There's Treasure Everywhere

This past week was one of the weeks of summer I was most looking forward to because all of my family came into town! Rachel, Michael, and Ben flew in from Indiana, Benjamin and his girlfriend Christina flew in from Houston, and Timmy drove down from LA. Our week was a whirlwind of activities, but here are some of the highlights:

Swimming at our pool.

An afternoon of dodgeball, kickball, and wiffleball.

These two hung out during our "field day." Ellie actually made quite a few friends with all the dogs and dog owners that came to the park to play. She is definitely our most social child!

Hanging out at Nana's house.

Eating delicious dinners al fresco.

More lounging by the pool.

And of course, going to the beach!

My cousin Abby even flew in from Phoenix to hang out for a few days which was great!

Ben was not too bothered by the sand.

I love that Ellie is photobombing the picture.

My birthday dinner!

Matching outfits?! Okay, this requires more of an explanation. I bought this dress at the beginning of the summer. My mom liked it so much that she bought one for Rachel and Christina on their birthdays and one for herself. I don't think any of us realized that she got them for all four of us, and then she arranged it that we all wore it on my birthday. It was pretty funny. We felt like bridesmaids.

We also had a chance to visit my grandma.

Then we headed over to my aunt and uncle's house for a pool party with more of my cousins.

It turned out to be a rare rainy day in August, but we still had a great time.

There's the whole clan. What a fun group!

Unfortunately I didn't get more pictures, but we also had Ben's first birthday party, a few games of Mafia, a hike in the rain, and other fun family memories.

Joey and Hannah had two two-week sessions of swimming lessons this summer. This was our first year doing swimming lessons through the city, and they were great. The kids started the summer saying that they didn't want to take swimming lessons. Then as soon as they started the lessons, they loved them.

The only downside to the swimming lessons was that they were every day for those four weeks (in the past, they were only M, W, F or T, Th), so we weren't able to do any of our regular summer activities like play out with friends, have friends over to our pool, or go to the beach. The kids have actually seemed to really enjoy our more laid back summer with mostly hanging around the house, playing together, and then heading over to lessons. I am surprised they didn't get more stir crazy.

So as wonderful as our summer has been, it seems a bit of a shame that we live in beautiful San Diego and haven't gone to the beach one time (although the older two kids went with my mom during Camp Nana). Thankfully we remedied that on Saturday.

"On your mark, get set, GO!"

They ran back and forth for a while.

Ellie really loves the beach, much more than the other kids at this age. She loves going into the water as long as I'm holding her hand.

My two beach girls! Hannah is a big fan of the beach too. She's my kid who loves to go the farthest into the water and jump over the bigger waves.

Joey came out of his room after a time out and we were having a little talk about his behavior.
Joey: Mom, can I use a bad word for a reason?
Me: (I knew which bad word he meant) Yes.
Joey: I hate being up there (in his room).
Me: Good!
Joey: I know! I just wanted to tell you that it was a victory for you.

Ellie says this all the time...
Ellie: Bye Alligator.
She doesn't quite get the "see ya later" part.

Hannah: I've noticed something. When I do one chore a day I'm kind of whiny about it. But when I do like five chores a day I get all into it.
Me: That's really interesting.
Hannah: Yeah, I know. It's really interesting.

A friend of ours from church invited Andy and Joey to go deep sea fishing with him and his son William (who is a friend of Joey's). The four boys carpooled to Dana Point, leaving at 4:30 in the morning. I thought Joey might sleep a little in the car on the way up, but he said, "William is just too funny." Apparently, the two boys had a blast together!

Andy and Joey managed to catch a few fish, so Joey was pretty pumped. I was a little worried about Joey getting sick, but as Andy put it, "He was a rock star!" Unfortunately, Andy didn't fare quite as well, but it was a special father-son trip in spite of the sea-sickness.

Last July I had "My Week with Ellie" when Joey and Hannah went to my parent's house for VBS and Camp Nana. Thankfully my mom was all about doing it again, so it's just Ellie and me this week.

Yesterday I thought it would be fun for Ellie to have her first play date. She loves our three year-old neighbor Cameron, so we went over first thing in the morning (while still in jammies as you can see) and invited her over. Honestly, I didn't know how it would go with two toddlers playing together, but they were great. They just went from one activity to another without much direction from me. It was really cute watching them interact and jointly decide what to do next.

They started with play dough,

and then they played with babies and the play kitchen for a while. Then Ellie asked me if they could go upstairs. I said, "Sure!" Then she looked at me with big eyes and said, "Hannah's room?" I said, "Sure!" She was SO excited and called for Cameron to follow her up.

They came down with these dresses that they wanted me to put on them.

They really loved walking around in the shoes.

Snow White ="Fee White" in Ellie-speak.

At some point Cameron found the puzzles under the couch, and they started working on those together.

Then they wanted to color.

After coloring, I asked the girls if they wanted to paint with water. They both loved it.

The girls played nicely for about three hours with barely a conflict, which is ironic since afterwards our house looked like a war zone. But in a good way. :-)

We had Ellie's half birthday party this past Fourth of July weekend (for an explanation of why we do half birthday parties for Ellie, see here.) Since it was a holiday weekend, we decided to keep the party small with just the grandparents.

Papa J went on a donut run first thing in the morning.

Earlier in the week, I took Ellie to Party City because I thought it would be fun to have her pick out which plates (theme) we would do this year. I had no idea what she would pick because she loves Hello Kitty, Dora, Minnie Mouse, Tinkerbell, the Disney princesses...basically every girl theme available at Party City. We started at one end of the aisle and I showed her two sets of plates at a time and had her pick one. She always picked the new set I showed her until we ended up at the end of the aisle by the princesses. So princesses it was.

This theme worked out great, because I had leftover decorations from when Hannah had a princess party and we had a lot of other princess stuff to decorate with like Hannah's princess castle...

some porcelain princess figures from when I was little, and even a princess pencil box.

We've also accumulated quite the princess baby collection so we used them for decoration as well.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures with the grandparents except Ellie playing video games with Papa J. I love this picture, but I really need to be better about grandparent pictures in the future!