks each year, but the cop went from ours to theirs so we didn't get the big show that night. Here's a few pics from that night :)

Rhett stayed up...he was so tired....

MEGAN'S FAMILY LEFT!!!

I don't have any pics from their going away party but I'll miss them soooo bad! She's like the funniest girl ever. I like her lots and lots.  Love your face off Megan!

Okay--Kade TOTALLY looks like a troll here right?!

This was right after Rhett's haircut/shave (his hair's like translucent so now he's totally a mini-Jess)

 I love this pic cause he looks like an old man shouting at hooligans to get off his lawn!

School starts in less then 2 weeks.  The summer went by sooooooooo fast!!!