Technical difficulties

Yeah, this face is how I feel too.  I had so many pictures of so many things to share.  We have been having so much fun with family and I was ALREADY behind posting about them.  Then we got to Jonathan's house and discovered he had no internet.  And they were unable to fix it.  We went an entire week with no internet.  Well, except for the hour we had it at the library while the children were sadly neglected.  Now I am even more behind.  I hope to be able to catch up, but I do have a rather large amount of pictures.  Um.... like 450 of them, that I must go through and decide what to share with you!

Early Fourth of July

Well, I'm still a week behind on our exciting events around here.  So I'll make this short on words and long on photos.  Last Friday Aunt Miranda decided we needed some 4th of July celebration.  She brought back a bag of goodies from the fireworks shop and let the kids have at it.   They had a marvelous time with the bottle rockets and smoke bombs and snap caps.

Sadly, it was our last hurrah before Kera and Miranda left with their progeny and left me alone with mine.

Hike Part 2

We came prepared with snacks and water.

Callie was everyone's favorite because she gave piggy-back rides and made cranky children happy.

Rylee and Charlotte, giving me silly faces.  Aren't they adorable?!

These are their happy faces.

Marian, hanging out at the park.

Callie and Rylee.  I love it when they are sweet to each other.

Once again, Marian is Queen of the Tree.

I'm sorry, she was so funny, drinking, I had to get a picture.

 And Delaney's distressed look cracks me up.

 Somebody broke his glasses.  He says he can see just fine, but he's a fibber.  He squints, just like this without his glasses.

Oh, look!  It is all my favorite children!  I kind of love them.  A lot.

5 silly children and one goofy dog.

Everyone else moseyed down to the water, but my kids were hot and tired and only made it to the car. 

Fun family hike Part 1

Silly blogger isn't letting me upload more than one photo at a time, so it has taken me 3 days to get this far!  And I'm done.  So, here are pictures from our hike!

We drove out to a lovely spot by the lake and took the kids for a hike.  It was a very short hike for grown ups, but fairly arduous for the 4 year old crowd.  Or maybe just for MY four year old!  All the other kids had a marvelous time running and climbing and hiking.  We hiked them through a trail to a park and then back. 

I think the highlight of the hike was when Marian hopped up on a tree and realized there was a baby fawn right next to her.  The branch she was on broke and the poor fawn bolted.  Levi wanted to go in hot persuit, but his leash holder managed to keep him where he was.

It was a good day and a good time.

A view of the lake before the hike.

Matthew, Callie, Aaron and Marian on a log. 

The whole gaggle of kid, with my son, making me so proud there in the front.

Whew!  Joshua looks normal.  

FYI, all these kids, plus 5 adults were sharing a 5 bedroom home with 2 bathrooms for a week.  Crazy!

Speaking of crazy......!!

Having fun hiking.

Alex is just so doggone cute!

I said I wanted more photos with my mom in them.

So i made them pose for pictures.  Rylee is kinda photobombing.

Someone had a LOT of fun!

Merry-Go-Round = Good times

 One of the parks here has an actual, real, live, merry go round!  Do you know how rare those are these days?!  The kids love that park and spend the whole time spinning around and around. We went to that park on Tuesday morning.  I was surprised how much fun it was for all the big kids.  Joshua is almost 13 and he had a blast.  There were some random small children at the park, and a couple kids around Joshua and Marian's age.  They joined the whirling good times with our kids. Some older kid (or young man, 18-20s) showed up and thought it would be fun to play with the kids.  He spun and spun them so fast the boys were flying off the merry go round, and not entirely on purpose. We were there around 2 hours and not once did any of the 13 children utter the words, "I'm bored."     Yay!

Relaxing as they spin.

Callie spinning the merry go round with family and new friends.

Rylee preferred climbing the caterpillar.

finding new ways to ride the merry go round.  And look at Charlotte's face. (She's the adorable little blondie in pink.)  I love it!

Even Delaney had a really good time at the park.

Camden and Ethan were adorable and I couldn't resist this picture.