Abbey's Birthday Party

Abbey and one of her best friends have a birthday only days apart, so they wanted to have a shared birthday party this year at their old gymnastics place. It was sort of last minute, but we got together a group of friends from school and had a great party! This is the Elsa cake I made for the girls.

Matthew is a budding gymnast...

Juliette was happy to show off her skills too...

Abbey had a great time playing with her friends while doing gymnastics, which is her current passion.

Juliette in the pit.

Abbey and one of her friends from school.

Cute shot!

This is Abbey and her birthday buddy!

Then it was up to the room for snack and cake!

Birthday girls...

It was a great party - thank you to everyone who came!  Abbey was thrilled to receive so many "Frozen" gifts too - lucky girl!  She had to wait a few more weeks to actually turn 6 though...

Kick Start Summer!

After we got back from Florida, we jumped right into our summer activities! The kids started right into Vacation Bible School and then the next weekend we decided to go strawberry picking!

Ready to go pick some delicious strawberries!

Good one Juju!

As you can see, the strawberries were perfect - we finally got our timing right!

Matthew showed his approval by spitting up in the fields...a true Matthew mark!

Pretty girl!

He looks like he wants to try one!

Abbey filling up her basket!

Getting full!

These kids did an awesome job picking really good ones!

Daddy and Matthew helped too.

We ended up with about 10 quarts of strawberries.  One would think we would take that opportunity to make all kinds of strawberry jams, cakes, jellies, whatever, but really, we just ate them all!  We did have some strawberry shortcake and one strawberry cake (that nobody ate), but other than that, we just ate up the fresh fruit, which was delicious!  Here is our final shot...Matthew was about done at this point!

The next day was our annual Church picnic, which is always fun.  Ben won this fun toy...

Just a cute one of Matthew and Daddy!

And then, before we knew it, it was the end of June and our anniversary!  We have been married 12 years now and the kids wanted to celebrate, so they got out the tub of ice cream we had leftover from a party and wrote 12 in it with chocolate sauce and put candles in it and sang "Happy Anniversary To You!"  It was funny, but very sweet!

5 Months!

While we were in Florida, Matthew turned 5 months old! But a while ago, when he was about 3 months old, I had some pictures taken of him by a friend of mine who is a photographer. I finally decided on which pictures to purchase, so here are the results! It is fun to look back and see how much he has changed already!

Oh my crazy girls got into it too...

Love this one - stunning shot of my Juju!

But here he is at 5 months old!

So when I took him in for his 5 month appointment, he weighed in at 15 lbs, 5 oz and 24 5/8 inches.  He is growing well now that we fully switched to formula and started on some food!  He is loving his cereal and we started on vegetables, which he seems to like as well.  He sucks his thumb, like big sister, and finally got into a sleep schedule with his naps and sleeping through the night!  He is doing really well!  He smiles all the time, and he makes us smile all the time too!

Last few days in FL

After our Disney day, we needed some time to unwind again. And luckily for us, that included spending some time with Uncle Chris, Aunt Ginny and Brendan as they flew in on Friday! All of the kids really enjoy playing with Brendan, especially Abbey.

Mommy needed an XL glass of wine after our exhausting Disney Day!

Ben took some time to relax and catch up on some light reading.

 

Matthew spent some time relaxing with Patch!

We all enjoyed watching the dolphins from our view on the porch!

More playing with Brendan!

View of everyone playing in the pool from our porch!

 Then we were very excited to be able to spend the day with my grandparents and let Matthew meet them and the kids spend some time with their great-grandparents!  Here is Matthew with Nana and GrandPatch.

And Matthew meeting Mimi!

 

Matthew with Nana!

It was really cute...Matthew kept looking up at Nana and smiling!

All of the kids with their great-grandparents!  I will forever cherish this picture!

Then we celebrated Nana's 91st birthday with a cake!

Juliette saying goodbye to Mimi and giving her a hug!

Ben with Nana and Grand-Patch!

Saying good night!

I am so grateful that we were able to spend the day with them.  I wish I got to see them more often and I wish the kids could see them more often too.  But now that everyone lives in  Jacksonville, we will hopefully see them more often when we come down (which unfortunately, isn't all that often anymore anyway though). 

Since we were only overlapping with Uncle Chris (and fam) for the weekend, we took an evening flight out, so that meant we got to spend one more day at the beach!  Matthew is ready...sort of...

Madgie and Patch with their grandkids!

We decided to bring Matthew down and let him nap on Daddy.  We have pictures of all the kids napping on Daddy on the beach, so it only seemed right to snap one of Matthew doing it too!

Abbey playing in the sand with Brendan!

Uncle Chris and Ben throwing the football around in the ocean.

Sand fun!

Aunt Ginny and Brendan.

OK kids, get your last swims in before it's time to get ready to leave.

Right before leaving, Ben found a crab and named her Hermione.

Then it was time to shower up and get ready to head off to the airport.  Matthew getting in some last minute play time!

Last minute playing with legos.

As the fourth child, you get placed inside the tall lego building your siblings made.  This is why Matthew is so laid back...OK, what are you doing to me now?  OK.

Brotherly love.

Last minute hanging with Uncle Chris.

Then off to the airport!

And some exhausted kiddos fell asleep on the flight home!

We had a really fun trip and it was a great way to kick off summer!  Thank you Madgie and Patch for everything and thanks to Uncle Chris and Aunt Ginny for coming down and overlapping your trip with ours!  I wish we could have spent more time there, but it was time to get home and get into our summer activities!