How did that happen?

Summer is over?! I don't know if it's because I have kids now or if it really is shorter, but summer keeps going faster and faster.

These are a few snapshots of our last summer day. 

 Silly smiles at the park :)

 

 

 Nap time snuggles.. one of the biggest things I will miss from this summer.

 And our morning walks...

Yep. This happened.

Some events from our wonderful summer!

Vacation Bible School

First big "alone" event for Aiden, and he LOVED it!!

 

  

 

 He even got up and performed at the family get-together and did such an amazing job!  We were so proud of him!

 4th of July Fun

 

4th of July flags and pop rock goop!

 

Library and Hy-Vee:  A couple regular stops (Target too :) )

The day he figured out how to wave :)

 

 

 Some summer-time projects

Rocks

Painting with rocks

 Going on a rock hunt!

 

 Our rock lady-bugs :)

What a masterpiece! Amazing rock art!

Aiden in pretzels!

Making doggie treats!

 

Aiden drew me a picture.  It's a tornado...

Marion Airport:  Fly-In Breakfast

We saw tons of airplanes taking off, flying around, and landing, there were fire trucks to sit in, hay-rack rides to go on, and airplanes to pretend fly!

Get together with Echo Hill babies!

 John Deere Pavillion

Truck Event

 

 

 

We found some great things to do this summer!  It was short.  But it was memorable. :)

Wait a minute. They DO sleep?!?!

My boys sleeping.  Makes me smile (both because they don't do it well, and because its so darn adorable)!

Neither of them have fallen asleep while eating or playing or crawling or in my arms while shopping or at the park like you see other kids do.. oh no, not my boys.  But. They do fall asleep cutely :)

 

 

This is what I'm working with here people...

There was a night this summer when Jeff had talked Aiden into "camping out" in the basement.  I was sooo excited to get the bed to myself (besides Lills)!! I took this picture and sent it to my mom and said something like "Ahh!!  I get the bed to myself!  I think I may get a few hours of sleep! Ahhh!"

 And then this happened...

Really Lilly?  The clean clothes? Really?

Hehe 

Yep.  He's sleeping!

Oh my gosh.  I coudn't even stand how cute this was.  I took like 27 pictures because it was so cute and they all look exactly like this one. ;)

 Awesome.

This is how I sleep too Lills..

He just loves his George :)

 My snuggle buddy

I think this was one of those early (as in 330/400) mornings that we couldn't get him back to sleep so he ended up in bed with us.  As you can tell.. he cleared the bed.

 So weird. Who took this picture if we are all sleeping??!!

 :)

Haha, I walked in to check on him one night and found him like this.

Step 1: Take picture

Step 2: Make Jeff go look 

Step 3: Weigh options - move him and wake him OR leave him

Step 4: Tell yourself (out loud) how stupid you are to even think about leaving him like that

Step 5: Move him :)

 I took this picture right as they were waking up.  :)

Boys and their dog

I absolutely loved watching Aiden bond with Lilly and I feel the same with E.  She is such a good pup...especially now that Emmitt is dropping (feeding her) food! :)

 Feeding her cheerios :)

Busy little relaxing eventful trip to D.M.

Highlights from our DM trip

Friday Jeff worked from the DM office so we met his boss' wife and their little guy at a park!  It had some great playground equipment and a fun spashpad! The older ones had fun filling up their cups with water and dumping it out on the dry concrete :) E had fun crawling around on the concrete.. because no matter where we are he has to torture those little knees with crawling on super hard surfaces.

Some friends recommended this place, Incredible Pizza Company, so we went there for supper Friday night. Ummmmm.. this place was like Chucky Cheese exploded and each piece multiplied into a million more pieces and then all came back together to create one GIANT ball of kid chaos. Arcade - one for big kids, one for little, bumper cars, black light miniature golf, ropes course, go-karts, buffet and like 5 separate huge rooms to choose from to eat in (we chose the gym.  yes gym).  There was no way I was taking pictures at this place, but I did have about 20 seconds to snap one when they were both in the same place and sitting :)

The Zoo

We went to the zoo with Jeff's boss and his wife and little boy, Jackson.  This is the only picture I could get of the 3 of them where I could actually see all of their faces :)

 My loves :)
This picture is SO them.  So completely them.

 

 

 Aiden and Jackson checking out the seals!

 

 E's new favorite animal sound (close second is the duck "quack quack") is the lions "ROAR"!! He roared the whole time we looked at the lions..and in the gift shop :)

 Daddy's and their boys.  :)  I wanted Aiden in the middle, but he was off to the next thing. Pretty sure we lost him about 208 times in a 3 hour span of time.

 Two little boys making loud shrieking noises in a tunnel = zoo-goers asking "What animal is that?!?!"

 Feeding a giraffe! Jeff forgot seeing Aiden's face in the pic would be nice... ;)

 

Train ride!!  One of Aidens favorite parts.  Go figure. 

We had so much fun spending time with the Conner's and doing some fun "touristy" stuff. We even snuck in mini- trip to the hotel pool and a trip to Culvers for some ice cream! Phew! 

We went thinking it would be a nice relaxing trip with the zoo stuck in there. It kind of ended up being an eventful busy trip with a couple naps stuck in there. 

Loved it :)