Birthday Angel

I can't believe Austyn turns 7 on Sunday. We brought cupcakes, lemonade and treat bags up to her class today and the entire walk from the car I kept looking down at the candles in the cupcakes and thinking that can't be right......Ty? She's 7, is that right? I must have asked him 3 times walking from the car. It just didn't look right. How could 7 years have passed since our sweet angel Austyn blessed our family. She has a friend over for a sleepover tonight, then we are taking her, and 3 friends, Emma and Dagan to dinner and movie tomorrow night. On Sunday we will have lunch and birthday cakes (and possibly a few presents) after church. By Sunday afternoon I'm sure she will feel very well celebrated! We are so very lucky to have been given such a precious gift as our sweet 7 year old Austyn!

Pictures of all our little parties to come.......

School, Friends and Finally some crafting!!!

Ok so I have pretty much stunk at updating much this summer....honestly I don't even have a good excuse either! Here's what we've been doing. We took a week right before school started and went to visit friends in Arkansas and then dropped down to Texas to visit the grandparents for a few days. It was a short visit but we had a good time. Right when we got back one of Ty's childhood best friends came to KS for a visit (they live in Canada so it was a great treat to see them again). We tried to remember and I think it had been about 9 years since we'd seen eachother or met eachothers kids! It was a wonderful afternoon, thunder/hail storm and all!!!

Almost all our kids (Macy wouldn't join in the group)

The whole crew!

Andy, Chad and Ty

Here are a few pictures from the lake with Grandad...

I love this picture of Dagan & my Dad!!!

Helping build the 'sandcastle'

Meara didn't get to play in the sand or the water much but she sure had a good time!

Water fight....this was taken just moments after Emma threw a whole bucket of water on Granddad!

We stayed at grandmas too and played and hung out by the pool but apparently I was too lazy to ever get up and get the camera because I got home with no pictures from there or Arkansas!!! Hate that!

As a reward for reading so much this summer (over 50 books each!) Auntie Carol took the kids to the Salt Mines in Hutchison. It was such a cool tour and the kids really had fun (and even learned stuff...shhhhhh!) Heres a couple pictures from that day too.

It is still a working mine so we had to wear hardhats and have emergency breathing thingys.

And then it was time for school to start! I've never seen kids as excited as they were to get back to school! Long may it last! When I picked them up from school the girls chattered non-stop about what they did, their teachers, their friends, lunch, recess.......you get the idea! Dagan says mom I was a good boy ALL day I used my NEW listening ears almost the whole time. Almost? I said, yes he said the rest of the time I used my OLD listening ears! Really, and where did you get the NEW listening ears.....at the EARS store. ROFL!!!! He was so funny, grinning from ear to ear!
And no that isn't a TV over their heads in the background, it is a picture hanging on the wall with a reflection on it.

And finally a couple new pictures of our new crawling Meara! She is growing WAY too fast, I can't believe she is already crawling!!!


And as if that wasn't enough......I finally got some scrapbooking done. Good news I got several layouts done for Aunt Donna's book, bad news it isn't catching me up on my stuff any but it is always fun to work with baby photos and Mya is such a cutie! You can check out the layouts (I think) here: http://www.scrapbook.com/myplace/index.php?mod=galleries Hopefully that works.....Ok I think that's it for now, I might have more pages added to that gallery if I can get myself organized and back to the table to craft this afternoon...we'll see!