4th of July - Part 2 (the Peter's family!!)

The second part of our holiday weekend fun was getting to take a day trip to hang out with very, very good family friends of ours, the Peters. :o) It was a really fun day. One of those days that you would be want to re-live again if you got the chance. The combination of great weather, great people, great food, and fun on the water was perfect! We arrived just after breakfast, and stayed almost until the sun went down.

When we (the "kids") were younger, almost everything we did together revolved around the water - and the day at the lake was no different.

Taylor LOVED this little rhino toy. She floated around in it all day.

The little kids had fun on the slide...

While the big kids had fun on the paddleboard...Nicole even did it with her two kiddos along!

Testing out yoga moves on the board

A lot of time, we were just able to relax and hang out by the water!

These two live in Colorado, which I think is really neat, but I wish it wasn't so far away so we could see them more!

Before dinner, the three of us went for a little open water swim

After beach was coloring, play time, wonderful fresh food for dinner, a fire, s'mores, glow sticks and sparklers

Taylor was exhausted from all the fun, and got up from dinner, crawled on the couch and was asleep in minutes :)

A little walk...

 After dinner, Nicole and I took the kids out :o) Who needs more than one stroller with four kids?? :o) 

Fire & S'mores

 

Caleb getting messy with his s'more :)

Camryn having her first taste of a s'more

Watching the sparklers from above

Before we left, Camryn was feeling tired and gave Adam some snuggles (and Ari was reaching up to say good-bye, too :)

Yay for great friends and fun summer days!! :-D

4th of July - Part 1

Still playing blog catch-up. :)

Back to the 4th of July! We were up north (as always :)) for the long holiday weekend, and we had a day trip to a different lake to see family friends, so I will put pictures of that with the next post.

We didn't have the camera out a whole lot during the weekend - instead just captured a few snapshots here and there...

Taylor on the beach. Taylor wakes up every morning and wants only one thing - to go out to the beach. Once she is outside running around in her little suit, it is hard to get her to leave the sand and water. She usually has to be coerced with the idea of a yummy lunch or snack to get her to come inside. :)

Chasing bubbles - pure joy

Boating (trying to capture a different picture from Memorial Day weekend, where we were all in warm jackets and hats!)

4th of July dinner (minus dad, who was taking the picture :))

And the final morning, when we were getting ready to leave, Camryn had a bath in the lake, and was content to sit eating snacks in Bapa's lap to warm up until we were ready to go. :)

Pools, potty, and a photobomb :o)

POOL
We get a lot of use out of our kiddie pool - it is the fastest, easiest option for a fun way to cool down in the afternoons! It is also nice for Taylor to be able to play outside while Camryn is snoozing away inside during nap time. :o)

Silly girl :)

Today, Taylor was running to the sprinkler, and then sprinting back to the pool and jumping in with a big splash - over and over, again.

Running

Action shot in mid-air!

Splash!

Camryn was my little snuggle bum when she started getting tired today. She just laid against me, watching her crazy busy big sister run back and forth. :)

But eventually Taylor started to cash, too, and kept climbing out of the pool to curl up in the chair next to me. Both girls took 3+ hour naps after playing. :)

POTTY

We started on the potty training journey last August. She spontaneously went on her own twice on the potty, and we thought we were going to be able to start the process! But the next 10 months involved a lot of anxiety, crying, frustration, and complete resistance to anything involving the potty. She would ask for her diaper, and no amount of stickers, chocolates, prizes, bribing, naked days, Dora potty books, etc., had any affect. For the past 10 months, most of it we just really backed-off from the whole idea, really knowing that when she was READY, she would let us know. Well, we got back from the cottage during one visit in June, and on Monday, June 24, we had a bit of a breakthrough. Her drawer where we kept her diapers was empty. We had a new case in the basement, but hadn't brought it up yet. I decided to carefully take a step towards being more intentional with trying to get her to go again, and told her there weren't anymore diapers. She seemed more open to the idea of being without. That first week she had a total of five accidents. She made it through 3 hour naps dry right away, and we realized this could be it! And just like we had hoped, when she was ready, she was READY. It was a pretty quick process, we haven't had an accident since last Thursday - when she was too busy playing on the beach and forgot to ask. :) She could probably be close to moving away from wearing a pull-up at night, but we are waiting on that until our whole sleeping situation is in a better place. We are so proud of our little lady!

That first week we did give her stickers as a prize each time she went, as an incentive, and each time she filled a row, she got a prize.

And her prizes of choice were Thomas trains. :)

This is her set-up after all her stickers!

And one proud lady with her trains. :)

PHOTOBOMB

I had to include this one last picture. I took all the pictures for our house listing (because we are doing it "for sale by owner") and in the process I had lots of little ones who would photobomb my pictures of the rooms. I think there might have been 15 pictures out of the 98 pictures I took that I had to discard because either Taylor or Camryn snuck their way in. ;)