First Day of Enrichment!! Kindergarten and 2nd Grade. :)

4th of July

We had a great Independence Day this year.  :)  We had my parents, Steven Ashley & Chase, Cathy and the Karrers over.  The kids and even some of the adults swam for most of the evening.  It was 106 in Bakersfield, yikes!

How many Grandmas go swimming with their Grandkids?  Probably not too many.

It was Chase's first time really enjoying the pool I think, he kept saying "Bath! Bath!"  :)

The Karrers brought sparklers, which were the hit of the night.

I think of everyone here, Baylee was the most excited about the fireworks and kept screaming when they would go off!

The boys enjoying their sparklers.  :)

I thought this was a great picture that Anne took, it looks professional.

And this is just adorable. :)

Livie loves Cathy!  She hung out with her all night.

Baylee with her sparker.

This one was pretty funny, so I thought I'd add it in.  Luke seems very concerned.  He must know Jaden well.  :)

We had a pretty good view of the Seven Oaks show, so that was great.

What's new?

This is kind of a miscellaneous post, an attempt to catch up...

No Rhyme or reason for this picture, just thought she looked like a cute little baby seal or something and I had to put it up.  :)

Livie didn't like hers as much because she couldn't get her hands out.  Baylee rescued her though.

We are kind of going backwards because I wasn't paying attention to the picture order.  :/  Here are my big three right before the Christmas program at church.  You can expect a couple of cute videos of that to pop up soon.  :)

Tony and Aubrey on Thanksgiving playing some sort of video game at my parent's house.

Grandma and the girls.

Jaden demonstrating why we will never own one of these at our house.  Obsessed.

Baylee in her new "robe of many colors".

The boys, up to no good as usual.

A picture of a lunch scene at our house the week we kept the Karrer boys.  :)  It was a riot.  Please note the look on Baylee's face.  I think that old saying came true and her face is actually stuck that way, at least that is how it seems these days.   Ahh... the terrible 2s, 3s and 4s!  :)

Here she is in a much better mood... she loves her sisters, Aubrey is enjoying being the middle child for a little while longer.

This is an absolutely rare occurrence at our house... the kids all fell asleep on the couch at the same time.  I shouldn't even say rare, because I can assure you this has never happened before and will most likely never happen again unless there is a gas leak of some sort.  I actually had Tony check to make sure there wasn't a gas leak when I saw this... just completely random.

I just liked this one because Brenna is cracking me up.  She was so into the movie, it was really the first time she has seen a movie and paid attention to it.  The kids are VERY into Robin Hood right now, and she loved being right in there with the big siblings, at least for a few minutes.

That is about all I've got.  We have just been keeping busy doing life.  Tony has pneumonia which is a bummer, he has been quite under the weather lately but is doing much better the past few days.  That is about all of the excitement around here!

Pumpkin Patch

On Saturday, we went on our 5th annual pumpkin patch trip with the Karrers.  It is getting to be so much fun with all of the kids, and to look back on how much they've all grown since that first year.  :)

Here are the big three, Jaden is a little reluctant to pose since just a few feet away his friends are all playing.

The fantastic five.

I love this one with all of the big kids.  Especially Caleb, he cracks me up.  :)

They got quarantined while I was taking pictures of the Karrers, this one actually turned out the best I think, and as an added bonus, no one got lost.  I think I might have to invest in one of these, it is quite handy to keep them all together.

Our family, it is so much fun!

Brenna and Livie were extremely tired because this was around 4 pm and they had not napped at all this day.  (We were at the buddy walk earlier in the day)  They were troopers, they are such good girls.

I love this one, Aubrey is so relaxed.  :)

Never thought I'd have 3 girls.  Never thought I'd spend so much time doing hair!  They sure are cute though, eventually I'm sure Baylee will help me.  She loves her little sisters.

The boys think it's more fun to stick things in the girls' hair.  They are good entertainers. though.

Princess Lulu

Our little peanut, eating as much grass as she can get away with.

 

Apple Picking

We went up to Pulford Family Orchard last week for our annual field trip/apple picking adventure.  :)  Here is Farmer John explaining to the kids how to graft a tree.  Tony wanted to know if I took advantage of the opportunity to tie that into our spiritual grafting into the body of Christ... obviously he has never taken 3 small children on a field trip with all of their little friends.

Next, they learned how the apples are cleaned and sorted and stored.  They even got to go into the giant refrigerator which was a nice break from the heat.  (Yes, we were a little over dressed!)

Jaden was excited to get the apples!

I still made them take a couple of pictures with the inevitable results.

Then, they got to start.  We were thrilled this year to find some tart green apples.  (Last year we only got sweet red apples, which were still wonderful, but we much prefer the green ones around here!)

Aubrey had fun and managed to find every apple in the orchard that had been eaten by a bird or bug.

Jaden did much better this year  though and found lots of huge flawless apples.

Baylee and Matt :)

They were very excited to get home and make some yummy apple recipes.

Especially Aubrey!  It is hard not to just eat them all up plain, but we have a few pies and breads planned that everyone is very happy about.  Happy Fall!!!