Aren't they cute?

Spice Families

One of the fun things about having children is watching them enjoy the same things we enjoyed as children. The other day I gave Elena a bunch of spices to play with while I was cooking supper. Right away she started to make a spice family. The big ones were Daddy and various uncles; the medium sized ones were Mommy or aunts; and the little ones were babies and cousins. It brought me back to when I was a kid and used to make families out of the spice jars as well. (They are napping in this picture)

I even sported the same business-in-the-front/party-in-the-back hairstyle.
(I'm on the right with my sister, Maria, and cousins, Jake and Ben)

Snoozing In Sync

They do this all the time...

About 10 minutes into their ice cream cones....

Elena and her friend, Ana, couldn't be more opposite. (The pictures below were taken at the same time)

Here is Ana: slowly and meticulously enjoying her ice cream, careful to let drip only as much as necessary as she licks (never bites) her treat.....until her dad, not wanting to stay at Burger King until midnight, stepped in 5 minutes later to have a "taste" and finished off all but the last bite for her.

Here is Elena: speedily devouring as much of her ice cream as possible without eating the cone (she's not interested in a cone when there's ice cream to be eaten)....until about 1 minute later when she set down her cone and made a bee-line for Joy's cone, which was sitting on the table (Joy was busy feeding Toby) just asking to be eaten. Unfortunately for Elena, Joy was too quick - so she helped me finish my cone.

And that, in a nutshell, is the difference between Elena and Ana.

I love this age!

I think my favorite baby stage is 6-9 months. Sammy is really starting to laugh, play and develop a personality. He has started to play peek-a-boo by burying his head in the floor and popping up and he started crawling last week (at 7 months)! Elena wasn't really mobile until 10 months so this will be a new challenge for us (especially with the added difficulty of keeping small things out of his reach when there is a 2-year old eager to supply him with toys).

Here is Sam dancing at Ted and Lisa's wedding (Lisa is Seth's cousin). Congratulations, you two! It was a beautiful wedding, and I am confident that you will continue on to have a beautiful marraige.

And here he is watching Elena go up and down the stairs - he just loves it!

Obsessed

Our 3-year-old nephew, Riley, is head-over-heels in love with vacuum cleaners. I have never seen a kid so singularly infatuated with a standard household item. Every time he goes to someone's house, the first thing he does is seek out the vacuum cleaner. At Easter, we found him walking around reading the owner's manual to Aunt Jan's vacuum. When he comes here, he will clean up my entire living room so that he can vacuum our rug. This kid is going to make some woman very happy some day.
Here he is vacuuming our porch.

Summer's Here!

And we just can't get enough of all the great water activities. We had an especially hot week last week and were able to enjoy 2 pools, a sprinkler and a spring-fed swimming hole.

Here she is playing in the sprinkler and then drying off with her friends, Jerome and Elliot.

We went to Camden with our friends, Joy, Ana and Toby. Thankfully my mom came along to help out with the 2 toddlers and 2 babies. What would we do without grandparents? Here they are enjoying the painfully cold water (it literally hurts when you get in), which was perfect on a hot, hot day.

Hay Ride

Seth's brother, Ricky, lives on the farm where Seth's family used to live. Last week, he took all the grandkids out on a hay ride through their pasture. I forget how lovely it is out there (Seth used to take me there when we were dating). My pictures don't really do it justice, but I tried.

Duh.

I was starting to think Seth would just have to pay a professional to cut his hair since we were struggling to find 20 minutes where one of the kids didn't need attention. And I didn't really feel like taking the risk of getting half-way through cutting his hair and having to stop.

Then it dawned on us: for about $3 less than the cost of a haircut, we could hire a sitter to come and watch the kids for 2 full hours - during which time, I could not only cut his hair but also get some much needed housework done. So we did. The kids had a blast (Elena got to go swimming!) I cut Seth's hair. And it was sooooo worth it.

Note to Self:

Don't use brightly-dyed frosting on our children's b-day cakes. Our nephew, Wyatt had green and blue frosting for his birthday cupcakes. Thank goodness they were outside!