Our Family: August 2012

June 14

On Reed's birth day, we had a mini celebration by taking him to Build-A-Bear. Eli and Chase have a bear, so we thought it was a good idea to let Reed build a bear for his birthday. : )

Chase and Eli brought their bears from home, but joined in on the bath with Reed's new bear.

The kind lady that helped us was sweet enough to give Chase and Eli boxes for their bears. I love it when people that work in kid's stores actually understand kids. This sweet lady knew that a card board box for everyone would make our exiting the store WAY more successful than if only Reed had one! :)

Reed celebrated with a strawberry cupcake from Annie's Bakery in Murphy. Oh my, what a wonderful cupcake!!! I LOVE that bakery and they were sweet enough to give us a cupcake topper for the picture.

Reed's 2nd Birthday Party

Reed is 2!!!! WOW, the past two years have gone by so quickly. Reed is such a joy to have and we are so blessed to call him our son. He LOVES his brothers and love to do everything that they do. It is so fun to watch him try to keep up with Eli and Chase. He does a pretty good job! : )

Reed had a hard time deciding the theme of his party....he went back and forth between Choo-Choos and Elmo. He finally settled on Choo-Choos. Reed LOVES choo-choo trains!

The Cake

Eli & Reed

Happy Birthday, Reed!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!

It's Been A While!!

I can't believe it's been two months since I updated this blog!! I love going back and looking at the posts and I keep telling myself that I MUST keep up with it!! : ) This is an attempt to catch up and hopefully continue posting on a regular basis.

We had a SUPER FUN summer!! At the beginning of the summer, it didn't seem like we had too much planned, but we were non-stop the whole summer. We LOVED every minute of it!!! I don't have a ton of pictures from our summer fun, but it included visiting family in Alaska, visiting family in Arkansas (three times), Vacation Bible School for Eli, Reed's 2nd birthday, gymnastics camp for Eli, visit from family from Arkansas, visit from Alaska family, trips to the zoo, many trips to the pool and many trips to the farm. So fun!!!!

What is summer without watermelon?!?!? These boys LOVE watermelon!!

We spent LOTS of time in the pool! Eli is an awesome swimmer!! He learned to do a front flip into the pool, a front flip while in the pool, and a back flip in the pool. He's working on diving too. : )

Chase is becoming a great swimmer too. He had a little accident in the pool....jumped in and hit his face on the step. He was a bloody mess, but bounced back quickly. He was back in the water and swimming within 20 minutes of the crash. : ) Chase is one tough kid!

Eli diving

We visited family in Arkansas in May and twice in August....we celebrated Madison's 5th birthday and Parker & Paisley's 2nd birthday. I can't believe they are already 2! I remember when I got a text that said "it's twins!" : ) Wish I had more pictures from our visits, but I guess we were having too much fun....or we were too busy trying to manage 6 kids in the house! : )

We had tons of fun in Alaska. Hunter went with us for part of the trip this year.

Eli and Jack found a mud hole to play in : )

And we can't go to Alaska without making a fire in the back yard and roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.

And we definitely can't go to Alaska without playing hockey....even if it's not snowing. Sometimes hockey on the back porch if more fun than real hockey.