in the past 30 days: birthday celebrations

Our girlie turned 8 this month, and we had lots of fun celebration! It started the week before her birthday, with a trip to the "American Girl" store to have her doll, Molly's ears pierced. We surprised K. by letting her get her own ears pierced that day too!

Then on her actual birthday, we had dinner with both sets of grandparents, with cake, ice-cream and presents:

 And finally, about a week later, we had three of her best friends over for a sleep-over party!

 These are sun-catchers we made from melting pony beads, a great craft for the morning after the sleep-over!

I think everyone would agree it was a good birthday!

in the past 30 days: farm fair

One of our summer traditions, which has been documented at least twice on this blog in previous years, is going to the county fair where I grew up, which is called "Farm Fair". We love to see my mom's best friend perform as Candy and Cupcake (a children's entertainment show), see the animals and the 4-H exhibits, and hubby loves a good tractor pull. This year the weather became ominous and the radar (thanks, smartphone) looked terrible...and then the storm blew over. I told hubby, " I guess God loves a good tractor pull too!" We had a wonderful day, as we always do.

my boys love combine harvesters!

super-cool! riding in a giant tractor-pull tractor!

earplugs in, and ready for the tractor pull!

in the past 30 days: long island trip

Summer has FLOWN by! We have been so busy but it has all been wonderful, wonderful fun. And I just haven't been here on the blog. But I do want to update with all the wonderful fun that has been going on, with some specific posts of trips and adventures, and a few miscellaneous posts of a mish mash of fun. So here is the first of several: near the end of July, the kids, my mom and I took a two night trip up to see my sister-in-law and my niece and nephews where they were spending the month in Cutchogue, on Long Island, NY.  Because my brother is in the Navy, we often see them only once or twice a year while they are stationed far away (currently San Diego). So it was a joy to spend this bit of time with them, to let my kids know their cousins a bit, to be with family.  My niece just turned 1, her brothers are 2 1/2 and 4 1/2.  Here are the highlights (yes, there are a lot of photos!):

the faces crack me up!

happy cousins!

on the lake (part 2)

As promised, here are the pictures of the kids learning to waterski, tubing, and enjoying being out on the boat! Without further ado...

They started skiing like this, crouched down:

 

But soon both were able to ski from a standing position (although my boy did continue to prefer the crouched ski for whatever reason):

 And much fun was to be had out on the tube (Mommy too, but alas, no photos!):

AIRBORNE!