Photo Book

Here is a link to a recent photo book

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=2AaOWjFm3ct3OQ&cid=SFLYOCWIDGET

Welcome back

Alright, so I went radio silent for awhile.  Not that there are more then five people that read this blog but I still want to keep it.  The blog is less about our life being important enough to have followers and more about the "what if". What if the awful happens.  It could be as simple as "what if we have a fire and lose all our pictures" to the unimaginable "what if something happens to us parents".  I want the girls to have a little bit of something telling them how much I love them and recounting some fun times.  

So I'm at it again.  Hopefully I can keep up with it again.  In my last post I mentioned baby number four making her grand entrance and I'm glad to announce she is here and seven months old! Ha! I will get around to posting her birth story but I want to just start posts again where we are now with the idea of going back when I have time for a recap.  That way I don't get further behind.  

So with more further a due, I'm blogging again.  :)  

First Piano Recital

Bumpkin had her first piano recital in May. She did so well! She was the youngest by three school years but still didn't show any nerves. As you can see in the video during one of her songs she did lose her place but wasn't discouraged.  I was so proud of her! 

Week before birth

The summer weeks before DeeDee's birth were packed with summer camps, lessons, and softball games. And eventually grandma joined us so she could be here to help when the new baby arrived. 

Here are some of our pictures from hanging out at home and in the neighborhood. 

The older girls went to a memorial camp with some friends for two weeks and loved it. It is an artsy camp that had a performance at the end. I will upload those videos to a separate post. 

Daddy helped keep the girls entertained in the afternoon after their camps. He took them to the lake to go hiking, bowling, and the museums. Mommy and Mimi were also missing our Little Man so we picked him up and went to the children's museum one day while the older girls were at camp. Mommy was brave and let Mimi paint on the windows. So far she hasn't tried it at home. :) 

And finally, Mommas birthday dinner. Daddy and the kids took mommy out for her birthday which was just a few days before the new baby arrived. 

Jungle Cake

This cake was made for our neighbor and good friend E. she turned 7 and had a jungle theme party. 

Great Wolf Lodge

We surprised the girls with a trip to Great Wolf Lodge last week. I was so excited to surprise them! They had heard of it before but didn't really understand what it was. So it was exciting to surprise them. We walked into the place which they knew was our hotel. They had giant windows showing the water park area and the girls mouths just dropped! It was so funny to see. They loved watching the 1,000 gallon bucket fill up and then dump on the park. 

After we checked in we went to our room  where there was another surprise for the girls. We had gotten one of the log cabin rooms. The girls thought it was so cool to have their own place to sleep. That is actually the only picture I got while at the lodge. Neither one of us carried our phones around for pictures for obvious kids vs. water vs. phone reasons. So instead of pictures I have funny stories. 

Bumpkin- 

Bumpkin was drama this trip. Not that it is anything different then normal but everything had a production. Some of it pretty funny, like her reaction when we walked in and saw the waterpark, some of it not so much. She is currently 49 inches tall. The younger water slides say they are for 48 inches and shorter. Luckily nobody measured he or called her out on it because she loves those and wouldn't try the bigger ones. And I mean wouldn't try. She would walk clear up to the top of the tube stairs with daddy and Troublemaker (I was in the hotel room for naptime) but wouldn't go down the slide. She was scared of how high it was (even though she was up there) and then she was scared of the slide being enclosed. Etc.  So then they tried to get her to go on the body slides because they weren't enclosed or as high but she was scared of those for some reason as well. 

Troublemaker- 

Troublemaker on the other hand went on every slide she was big enough to ride. She even got to the point where she was going up the line and down the stairs by herself. (I'm not sure if I am more impressed with her being comfortable doing that or with daddy for letting her go by herself. Ha). 

Mimi- 

Mimi provided a variety of entertainment on the trip. She liked parts of the water park but really wasn't comfortable with a lot of it yet. She loved just walking around the little pool or the pool edges. 

However, she was hilarious outside the pool. First, we were in our room setting some ground rules for leaving the room, the pool, etc. we had just gotten done telling the girls they couldn't open the door without an adult right there. We were packing our swim bag when we heard the door open and looked up to see Mimi leaving. We asked who opened the door and when neither one of the big girls confessed we swore we wouldn't leave until one of them did. We even demonstrated that Mimi couldn't open the door herself. Daddy asked her multiple times to open the door and she tried but didn't. So since nobody confessed we sat down to wait. That was when Mimi got bored and opened the door herself and left! We were all rolling with laughter. 

That night we has put the kids to bed and Mimi was having trouble. We brought the pack n play just in case and had put it on the open floor in the cabin area. The other two were passed out but we knew Mimi was still awake. Then all of a sudden the lights in their room started going on and off. Somehow Mimi had gotten out of her pack n play (which she had never done before) and was playing around in the room. So I ended up moving the pack n play out of the cabin so she would go to bed. 

Daddy- 

I'm surprised daddy didn't have a heart attack while we were in the pool area. Anyone who knows daddy will understand this but his overprotective safety issues were in full gear! He even said to me "this is the perfect place to come in three more years". Ha. 

We really didn't do much of the extras this time. With naptime and needing to adhere to some sort of bedtime we didn't think we had much extra time. We looked into the Magic Quest but were told it took 4 ish hours. We saved that got when we can stay up later and/or stay longer. We did have fun in the arcade though. 

We had a great time and he girls keep asking to go back. We bought a groupon so it was well worth the money for us. We look forward to doing it again in the future!  

Mickey Mouse Cake

I made matching Mickey and Minnie Mouse cakes for a friends daughters recently. I should have gotten a picture of them next to each other but I was quite frankly tired of taking them in and out of the fridge. :) Since they were identical I would do one step on both cakes before moving on. It meant a lot of trips to my cake fridge. But here they are individually.