Ila's 4th Birthday

We headed down to Ashland Saturday to celebrate Ila's 4th birthday. This has become a fun tradition for our family to all get together down there for this weekend. Adie and Eliza had a great time with their cousins- they were too excited to eat or sleep most of the weekend. We missed having Gus and Vinny there but we're pretty sure they were having fun getting to meet their newest cousin. Along with having fun hanging out with everyone, Annie and Ian always have a pretty amazing dinner for everyone. This year is going to be hard to beat Ian. This is what Ian cooked us up for dinner! Ashlynn was a good little traveler. I almost missed her this weekend, I'd usually feed her and hand her off to someone. She did a lot of sleeping and smiling for everyone.

I had so many pictures of Natalie and Ila, they were cracking me up here. Natalie is making her funny faces...

more love...

Adie playing soccer with Les

Adie and aunt MiMi

Kayla REALLY missed Gus and Vinny...

Pretty little thing!

Birthday girl

It's fun for me to look back at her party from last year to see how all of the kids have changed in just a year. Click here if you want to take a look.

Then and Now

Here we are in college on basketball trips - I think this second pic. was in was Texas? We look a little too happy for just getting thumped...

Nicole with Peyton, Katie with Eva, Deb with Jace, Jill with Zoie and Tab with Ray and Luke

Now, here we are with our little ones. Quite a crew...Scott could have himself a good little squad in about 18 years (with LJ's girls who weren't here for the picture). We had fun getting together with some old friends and kiddos at Tab's house - looking forward to doing it again at our house! This little tid bit will only be appreciated by any former Bruins who read this. I've been cleaning out boxes in our spare room to make room for Ashlynn. I found an old mixed tape (yep, my car has a tape deck) that I've been enjoying listening to. The girls think it's funny when I sing along to If I, wanna take a guy, home with me tonight, it's none of your business...we must have listened to that A LOT because I still know all the words.

Garden

We finished up planting the garden this weekend - Adie and Eliza were pretty good little helpers. Luckily for us Ashlynn takes long naps in the morning so we can all get a couple hours of time together outside.

Rock Box

Ryan had been wanting to put a walkway in that goes from the deck around the house. So we decided on a multi-purpose walkway. He is filling it with pea-gravel and made a box at the end of it so the girls have a rock box to play in. They loved getting to play in it last night and it's not even full yet.

helping Ryan build the walkway

helping Jim eat his ice cream

They had fun playing with their little friend Kaelynn last night too.

Greller and Lacey Visit

Katie and Tab came over yesterday - Adie and Eliza get pretty shy around boys, it makes me realize that most of the people we spend time with have little girls. Adie and Ray warmed up pretty quickly, it was fun to listen to them play. Eva is still a little doll of course, she cracks me up. She's got a confident personality, if that's possible for someone who is not even 1 yet. THANK YOU Lacey's for the new jammies (we like the zipper)!

Poor little Luke was under the weather - during lunch he went into our room and fell asleep on the floor

And of course Ashlynn was a little love through all of the activity around her. Sometimes (a lot of the time) I feel bad that I don't pay enough attention to her. She gets moved from bouncy chair to swing a lot to keep her happy. But, she must be doing ok because she has turned into a pretty smiley little girl when someone talks to her - so she must not hate me too much...

Jeanette and Willy's Visit

The Sierra-Nisly Family headed back to Guatemala this morning. We had a really good five weeks with them. The girls really bonded this time - it was pretty amazing how they all communicated and got along. There's just something about cousins...These girls would run into each other's arms every time we got together, even if it was just from the morning to the evening that they were apart. Our girls aren't like this with their little friends they see all the time. I know they'll all be asking for each other for a while.

We got to spend some time in Seaside, it was fun despite the weather. We took turns braving the wind and rain to take the crew to the beach and the OUTDOOR pool. Both days we swam we made the kids come in when the wind was so hard it was blowing the lawn chairs over. Adie and Eliza loved it, both just had a huge smile the whole time they were in the water. Jessie and Alyssa were good for them, Adie use to hate getting water in her eyes and ears, now in the bath she wants me to dump water on head "just like Jessie and JoJo"

Jessie spent a good amount of time helping Al and Ryan shovel bark dust one afternoon

Jeanette let the girls help make bread

Their girls get just a little bit more sun than ours

CUTE







Grandma and Grandpa took us all to Chuck E Cheese. The kids had a blast, I kind of had a sour taste in my mouth about the place before we went. My memory of going is my parents giving us a certain amount of tokens and saying don't ask for more or we'll never come back. So, we asked for more, and I imagine there was some whining - so we left and never went back. I was nervous the whole time they were going to throw a fit when we told them the tokens were gone. They were all great though, they loved it. *and thanks for the lesson mom and dad =)

The last Sunday they were here we celebrated Alyssa's 3rd birthday (it's May 12th) with balloons and cupcakes and spent the afternoon outside, it was a fun and relaxing way to spend our last day together.

This girl is FUNNY! I wish I could understand more of what she was saying because she cracks me up and I don't understand her half the time. She's super expressive, and very assertive. Once as she was crying following one of her parents back to a bedroom for a timeout she looked at me, stopped crying for a minute and gave me a big smile, then went back to crying. It was so sly Jeanette didn't even notice she had stopped. I know Jeanette and Willy don't think it's funny at the time, but I love it=) I took this picture right after she made Jessie mad...

Jeanette and Willy taught Adie how to hit the ball, she got to where she could do it on her own. Now we just have to work on getting some power behind it.