Paper Wasps

A little over two weeks ago our neighbor Hannah came and asked us if we wanted to see a wasp nest (hive?). Sure, who doesn't? It wasn't too far away, across the street from our next door neighbors in fact. And it was a beauty!

Isn't it beautiful?!

Here's a little perspective with my hand, bigger than my hand, but not huge. It is not active, if you were wondering, I think someone killed it. :-)

Face Painting

I think this took place while I was at the doctor with Kaleb. Evie had purchased face paint at AWANA last year and we hadn't used it yet. She was super excited when Aunt Debbie said she'd paint their faces! Here are the results.

Didn't Debbie do a nice job?

Fun with Uncle Craig

My Uncle stopped by on Labor day on his way to a retreat center in NY. We had a great time with him! Here are some pictures from his visit.

We took a hike down to the creek. All the kids (and ME!) got a piggy back ride at some point.

Nathan found how to flip the camera view on my uncle's phone......

And had some fun with it...

It was really hot out, so our walk was pretty short. We then came home and hung out in the nice and cool house. 

There was much tickling!

And airplane rides!

No hands!

Crazy girl!

Spinning!

Fair Fun

When my parents were here, I attempted to have us do something fun and spontaneous, it didn't work out so well. Nathan is not really the spontaneous type and I might have over reacted a wee bit (okay, WAY over reacted) to his taking forever to get Hannah food. But here are some pictures from before that.....

Pig racing! Who doesn't like a good pig race? 

Maybe gooses races instead? 

Cows anyone? Damen is the one petting the cow here, HUGE improvement from being terrified a year and a half ago! Kaleb did super well too!

Petting the sheep

Bunnies!

Enjoying cotton candy with Nana!

After the animals we headed to the children's stage which they said was a magic show, but it wasn't....it was a Jeopardy style game show instead, Evie took part in the game and won her round! 

She then participated in the final round and got very frustrated because her buzzer wasn't working...it was more like the guy running it couldn't see which buzzer lite up first and went with whoever talked first. 

This was behind us while watching the game show...and after the game show is where things went down hill and we ended up leaving.....maybe we'll try again next year.

Swimming with Family

September got off to a crazy start. The first two weeks of September were very warm, so we continued with our swimming lessons. The first week of September also contained lots of family with Debbie coming in on the first and staying until the 8th, with a couple day departure in the middle when my parents were in town. My uncle also stopped by for a few hours on Labor Day. So it made for a crazy week! Here are pictures of some of the fun that was had in the water with visitors.

Debbie tried to get all the kids to jump in together, only the girls went for the idea...

Cute boy (Damen) waiting for his turn

Jumping fun

Number two

And splits

Everybody's go surfing!

Surfing USA!

Underwater floating! (This is Damen)

And this is Kaleb

The person behind the pictures! (Not Kaleb, the other person!)

Hannah waiting at the door to get in

3-2-1-JUMP! Both boys got very good at jumping in on their own by the end of the summer.

SPLASH!

Pretty flowers at the pool, Aunt Debbie helping the girls with their lessons

Evie diving!

Kaleb and Damen waiting to leave and being cute.

Evie finally got Aunt Debbie in the water with her!

And got her a little wetter than she might have wanted

In she goes!

After fun with Aunt Debbie at the pool Nana and Grandad came with us to swim!

Nana doing laps with the girls

Some backstroke....

And just to finish of the swimming for the season, if you've made it this far through the post, I'll share the videos from the last few days of swimming!

Kaleb jumping in

Damen jumping in

Evie doing freestyle

Evie picked up the elementary backstroke towards the end of the summer and loved trying to see how few strokes she could take to get down the length of the pool. I think the least she did was five. 

And after a couple weeks of practice Evie finally got the breaststroke down!!! 

Hannah's handstand! 

Look who's swimming!!! This is Damen and then Kaleb and the girls were trying to swim holding hands, so I went to them at the end.

And here is Kaleb swimming!

Favorite quotes from the past week

I totally forgot to write down one from Damen, so I'm writing the other two down while I remember. The first was from two kids in my Sunday school class last week when I mentioned Hannah's adoption day was the next day. Their response "really? She's adopted? I had NO idea she was adopted. I thought she was yours, like really yours. I thought you were saying she was going to adopt an animal. She's adopted? Really?" It was all said in serious disbelief.

The second was tonight from Evie. Hannah was sent to bed early for "tooting" on Evie, so I was making sure Evie understood why Hannah was in bed and warning her not to toot on her sister. Her response "I haven't tooted on her at all this month!" Great! Let's not any month please!

Church Block Party

The last Saturday of August our church had a block party. They had a peach wave truck, which is our local frozen yogurt place, with all the free frozen yogurt with toppings you could eat , along with free hot dogs and bouncy houses. They kids definitely had a good time! I only got two pictures, none of all the yogurt eaten! But here is the boys coming out of the bounce house.

It was a good chance to catch up with people from church and meet some new people as well!

The crazy life take 2

And I thought last Tuesday was crazy. Today, I woke the kids up at 6:40 am to leave the house by 7 am for Kaleb's 8:30 am ENT appointment half way across the state(okay, maybe not quite half way, for over an hour away). All the kids were in the car at 6:57 am. I go to start the car and it doesn't start. Nathan's not home because he left at 5:20 am to cook breakfast for and attend a men's Bible study. I call my friend in a panic not sure what's wrong with my car and ask if I can use hers, she said yes, but I had figured out, thanks to the girls help (they found the trunk light on) I just needed a jump, so her husband came over and jumped the car, we ended up leaving the house at 7:27 and arrived about 10 minutes late for the appointment. We did hit traffic and were going super low for about 15 minutes, but the rest of the time I went with the flow of other cars, which is WAY faster than I would normally drive, but resulted in making very good time. The ENT said that blood coming out of the ear isn't a big deal, she understands it freaks people out, but I really shouldn't worry about it. She also said she'd still recommend leaving the tub in through the winter and that the tube couldn't cause the bleeding, it's probably just due to drainage in the ear. My pediatrician said she wouldn't agree that it needed to come out. However, she did say she understands if we want the tube out and she is willing to take it out at this point if we'd like. Nathan and I will have to talk and figure out what we think is best. I made it home from the appointment fine and made it to the girls orthodontist appointment without a problem as well. Did you catch that? Girls plural? Yes, Evie had a consult because of her "petite" mouth. The orthodontist said we can wait off doing anything with her at this point and check back again in six months and probably start something then.

Playing at the Park

We went to the park almost two weeks ago, but I have pictures! So I figured I should still post about it. It was beautiful so when the kids asked to go to the park I said sure! We went to the park we've been to a fair amount next to an elementary school, the only difference was this year the school isn't in use, so we could use all the school equipment too!

All ready to go!

This was neat because two people could go down a firemans pole at the same time. Here the girls are ready to go

The boys wouldn't go to opposite sides, so they went right after each other. Here Damen is going

Here comes Kaleb!

Hanging out on a "fire truck"

Here Damen is driving it

Evie made it all the way across these money bars, I think there were 18 rungs, and she was even able to stop and smile for the camera!

Here we all had fun bouncing together. I'm standing on the thing behind Damen bouncing all the kids :-) 

Then they kicked me off and did it by themselves

Damen and Kaleb at the top of the spider web.

Chickens across the street from the park. Why there were chickens wondering around a parking lot I have no idea....

The kids also had a lot of fun playing on this mound of dirt which they thought was like a volcano. :-)