Ava's visit - July 5th-9th

Monday

Ava came to visit last week. As usual Kaiya was counting down the days. I was looking forward to spending the 4th of July with her. I had a good amount of artillery/displays. I love lighting off fireworks and Ava talked about it quite a bit before she got here. First couple of days the weather was rainy (surprise). We watched Toy Story 2 before it stopped raining that afternoon.

We took the girls to the park in our neighborhood. They all needed to get out and exercise a bit.

Kaiya and Ava get along great....about 90% percent of the time :) The other 10% is spent fighting over real important issues like who had the bag of chips first and who had the yellow marker first.

Ella can pull herself up on the swing. She is very determined and strong- must be the protein shakes.

Ava on the other hand would rather be helped.

After the park we went home, ate some dinner and Ava went home around 8:00.

On Tuesday Ava came back early in the morning. The sun finally decided to come out and it was hot outside. We headed to go to a park and play...we chose Game Farm in Auburn. It was nice and hardly anyone was there. We packed up a lunch, some balls and our kid badminton set and headed for some fun in the sun.

Ava mentioned the night before about taking some pictures while she was here to put into an album and take back to Milwaukee. We thought that was a wonderful idea! So at the park we took a bunch of pictures. These are just a few...

All 3 girls wanted me to spin them round and round. Lasted about 15 minutes. I had to take breaks every couple of turns...I was getting super dizzy.

When we got home Ella took a nice long nap while Ava and Kaiya went outside to play in the sprinkler. They had fun running back and forth through the water and spraying each other.

The sprinkler is fun when it's 95 degrees! Sprinkler under the trampoline is even better.

Craig and Nate helped me set up the new trampoline I bought. THANK GOODNESS! It's a beast to set up. Not like the one we had before that could break down in 20 minutes.

The girls played on the swings and brought us some water while we worked. The net on the trampoline wasn't set up by the time we took Ava home so the girls had to wait in anticipation another day to play on the trampoline.

Wednesday

One thing that Ava wanted to do while she was here was go to Chuck E Cheese. Ava loves Chuck E Cheese and always wants to go when I see her. Ella talks about going at least once a week now. She is hooked. Her and Ella dig it, this is both of their favs. We played and ate some pizza then went home to finish the trampoline and play outside.

Here we are getting our race on!

Score!

Yay! The trampoline is set up and ready to play on!!!

Can you tell they like pictures, and that their Mom takes about 500 pics daily? I give Heidi a hard time because she always makes us stop and take a picture....sometimes it seems like every 5 minutes. It gets a bit....well....annoying. Ha ha. When we look back at our pictures and look back on our blog I am very grateful that we have all these memories captured.

Thursday we hung out at the house most of the day. We did take a trip to Walmart so that Ava could pick out an album for her pictures but other than that we were home. Kaiya and Ava like to play school so between that and playing on the trampoline with the sprinkler they were pretty busy having fun. Ava spent the night so the girls played a lot and then went to bed early. For some reason there are no pictures from this day.

Friday was Ava's last day with us. We went and saw Toy Story 3 in the theaters. It was a cute movie and the girls enjoyed it. Ella fell asleep during the first 30 minutes. After the movie we came home and put the sprinkler under the trampoline. We also celebrated Ava's birthday while she was here. She turned 5 on June 18th. I told her that we would light off a bunch of fireworks on the 4th of July for her birthday. Genius idea, I know. She got a cake and some presents as well. These were the presents that we gave her on Friday.

We will miss Ava but she will be back for another week in August! Woo hoo!

Last Day of School

The school year finally came to an end. We decided to keep up with the tradition and go to Chuck E Cheese after school (it was a half day). This year we invited some of our friends. The kids had fun playing and it was a great way to kick off the summer.
Kaiya didn't want the school year to end...at all. She loved her teacher and said she would miss her very much. When I we got into the car after I picked her up she started to cry. I felt bad for her but knew the summer would end too soon and school would be starting before she knew it.
Kaiya and Kaylee...

This was Ella's favorite ride. She wanted to go on it over and over and over...

Casey didn't like the ride very much and wanted to get off...ha ha

Pizza!

Bailee's Runway Birthday Party

Bailee had a fun 8th birthday party. It was a runway party, fasionista style. Stephanie hired a photographer who took pictures, provided runway outfits, accessories and cupcakes. The girls had a really good time! The mom's were invited for a light lunch and to watch the runway show. It was a fun mother/daughter afternoon.

Sunshine! Dash Point Beach

A couple weeks back on Saturday I had wonderful plans to start organizing the house. Cirdan said he would help out which made me even more excited. We ended up waking up to a bright light coming from the sky...something that we hadn't seen for a while...the SUN. So, we decided to go to the beach. Cirdan had talked to one of the guys in a different office where he works and that mentioned it was going to be a really low tide so we decided to check it out. The water was further out than I have ever seen it.
Ella loved every minute of the beach. It was fun watching her walk out on the sand looking for sand dollars, crabs, jellyfish and clams. She is deathly afraid of spiders or bugs but wasn't afraid of a crab. She even picked up the crabs! She loved putting her feet in the little water puddles.