The Birthday Kids!

It's prime birthday season once again. 2 birthdays this month, 2 next month, 1 in september. Missy's birthday was on the 19th, Josh's on the 20th. We thought it was funny that Josh's soccer shirt has an 8, and the soccer shirt that Missy's been wearing as pj's for a while has a 4!

We're planning to take Josh and friend to do something fun for his birthday, and Missy will have a combined party with Jess in a couple of weeks. So instead of birthday cakes we decided to go out for ice cream sundaes.

How cute is the little water cup that they gave Manda?

Here are the present pictures . . . .

This is the present that Natalie made for Josh. It's a TV, complete with remote and a bunch of "videos" that you slide through slits on the sides. Is that cute or what?

Fashions by Natalie

A few weeks ago the kids got these little stuffed animals at cousin Annabelle's first birthday party. They've played with them a lot more than I would have expected, and the other day Natalie decided to make clothes for them!

Here we have Anna in her "sunday clothes."

This is Cory in his vest.

Next is Aubrey, wearing casual jeans and shirt with a "beach necklace." (notice the "a" for aubrey)

Last of all we have Kolee, wearing her "book of mormon dress." (not pictured: 3 buttons and a tie on the back)

Ta-dah!

Independence Day

For our 4th of July party, we had Jason's brother Jacob's family, and my brother Eric's family here. We had so much fun!

Jacob and Jenny brought their slip 'n slide, Jason got water guns for all the kids, and we filled up the wading pools and had a barbeque and popsicles. The kids couldn't wait for the fireworks!
cute little lainey
Wyatt
Meredith, Logan and Missy

(an inside joke for my siblings)

Jason, Jacob and Eric put on an awesome fireworks show for us! Our neighbors enjoyed it too.
This is Jessica with her sparkler. Go fireworks setting!

Two Reunions

Our first reunion was for my mom's side of the family. There were 67 of us, almost everybody! We were only missing a couple of spouses and missionaries. We stayed in the perfect reunion house, a place called the 5 star ranch. It's a huge house with lots of property, a nice big grassy yard with a trampoline, fire pit, sand box, horseshoe pit, and a pond with boats!

Missy was so friendly to all the grown-ups, it was so fun to watch her. Here she is with Hannah and McKenzie. We haven't had a reunion in 5 years, so it was really cool to see how grown up and gorgeous all of my little cousins are!

Natalie spent all the time she could in the boats. This is her with my cousin Matt, his son Jackson, and Jessica.

Missy dragged me outside one day and made me take pictures of her and her cousin Wyatt (Eric's middle son) who looks like he should be her brother!

This is Josh (in the red) and Jackson (Eric's oldest-- yes we have two Jacksons!) helping Jen's #3 Tanner to play a skiing game on the wii fit.

The reunion for my Dad's side started the same day the first one ended. We do this one every year, and it's getting really big too! Close as I can count, there are 73 of us now, and again we were only missing a couple of spouses. This reunion is a camping one.

One of the favorite activities of the little ones is Jeff's hammock. This is Jessica and her favorite 2nd cousin Gwendolyn, and Josh and Mandie.

Here's Josh and Jaren (Jen's 2nd) being "flower goblins." I think they were going around throwing flowers at people. What mischief!

And Missy discovered a favorite cousin as well! Lauralynn is just a few months older than her, and they were completely adorable playing together.

The End!

Walking!

On Wednesday Manda finally decided to get brave and start walking! She was so excited when she realized she could do it, it was so cute! She's 13 months old.