Another Birthday Down... :-)

Emmalie is officially a six-year-old upon waking up this morning. She woke up today and the first words out of her mouth were... "Next year I'm having a sleepover for my birthday!". UGH! Between the bounce castle, cake/cookies/ice cream, misting water and opening of toys to play with them... We had so many screaming girls over here yesterday that I was 100% ready for them all to leave by the end of two hours :-)

It's hard to believe that our once premature and frail baby girl...


has grown up to such a beautiful soon-to-be First grader!


Well, I have to keep this short. Emmalie is chomping at the bit to get around so she can spend her birthday money after church! Here are the photo highlights of her celebration day.











I'll leave with a verse from one of Emmalie's favorite kids poems (Mother Goose's "Come My Children")...

Let us make a merry ring,
Talk and laugh, and dance and sing.
Quickly, quickly, come away,
For it is a pleasant day!

Shelia, Tony & the Gang

Wasss Up... :)

Well... Dalton and Emmalie are enrolled for the 2011-2012 school year. Dalton is (for the most part) happy with his High School teachers for the first semester... I haven't checked, but pretty sure they are either young and female or an athletic coach of some sort! Emmalie, on the other hand, could care less about who her teacher is. She's just excited about getting to go to school all day this year... and I'm pretty sure that all day learning excitement will go away by the end of the first grade!

How can you tell when you've read the same bedtime story to your 3-yr-old too many times? Let me show you...

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Bethanie now thinks she can read anything... and she sure tries! Emmalie has started to "tutor" her sister on all 1, 2 and 3 letter sight words. It is so cute to watch. I sincerely hope that those two are always so close.

In other news around our homefront...

We've been finding the fun in Family...

Playing at the playgrounds...

Enjoying the parks...

Watching some baseball games...

And winning a few, too!
(Dalton's team took 4th in 14U at State!)

Now if we could just get the constant 100+ degree temperatures to go away...

A Little Picture-Style Video

In between a wonderful and relaxing 4th of July holiday weekend and a long weekend of state baseball tournaments... so we thought we'd provide a little clip of our 4th celebration to tide over until the next post ;-)

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Shelia, Tony & the Gang

All the Lovely Flowers

There is not a better way

To spend a hot, sunny summer day.

Exploring the wonders of our given senses

As we walk and play around the garden fences.

That is exactly what we did today... took the kids to visit the new children's discovery garden. Emmalie referred to it as "enchanted". Bethanie referred to it as "magical". Tony and I referred to it as a great opportunity to wear the kids out! How can they have so much energy when it is so stinking hot outside?!

The girls enjoyed getting to plant their own flowers to take home and walk through the rainbows. It never ceases to amaze me how much fun kids can have just playing around in the awe of nature. Although... we found out that we need to expose Emmalie to more butterflies. She totally freaked out when one went to land beside where she was sitting in the butterfly garden. Her facial expression was priceless (see photo progression below).

Hope every has a safe and relaxing 4th of July weekend.