Father's Day part one

I'm behind on my pictures, but I don't want to skip stuff, so I'm going back to Father's day weekend.
On Saturday we went to the Lake in Maryville with Grandpa and Grandma, our Hazen cousins, and Faron's Aunt and Uncle.
We had a picnic and then played on the beach.



Aunt Anna (not Auntie Anna, that's a hard one to keep straight in the kids minds :)
Lane always brings weapons to share with Xander, which was great since we didn't think to travel with any.
they chased a bunny into the woods





We went down to the beach too. The kids had been most excited about playing in the sand, but as it turns out everybody had a blast in the water. I don't have pictures of how well they were all swimming cause I put my camera away so I could get in the water, but they all had a blast. The girls were putting thier swimming lessons to good use, and the little kids were very brave. Xander was fully under water just about as much as he was above the water. I had to make him stay within arms reach because he was often submerged. However, he never went under water when he didn't mean to and he had a blast.















After the beach we went back to Grandma and Grandpa's house to play some more. Lots of cousin play going on. Here's Ella's tiny toad.

At the end of the day we tried to get them all into a picture. This was as good as I could get. Next time we'll have to try at the beginning of the day!
These are very cute though.


Auntie Tenna was doing quite a dance to get them to all look up.

Hazen Cousins

The kids had a visit from our Hazen cousins last week. The came down in the evening and spent the night then the kids stayed with us the next day. They had a lot of fun, and I have a lot of pictures :)

When you wake up to a boy cousin, you must first greet each other with guns.
You can see the sleepy fresh out of bed looks on their faces still!as has become our custom, we headed outside as soon as breakfast was over (thanks Faron for cooking pancakes for everyone, it was hot and ready when I came down the stairs)
We made some of our side walk paint (equal parts water and cornstarch, then add food coloring)
and went out to paint a bit.

Stopped off to visit the chickens. Couple of blond boy super heros joined us here.
Then we went for a walk in the field where the kids hopped to see their huge mud puddle.
I had to take several shots just to get every body visible, and we were still missing the youngest two!
though the mud puddle was not a puddle anymore, it was still mud, and much dryer and not as messy, but still very fun.
They dug up worms (to feed to the chickens) and rolly pollies.
Lane was not much into the mud play, but he sat and watched, and guarded us all from evil villains.
Arianna would not play in the mud when it was a huge sloppy mess, but she liked this consistency of mud, it was about like play dough.
heading back to the house.
I hosed the kids off while the jumped on the trampoline, but that was a bit to dangerous for my camera, so I didn't take any pictures of it. However, that morphed into playing in the sprinkler, and makeing little containers into pools.

and all of that was just the morning! After that we had lunch and then had a much quieter time of inside play. The girls dressed up in some fancy dresses, the boys sword fought, and every one had a grand time!