Birthdays

My mom, Grandma and aunt all have birthdays in August as well as George's sister who was visiting.  So, we had a really nice get together at my mom and George's new house.  Justin and I love their house!

Traditions

One of our best - Mexican and Margarits with the Styers.

Kiddie Land

Kiddie Land closed this summer, so we decided to finally take the kids there.  Megan and I took all six kids! 

Wyatt was still afraid of rides, but had fun anyway as did all the kids!

These two pictures are a great exampole of how much alike Maddy and Wyatt are.  Completely two pees in a pod!

  Before they got on this ride, Chloe said to Katy, "Get ready, Katy.  This is gonna be whippy" 

The two little ones rode lots and lots of rides.  There were pretty much no lines!

Minnesota Trip Day 3

The final day of our trip was a beach day! We loaded up coolers and grilling stuff and headed to this very cool beach. It was a man made chlorinated lake. It was just like any other lake with sand and gentle waves but no fish, no seaweed, no gunk. Awesome! Loved it! The kids had fun at the beach.

They also enjoyed just hanging with the family and being their usual goofy, playful, joyful selves.

Minnesota Trip Day 2

The second day was the biggie!  Here the kids are all freshly showered and looking planning the trip.

Mall of America http://www.mallofamerica.com/#/main/home/home and The Nickelodeon Theme Park http://www.nickelodeonuniverse.com/ What a gigantic place that Mall of America is! 

Wow!  It would have been very fun to shop there.  They even had an American Girl store!  But, we spent 8 hours there and still the kids din't get to ride all the rides.  Yes, 8 hours of indoor amusement rides with 5 kids!  Wyatt, who would ride scary rides at 4 years old, suddenly developed a fear of rides.  So, that was a little bit of a bummer, but he had fun anyway.

I just love this one of the boys.  Wyatt is so shy with his smile that I hardly get to see that dimple in pictures.

Jake had this bravery that completely surprised me!  He climbed this terrifying climbing theing where they harness you in and you walk on tight ropes and stuff.  I was sick just watching.  He even stood in the vicinity of the dreaded "dressed up guys" and smiled.  I have to get that picture from Missy.

The two little ones had a ball!  For sure the biggest challenge was keeping Joey with us and safe.  If I had to do it over, I would have had a harness and leash for him.  Just kidding.  Kind of.  :)

Chloe was a little scared on the ferris wheel at first but quickly got over it.

All in all a great day!

Minnesota Trip Day 1

Finally, after years of saying, ""We really need to go to Minnesota and visit."  we finally did it!  My dad's sister Kris and her family live there.  So, Missy and I loaded up all the kids and drove there for a short visit.  We had 3 full days there and the other two were driving days.  The first full day we went to Como Zoo.  There were animals, rides and a playground.  Perfect!

The kids were absolutely crazy about my cousin Jake or Big Jake as they called him

so as not to confuse him with our regular old everyday Jakey boy.