Sunday, July 7, 2013

Lucas is 9 months and a little



Lucas turned 9 months old on June 27 and he is busy!  He already pushes trucks around and makes truck noises.

Here he is during a bath.  Usually he is splashing enough to get me wet as well.

He can feed himself Cheerios now, too.

He is also crawling all over the place!

Saturday, July 6, 2013

4th of July

The 4th of July was very laid back.  We grilled hot dogs and did 4th of July trivia over supper. Jello flags followed for dessert.  Actually Randy did most of the work, I just had the idea.  Randy happened to read that there was a new hotdog eating contest winner, so we had our own contest to guess (not eat) how many hotdogs were eaten.  Alex guessed 55, Max 47, Sophia 118, Henry 102, Timmy 2.  The number was 69!     After dinner the kids (minus Timmy and Luke) went to the neighbors to do sparklers, snaps, bottle rockets and the like.  Alex got to light a few things and Max was the designated fire fighter, he held the hose and sprayed dropped sparklers and such.  I went over for a bit and between the kids and a few other neighbors the neighborhood was just a haze of smoke.  It was a lot of fun for everyone!

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Helping Sara and Eric Move

We went to Sara and Eric's new house in Ohio to help them move in. Our family plus Uncle Dan and Aunt Wanda, who had Oliver with them, were the first to arrive. The kids thought it was great fun to tear around and wrestle before the boxes and furniture arrived.

The next day, Saturday, Sara and Eric had movers coming to help them unload the truck with all their stuff.  So Aunt Kathy, Aunt Coco,Kelli,  Randy and I took our kids plus Sara's kids swimming.

Grandma Steffen did us the honor of watching the littlest non-swimmers on the side of the pool.

Unloaded toys to play with!

There was a great park fairly close to Sara and Eric's new home.  After a lunch at Mc Donalds, Aunt Kathy and I took Oliver, Sophia, Henry, Timmy and Luke there.  The best part was the shade! All the park equipment was in the shade.

Sophia, Oliver, Timmy, and Henry all enjoyed the swings!

This pose was Sophia's idea. They all had a great time together.

Luke was very happy to watch everyone playing and having fun!

Randy found and filled up Oliver, Parker, and Julia's pool.  It was plenty hot to play in the water.

Here are all the swimmers, (l-r) Oliver, Sophia, Alex, Timmy, Max, and Henry. (Parker was napping)

While the older kids swam Julia and Lucas (the next pic) played quietly inside.


Randy found a Spider-baby while working around the house.  Randy got alot done while we were there.  He and Eric installed a new washer and drier, he helped hang some curtains, put together some shelves for the garage and installed a garage door opener with Eric.  We also found time to relax and just hang out as well.

On the way home we stopped at the Museum of Glass in Corning, NY.   It's a great museum!! Here's everyone in front of a glass sculpture.  We stayed in a hotel the night before and the kids swam in the morning, I wish I would've had my camera, Luke loved the pool, and tried to "crawl" in the water - it looked like he was swimming.

Timmy surrounded by glass.  Don't worry it's not as scary as it looks, all the glass is attached in such a way he can't really break anything.

Sophia surrounded by glass flowers. 

There were a number of glass models, I guess  you would call them.  There was a farm and quite a few depicting the life of Jesus. Here is one of the Jesus ones.

Here are some glass eyes - cool, uh?

Alex by super-duper old glass, quite impressive.

Here are Sophia and Henry standing on the glass floor of the second story of the museum.