The Plight of a Mother

How many times have I swept this floor today?

It must be summer...

...because this is what my laundry room constantly looks like! We sure do love swimming whether it's in the kiddie pool in the yard or at the pool, we always have swimsuits hanging up to dry. Plus my very favorite scent of sunscreen is permanently in the air. Oh, and sweet little kid tan lines...oh my do I love summer!

Benji {8 Months}

 This sweet boy just took his first "crawl step" today! In the past week he's figured out how to scoot himself around to get to anything and everything and already is figuring out how to crawl! He can also go from lying on his belly to sitting back up. I'm amazed because the funny part is that he still hasn't figured out how to roll onto his back from his belly! He loves to be a part of whatever is going on and loves to be held (especially by those other than his sisters (; ). I just love my sweet boy!

 He makes his mama so proud when he does his baby yoga down dog. (Not really, but I like to pretend. Ha!)

I loved this sweet smile I was getting whilst Rob was giving the FHE lesson. I just want to eat him up and kiss those cheeks all.day.long.

A New Adventure

We just found out last week that we will be headed to a new adventure come November. We will be moving to London, England for 8 months! We had been planning on moving to Singapore, but because of visa issues for other MAPs (the program Rob's in at HP), they have to go to Singapore, and we'll be headed to the UK. I oscillate between being really excited and really terrified/overwhelmed for this new adventure. We'll be going with one of Rob's co-workers whose wife is a good friend of mine, so it will be awesome to have friends along for this crazy ride!

Swimming Lessons

The girls started swimming lessons last week. They loved them and were so cute!

Father's Day 2013

What a great holiday to celebrate the most amazing Dad our kids could ask for (and to celebrate our own wonderful Dads!).

I had the girlies do Dad Surveys. I asked Ruby first and while she didn't really grasp what we were doing, at least her answers were genuine. If I had asked her after Grace, they would have been exactly the same as Grace's. She's going through a parrot phase :)
 

Happenings

 So far Summer has been full of lots of fun. It's even more enjoyable now that we have 2 extra window air conditioners to help our poor struggling AC unit out to keep our house a livable temperature.

 Homemade popsicles...mmmmm!

 Swimming in the kiddie pool and sprinklers. Some days these girlies have their suits on 3 different times!!

 Rob had a work trip to Washington D.C.

 We got to visit with our old and very wonderful friends, the Meeks, from Nashville. Lucky for us they have family in the area and come and visit fairly often!

 Ruby has an awesome sense of style.

 Benji had a little cold. Is this the sweetest sad snotty face you've ever seen?!

 Naptime shenanigans...instead of napping Ruby pulled out a crate of 3-6 month baby clothes and tried them on and got stuck.

In this picture, I think she's wearing at least 3 dresses.

I made 5 lbs of carrots for baby food for Benji in the new (amazing) VitaMix, which are so far his favorite food.

More naptime shenanigans...Ruby snuck out of her room and into the craft room and got freshly made (with food coloring) playdough onto our white carpet....grrr!

Family Vacay to Fayetteville and Branson

 Back in May, Brian and Eila graduated from the University of Arkansas and lucky for us, a week apart, so my parents flew in and in the week in between we went to Branson, MO to hang out. Brian graduated first with his masters degree in geographical information systems. Go Brother!

 The kids were fantastic considering they had to sit through 3 hours of waiting and graduation after having sat in the car for hours. We're so blessed!

 Classic Rob and classic Grace :)

With the Razorback statue

 On the way to Branson I made everyone stop in a pottery shop in an ancient Stamp Store. The nice potter let the kids each create a little piece which he will fire and they got to take home a piece another kid did that was fired and glazed. They loved it!

 Mom, Dad, Bri and Eila went to see SIX. Mom's dreams come true :)

 We had a delightful Mother's Day. It was so fun to get to spend the actual day with my Mama.

 We went to Silver Dollar City, a fun old-timey amusement park.

 Milking a fake cow

It was fun to see the Frisco signs all over. It's the Frisco Line of the railroad that our city is named after.

 Grace rode her first big roller coaster and was so freaked out and loved it. She had the most amazing scream - it was many super high-pitched screams in a row full of terror and delight.

Love my Benji!

Sweet Auntie Eila rode on the pukey hopping frog ride that goes around, and around, and around, and around....

This wonky house made me feel so sick because there were no level surfaces!

 Ruby was so excited that she was tall enough to go on the log ride. I love her concerned face in the close up. It was her favorite and she wanted to ride again and again!

 My parents watched the kiddos and let us go on a zipline adventure. It was so fun and less scary than I expected. (Love how pregnant we all look in this shot - no thank you harness, and excess 20 lbs) :)

 There's not a picture, but I even went upside down! Whoo hoo!

 We got to ride the final line as a tandem and apparently Rob and I were pretty funny. The workers said they'd never seen anything like our ride. Haha!

 Branson has lots of timeshares. Mom and Dad did one early in the week to earn some cash during naptime and convinced Brian and Eila to do one with them later in the week. Too bad Rob and I had to stay with the kiddos...not.

 I've always wanted to do an Old Time Photo and we did! It was fun to get all dressed up!

 Eila celebrated her birthday with us too!

We also visited the fish hatchery. It was interesting to see the different growth stages of the trout.

 Probably my favorite thing that we did was go to Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede dinner show. We sat around an arena and ate a yummy dinner with no utensils while animals, fireworks, dancers and lumberjacks entertained us. It was so fun! They had ostrich and pig races, lumberjacks climbing trees and log rolling. So cool!

 We also did some geocaching. I love seeing place off the beaten path this way.

Duck Tour

The girls and I got to drive the DUCK.

 I love my face in the rearview in this one...think I'm excited? Hahaha. I was the only adult to do it. :)

 Can you guess where Ruby gets her expressive eyebrows/eyes?

 We saw the Acrobats of China show. It was amazing!

Here is Grandma discussing the finer points of how to eat an Oreo with Grace. So sweet!

We ended our trip back in Fayetteville for Eila's graduation with her Law Degree! 

 

The whole crew with Eila's mom

Congrats to Brian and Eila for completing all that hard work and for such a fun family vacation!