park swing

every tuesday gemma and i

wake up

pack our bags

and head to play group for the morning.

each tuesday we go to a different location.

whether it is the pool, someone's house, or a local park

this week it was at one of the parks around town. gemma has been to the park before, but before, when we went, she was always too small to swing.

this time i though we should give it a try...

she loved it...

it looked kind of like she was sitting in half of an egg because the swing was so big and she was so small.

i forgot my camera, but thankfully my phone has a camera on it so i got a couple of pictures of her.

anyway, she had a great time and probably could have fallen asleep in there.

we will definitely be making the park one of our frequent places to visit.

family pictures

we had a great time with family this month...

thanks to a little self timer we were able to take pictures of everyone

you might remember a while ago eric and i practiced with self timer. and we did it again.

the kids did pretty well...considering we took TONS of pictures... and lots of posing and moving and rearranging.

with 8 small children 6 and under you just have to take what you can get.

the weekend not only included pictures, but it also entailed...
bowling and picnics

and...did we go swimming? i don't actually remember, but we did have fun.

oh and mom made the BEST mac and cheese ever. i can't remember what restaurant the recipe was from, i only know that it had lots of cheese and maybe it should be the new tradition... i don't know what the tradition is for: family reunions, get-togethers, or just every time we go to mom's house for dinner.

alright, enough about mac and cheese... how about pregnancy...duh duh dum

i'm not,
but my two sis-in-laws are and we discussed some sort of addiction our family has...
babies!!
we also talked about how every kid in our family is 3-4 months apart from another kid in the family...except for 2. i told you...we are addicted

so having the whole family together was great...i wonder how may more kids will be added to the group for the next get together...either way mom is going to have to make that mac and cheese again... (and with the way our family is multiplying, a much bigger bowl!)

another first...

i mentioned before that gemma is constantly having all sorts of firsts.

first day at the pool

first time to roll over

first tooth

well this weekend eric and i and gemma all had a first.

since we have been married eric and i had never been camping.

we went this weekend and it was so fun

put together no sleep

bugs

smoke

heat

fire

smores

swimming

and hobo meals

and it makes for a GREAT camping trip.

we can't wait to go again...

we have already made a list of things that we need to do differently next time to help the process

gems from gemma: first time visit to the zoo

ready to go to the zoo with grandpa, grandmama, and my toliver cousins.
i had never been to the zoo before and couldn't wait to see all the animals.

daddy and mommy went with us too. one of the best parts of the trip was getting to go in the big church van with everyone.

nolie and cy had fun climbing on the fake statues that were scattered all around the zoo. maya and i had to stay in the stroller the whole time so we didn't get to climb on them...
but we didn't mind too much as long as we could hold hands while we were sitting there.

we even got to play in some fountains that we found there.

we got to get really close to some of the animals. they had a few of the animals like... goats, donkeys, sheep, a funny looking buffalo kind of a thing and a camel inside a fence.

it was a little scary sometimes, because i am just used to jack, not these funny looking animals. my favorite was the camel. mom told me that sometimes when camels are bigger people can actually ride them. the camel we saw was just a baby, so she said we couldn't ride this one.

and guess what grandpa and grandmama got for us...

ice cream!!!

i had never had ice cream before, but i just had to have a little bite of it when i saw everyone else eating it.

grandpa and nolan were nice enough to share some of theirs with me. actually i took more than just one bite.. yummy!! i loved it.

after the ice cream maya and i were getting sort of sleepy. i didn't want to leave to go take a nap, but i guess everything fun has to end sometime.

while maya and cy and i were sleeping on the way home, nolie was playing with mommy's camera and they took some pretty funny pictures.
i guess nolie is going to be a photographer when he grows up.

he can even take self portraits.

thanks so much, grandpa and grandmama for taking us to the zoo...

i can't wait to go back again sometime!!

its that time of year

its time for teeball again. cy and nolan are both playing baseball this year. cy is playing teeball and nolan is starting coach pitch softball.

last night eric, gemma and i went to cy's teeball game. this was also jack's first outing for the summer. we had him in the car with us.
as we were nearing the park, eric realized that he had forgotten jacks leash.
so...

we improvised, i took out eric's shoelace and we used that instead. it actually worked pretty well. nolan had a good time at the game. he played with eric and jack. we sat near a fence...
we all the sudden heard nolan say, 'what is this?' and eric saying 'what is that smell?'
when we looked we saw that nolan had kicked a dead turtle over near us. yuck. it was actually a really big one too.

maya and gemma had a good time as well. as long as they were playing with each other and could keep each other company. which they did a good job entertaining one another.


cy is already getting into the spirit of teeball. it was so fun to watch him get into it. i have heard, as have you, more than likely, teeball as referred to as 'herd' ball. now i know where that term came from.

this is actually the night when gemma really stood up for the first time. as i mentioned earlier. okay, so she didn't stand by herself, but she stood with the help of aunt adrian.

she is getting so big. and i love watching her interact with her cousins. they really are great entertainers. she is constantly laughing at them.

she is also excited about our weekend camping trip. eric and i have never been camping...at least since we have been married. so we are pretty excited too!