71 Days Of Summer.. Continued.

It seems like Summer Break was just starting.. & now it's over and I'm getting ready for my 5th year of teaching second grade.  Starting a new year of teaching is always exciting, but I'm always missing my babies when I'm not with them.

I had high expectations for this summer, but mainly I wanted to spend time with my 3 beautiful children.  We spent 30 days with Elyse this summer from June 5th- July 5th.  30 days seems like a long time, but it's not when you think about the 156 days it had been since we'd seen her last and the 130+ days until we see her again.

She came into town and she was so happy to be here and she was really wanting to see the babies.  I woke up Ryan and Tim woke up Jakey so they could spend some time with their big sister.  Ryan was a little shy at first but quickly became a wild child with her.

On Elyse's first night here I crossed something off of my Summer Bucket List- take a picture of all 3 kids.  Check!

Take the kids on a photo shoot and get a picture of all 3 of them and lots of individual pictures.  Check & Check!  ... Except Ryan & Jakey's are somewhere in the computer and I don't feel like searching for them.  Tim did get a lot of great shots of Elyse though.

Spend lots & lots of time with Mommy & Daddy.  Check!

Take the kids on a picnic.  Check!  I had a super cute picture of Tim & the kids on our picnic but I lost it when I lost pictures off of my memory card.  I came onto blogger a couple weeks ago to post some pictures and my pictures were gone!!!  I went downstairs and started crying.. came back up and posted it on my facebook.  Thankfully a friend was telling me about a photo recall progam she had previously used, $29 bucks later I had over 500 pictures back.  A few were ruined though- like the picnic picture.

Take the monkeys to the splash pad.  Check!  Except Jakey & I just watched.. he was not a fan of the water.

Bake with Elyse.  Check!  Elyse is quite the little cook.  She was wanting to cook for us all the time.  She likes to pretend cook too.  She was always asking us what she could get us to eat and drink.  She's like your own personal little chef.

Jakey getting cuter and cuter by the minute.  Check :)  Could this kid get any cuter??  No, probably not. 

Play outside.  Check!  The weather wasn't always nice, but the kids still loved playing outside.   We had gotten these big boxes from Ryan's birthday presents and Elyse had fun pouring rocks over them again and again making Ryan laugh hysterically.  Look at his little fists- can you tell he's excited?

 More outside playing.  Tim, Elyse, and I trimmed up our trees and bushes in the front yard and cleaned out the rock path coming up our front porch.    When we were done Tim got the water hose and sprayed the kids.  Ryan's diaper was so gross I had to take it off and then we just gave him his first bath with the water hose.

Spending time with Daddy.

Jakey ate his first bowl of cereal!  6/19/12  It was also the day that he rolled over for the first time from back to front.

Lots & lots of walks.  Check!

Signing up Ryan for gym class.  Check!  If your toddler isn't in a gym class- go sign them up!! Cutest thing ever.  Ryan LOVED it.  I can't wait to sign him up for the next session.

Jakey started solids shortly after his 6m birthday.  Of course- he started on carrots just like all the other special little people in our lives.

Elyse had a brilliant idea for the kids to get into Ryan's crib.. so she climbed in and asked for me to put Ryan and Jake in there with her.

Our last night together was fun.   We spent our night sitting on a blanket in a parking lot watching the fire works.  --- Jakey was sleeping in the car!

We went to a birthday party.  I like going to little kid birthday parties.  Ryan had a lot of fun and kept running over to and climbing into the jumping castle.  His little friend Brody turned 2.

& another thing I wanted to do was put Ryan in swimming lessons.  He did his lessons for 4 weeks.  We practiced swimming under water, kicking, blowing bubbles, doing monkey walks, climbing out of the pool and doing back floats.  He was the best one in the class ;)

One of my favorite things we did this summer was go to the water park on Jake's 6m birthday.  For obvious reasons, I didn't take my camera.   Elyse woke up soo excited and said "Today's going to be the best day ever!"  & it was :)

So there you have it.. My 71 days of summer in 23 pictures.