Mid-Air

My brother just finished building a beautiful play set in his backyard, and we were invited over to help break it in. He bought and added on a water slide extension to his slide, and the kids loved it.

The slide was pretty fast, and Makenna wasn't quite able to get her momentum under control at the bottom and would fly off the end of the slide. Despite landing on her bum in the grass, she loved it and went over and over. My sister was able to capture some great pictures of Makenna mid-air.

Photo Shoot

With all of the cousins together this summer, we couldn't miss the opportunity to take some pictures. It was quite the challenge to get 11 kids ages 5 and under looking and smiling at the camera, but luckily Grandpa was pretty entertaining.

All of the cousins

Just the girls
These 3 babies were all born within 6 weeks of each other. Hudson is the youngest of the three, but is also the biggest!

The Fourth

This year our 4th of July celebrations were spread over 2 days. Saturday my parents had their annual lake party with about 70+ family members. It was really fun to get to see everyone, and of course there was lots of yummy food to enjoy. And then on Sunday there was a great firework show put on at the lake. I was too busy enjoying the parties to take very many pictures, but here are just a few (mostly taken beforehand).

My mom bought her 6 granddaughters matching dresses.
And then I found this matching pair of overalls for Hudson at a garage sale.

No matter where we end up after school, I hope that we can make coming to my parent's for the 4th of July an annual tradition.

Summer Vacation

Our summer in Omaha has been more like an extended vacation. My sister and her two little ones, who are both slightly older than Makenna and Hudson, have been here visiting for a few weeks, and we have been busy going to the zoo, the children's museum, the park, shopping, to see Eclipse (the best of the Twilight movies so far, in my opinion), and of course have spent lots of time playing in the sand and water.

Here are a few of the highlights (more to come).

THE CHILDREN'S MUSEUM:

We loved the Con Agra Foods Little Market the best, and my mom even found a box of her favorite Con Agra product.

THE ZOO
I love the Omaha zoo. You could spend all day there and still not see everything. We had Grandma and Grandpa with us to help with the kids, which was nice.

Feeding the fish was one of my favorite parts of the zoo as a child, and it is fun to see my kids enjoy it.

Crawling

This cute little blue-eyed baby decided that he had sat still long enough. He was 8 months on Friday, and yesterday started crawling. Babies this age are so much fun. I love watching them learn and grow.

P.S. Is it just me, or is it really hard to find time to blog during the summer?

Omaha

I can't believe that we have already been in Omaha for almost 4 weeks. I have a feeling this summer is going to fly by. We are happily settled into my parent's basement. It was so nice to pull into a familiar city, with just our suitcases of clothes, and know that we had a nice, furnished house waiting for us. We are SO, SO grateful to my parents (and brother) for letting us crash here for the summer. I think they they are enjoying having us (...at least that is what they claim!)

John is really enjoying his internship at ConAgra Foods, and we have been enjoying the "market research" we have done at home eating up lots of yummy Marie Callender dinners and pies. We are also loving ConAgra's Summer Fridays on which he gets out of work at about 1:00. On his first Friday, we all went to the zoo. It was a hot day, so we spent most of our time visiting the indoor exhibits, the aquarium being our favorite.

Makenna has LOVED being here with Grandma and Grandpa at the lake. Our biggest problem is keeping her inside. With a view like this out the window,


I can't blame her, but it is just a little scary having her be able to just wander outside to the water anytime she wants. We are trying to be very diligent about not letting her down to the beach without a life jacket, and making sure that she is never outside alone, but she has managed to "escape" a few times. Yesterday my dad set up the alarm system so that it now beeps whenever a door opens, so hopefully we won't have any more breakouts!

Hudson is now 7 1/2 months old, and has learned all kinds of new things since we've been here. He can now roll over both ways (which he wasn't really doing before), he can feed himself (his favorites are animal crackers and nilla waffers), and he is starting to wave bye-bye, and get up on his hands and knees. I am sure he will be crawling before the summer is over. He has also fallen asleep in his highchair several times. We were all eating dinner one night, when my mom noticed that Hudson had sucked himself to sleep using a piece of bread. A few days later it happened again this time with an animal cracker. I know food can be comforting sometimes, but using it as a pacifier was a new one for me.

The transformation

from baby to Big Girl is complete!

Before we left Bloomington, we decided that we needed to do one of two things, either potty train Makenna OR get rid of her binki. Well, we went for the potty training, knowing that she was ready, and not wanting to A) potty train her at my parents' house on their nice carpet, or B) wait until the end of the summer and maybe miss her "readiness window".

Potty training Makenna went so well, and was SO much easier than I ever thought it would be, so after a week, we decided that we should get rid of her binki too. We told Makenna that it was time for her to give her binkis to the Binki Fairy to take to new little babies who didn't have any binkis, and in exchange, the Binki Fairy would bring her a new Big Girl toy.

So the stage was set, and Makenna was super excited to package up her binkis and put them on the doorstep for the Binki Fairy.

And was even more excited about her new Big Girl toy; a doggie which she named Elle.

So all was well until it was time to go to bed. Makenna yelled, screamed, and cried for an hour and a half before finally falling asleep around 11. The only way that I was able to resist running to the garbage can and retrieving her binkis is because she was more mad than sad. She wasn't acting devastated, but more just really, really mad. Luckily she only did that for one night, and has since adjusted well.

I am glad to only have one baby with diapers and binkis now.