Realer Life of Mark and Emily: 2012-09-16

We were so happy to head over to the other side of the state for another visit with family!!!!! We stayed at Uncle Matt's house since Grandma B's house was FULL! When we arrived at Matt's we saw that while Karrie was gone on a trip he had done this to their dining room!! Very impressive!

That night we headed to the small water park by their house with cousin Monica, Grace and Liam:

Annie was excitedly pointing at everything!!

And LOVING the water as usual!!

I even got in a date with my HOT husband!!!

And we got some play time out at Grandma and Grandpa B's house:

The kids TOTALLY. COMPLETELY. LOOOOOOOVVVVEEEEEDDD the 4 wheeler rides!!!!!!!!

And here is a sweet picture of all the twin cousins. Justin's Luke and Lindsey, ours and Scott's boys! We just need to photo shop in the newest twin cousins from Chelsea and we'll have them all!

Bonding over Kettle Korn:

This newest one was ADORABLE!!!

Roller skates anyone?!

Then we had a fun night at Uncle Karl's house, especially Liam and Grace!!

There was tons of yummy food and Mark finally got to ride on the zip line (something we missed out on last summer since we had negative time to do anything with our little ones!)

We had to do our usual stop at the Dairy farm. But....let me just add this in here...the kids (mostly the twins) were sooooo done being on vacation by the last day that even though we had not planned on leaving until Monday night, we ended up leaving by noon. They were miserable and making our lives miserable. In fact I'm pretty sure I cried at least twice in the hours preceding their total meltdown on Monday morning. We desperately wanted to stay and get some much needed visiting time in with Justin and his family, but it was impossible. In an effort to cheer them up we went to the farm. It didn't work, but here are the grumpy pictures to prove it!

We can always count on Annie being good for at least one smile!

Luke got so into feeding the calves it was so cute!!!

It was also VERY, VERY, VERY hot there!!!!!

We tried cooling off in the river. It was the kids first visit to the river. The first of many hundred I'm sure!!

Chewing on an empty yogurt container, that later became better used as a rock collector:

Grandpa showing Mark and Ryan how to make the water bottle heavy and light:

Mommy and Daddy got to ride on the jet ski's (the twins kept asking to go on the airplanes when they saw the jet ski's hooked up to the trailer!) but we didn't have life jackets for the twins so they missed out on it this year:(

Mark made sure to get pictures of all Justin's kids for our photo album we like to put together for the kids to remind them of all their cousins! Look at all these cuties!!!

Ok at this point the memories are starting to blend in to each other and I can't remember what month everything happened in!! I just know it was Summer. We've had SO MUCH FUN this summer!!!!

Here is Elizabeth eating cheese and hanging out with Grandpa B before church:

Mark and I FINALLY got around to painting our kitchen..it was a lot of work and I'm not sure if you can tell in the picture that it is a soft, pale, yellow:

Here is the before colors in case anyone could ever forget the olive and gold paint!!

Annie fell at the library after story time and hit her eyebrow right on the corner of a bench! It swelled up immediately and I about cried right along with her!!!! Poor baby, her first black eye:(

Some rare indoor craft time with Mark and Elizabeth:

This sight though, is not so rare since he has become OBSESSED with trains!!!!

We went to our friend Aubrey's 2nd Birthday party!!! It was at a new park and it was SO FUN!!!! The kids all love Aubrey and her parents. We feel so lucky that they only live 2 houses away:)

See that mommy down there holding her child so sweetly? That's me. And Mark. But it was more of a 'I'm going to take you home and never let you leave if you run straight for the water one more time' squeeze! In his defense there were ducks to be scared, I mean, seen.