It's July, holy cow, it is July but we had hail! And big ones to. We were all out sining and playing in the downpour and then all of a sudden pain. Big ol dime side hail. Derek and I start running for cover but Jude and Alice just stay still and cry so we double back snag them and rush to shelter. Those suckers stung! We finished out the rain storm from the saftey of our car port and just watched the wonder of it.

Here is a video of me trying to put Alice's hair into a pony tail. She is not going to have any of it.  

I printed off a bunch of pictures, put them on magnetic sheets, cut them out, and stuck them on the fridge.  Jude looked at each picture and was done. Alice loved them!  She would move them around, and get so excited about who she was looking at, or what was going on in the picture.  After awhile she started expirementing by putting the pictures in different places.  Finding out that the wall wasn't magnetic was a bummer for her but when she found out the dishwasher would hold up the picures it was on! She was running them back and forth, sorting them, and just laughing. Occasionly she would run over and show me a person and was just so excited. I think I am going to have to expand my fridge family photo albulm.

I thought I had the perfect activity for the kiddos. Making froot loop necklaces! Well... Jude was interested for about 5 seconds and Alice for even less. They were much more interested in eating them. After they each got a couple of hand fulls in there mouth I figured we could try to do necklaces again. Much better this time. They loved their necklaces but the second I put them on their neck they chomped away. I was lucky to  get a picture. I guess next time I need to pick a less delicious craft project.

I love the lake. I adore the Lake. I wish I could be at the lake everyday! We have so much fun when we go and we don't go enough. My mom came along this time and the kids were in high heaven. She had a little foaty and the kids thought it was a boat. They had such a ball going all around in it.  The water is realy low this year and you could get way into it and still stand.  And I finally got to use my tent! It was so nice when it came time to take a break. We all sat in the shade and with plenty of room to. We ate our sandwiches, drank our water, and didn't get melted by the sun. I love the lake!

So my dear sister Andrea calls and basically says "Would you like me to provide your kids with an activity? Where I will pay for supplies, drive it to your doorstep, and also provide man power and all you have to do is attend and bring your cabin fever kids?" YES!!!! I love that suggestion! And it was a dousy of an activity. She brought a big tarp and duct tape. We taped up the edges and then filled it up with waer and ade a GIANT BLOB!!! It was so much fun!  It was basically a giant outside water bed. The kids were having such a fun time squishing and squashing. They were jumping and rolling all over and just having the best time! What an awesome Aunt!!! 

We had an especially great 4th of july this year. We didn't really get started till dinner time where I made red white and blue pancakes! Very patriotic and very tasty. Then we went over to Brian and Angie's for rootbeer floats. (coke floats for me thanks) The kids were looking very cute in their firework shirts (we made firework prints using pipecleaners and different color paints) Then we went over to the High School parking lot and just wandered. There were stairs, ramps, fences, ledges, trees, so basically a playground for our kids. They had a real treat climbing and playing on everything.  When it got dark we lit off a couple of our smaller fireworks and did our traditional dance aroud the firework bit.

 BOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM!!! Time for the big fireworks. We had a couple of big ones that we had bought. It was fun to see big fireworks going off right above our heads. Then we watched the town fireworks and it was quite a wonderful way to celebrate our country's independence.

Alice shoe radar is a finely tuned mechanism. She is always going for the biggest, brightest shoes she can get her feet into. I am going to have to watch out for this wild one.

OK we have a problem. Alice has so many hair bows!!! And its my fault! I didn't have them very organized, they were just shoved into a little box and they way they were put together it made me think that she didn't have very many. So feeling like my daughter needed more accessories I went to the store and bought a couple of styles of hair bows. Not wanting to throw them in the box I looked for a bettter way to store them and found a cute idea with ribbon and hanger. As I was fishing out all of Alices hair bows from a tiny box...they kept coming...and coming...and COMING! I was counting higher and higher and by the time I was done she had 54 hair bows!!! I guess since they were in such a small box I just hadn't really gotten a good idea of how many I had. So many bows!! Well the first thing I did was laugh at myself for buying so many. The second thing I did was shove them all into Alices hair, all 54 of them. She wasn't very excited about it so I had to bribe her with candy to stay still. It was so worth it.  Every inch of her head was covere in bows. It looked like she had on one of those old time flowery swimming caps that got attacked by a bedazzler. HA HA HA!!

update: I have been finding bows randomly around the house and we are now up into the 60s. That's a lot of bows!

They had a minihorse show at the library. They brought two little mini horses for the kids to touch and pet. And whn I say mini I mean mini. They were barely taller the Alice, but not quite as tall as the boys.  The kids were so cute. And even though tat was very exciting the kids really got a kick out of the free carousel rides. Wahoo!

This June has been the month of pool parties. It has easily been in the triple digits as far as heat is concerned so I have gladly been doning a swim suit.  We have done slip and slides, sprinklers, water balloon fights, splash pad. It has been such a fun way to beat the heat.

I saw this and melted like icecream! I love that they are cuddled ont he couch using the char cushion as a blanket.  My cute boys.