Happy first birthday Caroline!

For anyone who doesn't know, Caroline is Neily's Bitty Baby. On Sunday, she informed me that Tuesday was Caroline's first birthday and she was going to throw her a party. I told her we could make cupcakes, and then I thought about all the mommy points I would win if I let her invite her friends over with their American Girl dolls to celebrate. We made cupcakes Monday night, and woke to find that Sully helped himself to them overnight. So, we bought the next round and kept them out of his reach. Called up the girls and invited them over for Caroline's party. Other than the food, we had everything else left over from other parties, and we just threw it all together. Neily was in heaven! My original plan was for Jack and Owen to go play on their own, but who knew they'd want to be at the party too? Haha! It was pretty funny to see the girls play along, everyone came armed with cards for Caroline's birthday.

With Caroline and Lily:

Sugar high!

Natalie, Neily, Grace- somewhere I bet I have a picture of these three at about a year old, and I should find it!
The crew- the boys were NOT going anywhere. They sang and everything.

Singing to Caroline-

I recently read a blog post about knowing when to be a "Yes Mom" and when to be a "No Mom". I often find myself being not so much a "No Mom" but very much a "We'll See Mom", so I was really happy to do this for her. She had so much fun and has talked about it every day since. :)

Impromptu visit to the sunflower field

On my way to book club a few weeks ago, I saw this sunflower field and practically jumped out of the car. I couldn't get it out of my head, so I talked the kids into stopping there on the way to Nana and Papa's one day. I just wanted to check it out and see if it was even possible to stop there without getting yelled out. Turns out it is because EIGHT other families were there when we were. It's really beautiful. We stopped at noon, which is the absolute worst time for pictures, so I only snapped one of Neily, and I am going to try and get back one evening this week at about 7, when it should be perfect. Hopefully many more to come!

Crazy Jack

We went out to my parents house last Sunday to swim and hang out, and Eddie snapped a few pictures of Jack being... Jack.

Our backyardigans

It is so nice to finally have a backyard that we can enjoy. We are by no means finished back there, but it's not the Jungle Cruise it once was. On Sunday night, we ate outside on our patio for the first time as a family. We've lived here for ten years!
The midwest is practically on fire this week after two weeks of rain and cool temperatures, so we're trying to stay cool but I'm getting bored with the pool. We have rotated from Kings Island's water park to Lifetime's pool (our gym) to our neighborhood pool and we needed a change. We bought the kids squirt guns and filled up a big tub with water and that seemed to make them happy enough! Who knew a barrel of water could be so much fun?

We came, we camped, we conquered!

Mason, OH, meet Holiday World. It's no secret that camping isn't exactly my first choice of recreation, so when the family decided to spend a weekend in Santa Claus, Indiana camping and hitting Holiday World amusement park, let's say I was not the most excited person in the house. However, the kids were counting down the days and very excited to see the sites.
We had originally planned to drive the van behind Grandma and Grandpa's RV, but in the end that just seemed silly, so we decided to hop in at the last minute and go together. Riding in the RV might have been the kids favorite part of the trip!

Neily and Grandma passed the time by playing cards, Grandma taught Neily how to play Hearts.

And Jackster, well, he passed the time in one of only two ways he knows how:


On the way- road rules don't apply to RVs! This was during a quick food stop, I took it out the window.
We're here! Boy, Mommy was excited!

So, our little Masonite children, who are used to having their choice of 3 movie theaters, 26,000 restaurants, Lifetime Fitness, 3 neighborhood pools, 6 Target stores and anything else their little yuppie hearts desire within 15 minutes, get out of the RV at the campsite, stand there and look at Eddie and I and say, "What do we do?"
We cracked up and said, "This is it, you camp. There's nothing else."
They looked at each other for a minute, seeming very confused, and then went off to get into trouble. It was pretty darn funny.
I have to admit though, even though camping wasn't bad at all, it's the packing up and loading/unloading that I hate so much. We'd been there for five minutes and the men started unloading all of our crap, and I said to Eddie, 'WHY do people like this so much?' It's just that camping seems like so much work to me, it doesn't seem so enjoyable.


Doug will teach them in a few years that THIS is how you camp.


Next day, on to Holiday World! I was a little scared (the amusement park is exactly as it sounds- holiday themed), but it really was no different than Kings Island and the kids had a great time.


Doug saw Gayle wearing the hat while he was on a ride and motioned his request for a picture of Grandma in the famous hat. :)

Daddy and Jack in line for... something.

Me! So excited! Loving it! I love to camp! Haha!


In the end, it was a lot of fun (I promise!) and although I will never learn to love camping, the kids had a great time and I did get to take a nap in a cozy camp chair. That wasn't so bad! I did hear some chatter about camping and caves, and I'm sorry to say THAT will not be happening with me around. I don't love camping, and throw in caves and I'm outta there. That will be a great memory that my kids will have to share with Daddy alone because me in a cave will probably never happen! ;)