Over the river and through the woods

For the 3 day weekend celebrating the 4th of July, we packed up the girls, loaded up a travel trailer and headed off to Gramma's house. We met up with Missy, Richard and the boys, and with Tracy and together we crashed in on Mom and Ron, taking over the kitchen and spreading toddler cheer from one end of their home to the other. It was a lot of fun and we did get a little something out of it. See, this was a business trip of sorts. We were there for blueberries and an experiment in jarring salsas. We spent hours upon hours in the kitchen on Friday, Saturday and Sunday freezing quarts of blueberries; mincing, chopping and dicing up mangoes, tomatoes, onions, cilantro and jalapenos for salsas and tomato sauce. But it wasn't all work. We did take a break on Saturday afternoon to cook up a fajita dinner for the rest of the family. Mom brought Mema to the house and Randy and Becky both brought their kiddos. It was a full house for a fajita and tamale dinner.

Mema soaked up the time with her grand kids and great grand kids. She was very excited to see John, Robbie and Grace all playing together. Amongst all the excitement, we were also working on potty training Robbie and Grace. Both of them did really well and were cheered loudly each time they went potty. It didn't take long for Tracy, Missy and I to draw immediate comparisons to a couple of weeks during the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles when we helped Mema potty train 2 of our cousins while camping in a motor home on the Illinois River. Oh the things you remember at times like these...

I picked these pictures because it was just so cute trying to get pictures of Mema with the little ones. All of them look really cute in one picture or another, just not in the same pic! The kids did do a great job of playing together this weekend. The concept of sharing is not a concept that comes easy for Grace. While we are very thankful that Grace does a great job of "self-entertaining", the unfortunate flip side of that coin is that she has not become accustomed to sharing just yet. I am hoping that improves as Hailey grows, otherwise there is going to be a lot of time spent in timeout... for Daddy, probably.

Comments

Gram White said…

What a wonderful, family weekend!!!

July 7, 2009 at 11:49 PM

Grace's Birthday pictures

Count Brenda and I into the category of fans of Portrait Innovations! Leading up to Grace's first birthday we took her to have her picture taken at Sears every 3 months so that we could watch her grow. Each time it was a difficult experience. Nobody at Sears seemed to be able to get Grace to interact at all. It usually came down to Brenda and I deciding on 1 decent picture out of the set to use. For Grace's 2 year old picture, we decided to try someplace different. We went to Portrait Innovations. Talk about a great experience. Just like in the previous times, Grace was fussy and not at all interested in having her picture taken. The difference was that this time, the photographer took her time to draw Grace in and make her feel more comfortable. We took some family shots and used lots of different props to keep Grace engaged. It also helped that they took a ton of pictures! Not only did they take lots of pictures, we used 2 different studio rooms and several diffe...

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