Kayli's Birthday

Our next door neighbors - Ken and Lisa - threw the 1st birthday party for their daughter Kayli today. It was a great day for a party, albeit a little humid, but we all still had a lot of fun. Here's the birthday girl.

Besides the pool (there was the little baby pool, and then a full-size pool), the biggest attraction for the kids was the inflatable bouncy house. Izzy, Zach and Emily were in it all afternoon.

Emily's getting air!

Since it was in the high 80's and with very high humidity, the kids were in the pool a lot to keep cool.

Son feeding father.

Ice cream and cake - of course. Wouldn't be a birthday party without it.

Sharing candy off a candy-necklace.

To finish the day - we almost made a trip to the ER. After a long day, with no nap, the kids had finished a quick dinner, were in their pj's and getting ready to head to bed. Zach has the plastic tube for the toy vaccum and was blowing through it making sounds. He then trips, falls down with the hard plastic tube in his mouth, landing on the tube and jamming it into the roof of his mouth. We quickly pick him up and are greeted with a mouth full of blood. A few swallows and wipes with a washcloth, plus some cuddles and the help of a flashlight, find a 1" semi-circular deep gash in the top of his mouth. Yikes! We call our doctor, and ask expected, you can't suture a mouth - so he gets to eat soft, cool foods (aka ice cream and milkshakes) for the next couple of days while it heals. And if we're able to get him to rinse his mouth with salt-water (yeah, right!), that will help it heal as well. What's funny, is that Melissa's brother did almost the exact same thing as a kid - except it was a pencil through the back of his throat, and the night before we left on vacation. I remember being so jealous that we had to stop every couple hours to buy him a milkshake. =)

Strawberry Picking

Today a group of my friends met at a local farm and we took all of our kids strawberry picking. It was quite the adventure! With my 3, it's like herding cats trying to get them to stay together, and follow along. Needless to say, I was exhausted afterwards. But we had a lot of fun, and the kids loved it.


I don't know if we ate more, squashed more tromping through the fields, or actually picked more strawberries that we took home. =)

Emily - go figure - was the only one that really took to eating the strawberries off the plants. By the end of the day, she was covered in juice... and mud. We had torrential thunderstorms yesterday, so all the farm roads were huge mud puddles. Try keeping 3 kids out of those!?!


Since it's a real farm, there are lots of animals. Here the kids decided to share all the strawberries we just worked so hard to pick with the local goats. Thanks guys!


There's a 4-H center, and the kids were given food (not our precious strawberries) to feed the sheep.

Emily loved it! She had the sheep nibbling on her fingers. Zach wasn't that in to it.

By the end, all 3 kids were filthy! Good thing I filled the baby pool up before we left home. When we got back, they were stripped in the driveway and got to "clean up" in the pool while I made lunch.

My Grandpa....

Elmer Levi Wiens
May 4, 1921 ~ June 19, 2008

Yes, my grandma passed away just two months ago. These two were inseperable in life, it's only fitting that they made their way to heaven together as well. We love you, Grandpa! Tell Grandma we said HI. We'll miss you both forever.

Happy Father's Day

Here are the kids working on their Father's Day cards for Grandpa!

Landscaping

Our latest house project was updating the landscaping around our house. With almost 2 acres, and tons of trees, it was a fairly big project. We put down 61 yards of mulch (aka barkdust) on the property. To give you an idea of the scale, that was 3 full semi-trucks worth! Here's the before and after pictures of everything.

Driveway entrance BEFORE:

Driveway entrance AFTER:

Driveway BEFORE:

Driveway AFTER: Eventually we'll plant shrubs and bushes in here and hopefully within the year the driveway will be repaved.

Front of House BEFORE:

Front of House AFTER: All the bushes/hedges were trimmed, flowers were planted under the windows and mulch laid around the house.

Side of House BEFORE: Grass never really grew here - because no light came through the trees.
Side of House AFTER:

Side of House BEFORE:

Side of House AFTER: We added a walkway to the new playground Steve built for the kids next to the pool and mulched all around it.

Backyard BEFORE:

Backyard AFTER: More stone walkways from the back of the house to the pool and playarea.

Playground BEFORE:

Playground AFTER:

Pool: No changes, just everything cleaned up, opened and ready for daily use.

Izzy

Izzy's really growing up! She had her 2nd cleaning at the dentist last month and did awesome. They let her wear the sunglasses to keep the bright light out of her eyes while her teeth were cleaned and polished.

... and she FINALLY had her first haircut! Zach needed his hair cut again tonight, and Izzy demanded to have hers cut too. So, we trimmed it. Maybe it'll thicken up a little from being cut, who knows. Her hair has this cute little curl to it, I hated trimming it off - but I tried to just even it out all the way around. She's so proud - she couldn't wait to show daddy when he got home. =)
BEFORE:

AFTER:

Summer in the pool

Now that we're finally getting some warm weather - the kids are enjoying playing outside in the water. Our inground pool is open and ready, but there's NO WAY I can take all 3 kids in it by myself... just not safe. So when Daddy isn't around, we opt for the inflatable baby pool in the yard.



Yesterday, it hit 80 degrees. They spent an hour going down the slide into the pool. Non-stop, one after the other until I finally made them go inside for lunch and then they all passed out for naps.