Sunday with Kelsey

Saturday with KaKa

We had a great visit with Kelsey... our teenage daughter! She is just so helpful and thoughtful and she LOVES our kids! What could be better than that!

On Saturday night we had a BBQ dinner with Iowa corn and then headed to the Splash Park after going to the playground to get REALLY hot and sweaty! It was a blast!

Hannah was just as attached to KaKa as Grace... they had to learn to share her!

Down the small water slide with Daddy... Grace loves to do this one by herself. She barely gets down before she is off to do it again! :)

Let's do it again!
Since Kelsey took Grace down the LARGE water slide(many, many times), Danny thought he would take Hannah! SHE LOVED IT and was saying "Again! Again!" before she was even out of the water!

It was a great evening of fun!

Shaving Cream Mess

I don't want my girls to be those kinds of kids... you know, the ones that enter school without having been children. The kind who never painted, never played with play-doh, never splashed in puddles, never made mud pies and never made a mess. I want my girls to explore, to learn, and to be kids!

So this afternoon I pulled out the picnic table and brought out cans of daddy's shaving cream... they squealed in delight. I gave them each a spoon (used to spread it or bang on the table) and a huge glob of shaving cream. They loved smearing it, drawing in it, and squishing it between their chubby fingers. I was surprised that neither one tried to eat it.... Hannah must be maturing (or it didn't really smell appetizing).

They truly enjoyed themselves and I enjoyed watching them work together and have fun. Clean up was a breeze... I just hosed them off and hosed off the table. Hannah even dried the table for me with the towel.

Next time we will have to try chocolate pudding... I am sure there will be MUCH MORE eating going on!!!!

KaKa Countdown..COMPLETED

KaKa comes in the morning.... will Grace get ANY sleep tonight? Will KaKa get any sleep tonight? We're doubtful!

There will be a blessed reunion a little after 10:15 central time tomorrow morning.

Hopscotch Queen

Here is the amazing Hopscotch Queen in action:

My Laundry Girl

Hannah LOVES laundry... she loves playing in it, dumping the basket on her head, and smelling the fresh clothes, but her favorite part is helping me take the clothes out of the dryer. That is a really convenient thing for me since she is a great height for it and I don't like having to bend over to do that. This front-loading washer really lets her be my helper....both of them actually because they can load the washer, put clothes from the washer to the dryer and empty the dryer! Wow! I have two great helpers!

Now we just have to work on folding.....

PS Grace does put her clothes in her drawers for me! :)

Jalapenos Abound

We have jalapenos!

At the beginning of spring we knew that we wanted to plant some veggies, but we really didn't have the space to plant much. I was very disappointed with that, but I knew that with everything else going on in our lives, we didn't need to add tending plants to the list.

We decided that we would just have one veggie plant this year -- jalapenos! We have picked our second group from this one plant and have had 8 total peppers. We thought that was pretty good. Danny made the first group into jalapeno poppers and then deep fried them... YUMMY (NOT)! The hardest thing is trying to keep the kids from touching the peppers.

I am sure we will plant more next year....