aunt elaine and cindy's visit

Chris' aunt Elaine lives in Germany and works for the Department of Defense as a teacher and has also done counseling. She usually comes back to the states for the summer to visit with family and friends, and take care of business. We usually only get to see her for a short time, but we are so excited because she'll be retiring after this school year and moving back to Texas (is that Bowling for Soup song going through your head yet?). Her good friend (and ours too) Cindy is so wonderful to come with her when she visits us. This year they got to meet Todd for the first time and we went to the Crystal Bridge for the first time. It was a bit warm, but not too bad. It's worth it because it's beautiful inside. We had gotten a Groupon for a membership and finally had a good chance to redeem it. We also played on the playground until we were hungry and hot. We were sad to see them go, but we can't wait until Elaine gets her Texas house then we can see her a lot more often!

swimming at dodds

We are really lucky that Chris works with some wonderful people. We went for a swim at Dr. Dodd's house last Friday night. We had a great time catching up with Dr. Dodd, Suzanne, and Lori (plus the dogs Hannah, Fred, Grady, and Lily). The water was great, which helped us get Todd to swim in his float too! Somehow we didn't get any pics of that. Elle decided to try the float out too, and Hannah, Dr. Dodd's older Jack Russell, kept trying to steal the pool toys. It was such a fun evening and we can't wait to do it again.

todd @ 7 months

A year ago this was us.

Now look at him!

Todd loves books, but we're still working on him not eating them.

Such a cutie in the tub!

 He's moved on to some bigger toys and likes to pull up on the toy box. He's so grabby!

fun for the 4th

July 1st we attended our first Star Spangled Fried Chicken Dinner at church. Elle had so much fun running around with her friends. Love these silly girls!

 They also have a tradition of a kids parade. We scrounged around the house for anything patriotic looking and decorated the wagon. Todd was having a little trouble with his hat! You can see some better pics of the evening on Katie's blog.

I found this fun idea to do a patriotic shaving cream/finger paint activity. I can't find the link now, but you squirt the shaving cream in a pan, then draw fireworks with red and blue fingerpaint, add some glitter and let them go at mixing it up. Elle thought this was awesome! It was easy to set up and quick to clean up too. I think we might do this for each holiday with different colors.

We went to Tulsa for the holiday. We played with cousins, went to the Bixby splashpad, ate lunch at Grandma and Grandpa Johnson's, dinner, movies and fireworks at Nana and Aunt Casey's.

prebed water play

It never fails the evenings we want to play in the sprinklers here they aren't on. So we pulled out the baby pool and squirt bottles!

You can't get them both looking at the camera most of the time!

"Why isn't this blown up, Mom?"

"Thank you!"

"Mops you want some of this action?"

up

down

squirt bottle tag

Elle flashback!

RV's visit

Not a lot of pictures from this visit, but we had some good times! We went to the Myriad Gardens for a picnic and played in the fountain on the east side. RV makes the best chicken salad and I love that he graciously fixes it for us whenever he visits. We also ran into the Mitchells and Andersons for extra fun! Saturday night we attended Mayfair Live for the first time. The cakes were awesome! Next year I'll know not to eat dinner because there's too many choices to limit yourself. RV got to have special movie night with us and learn how to train his dragon, and then we introduced him to Tucker's.