Kendra enjoys swimming in the baby pool.
The girls took a few rounds of swim lessons and loved it.
Mikayla loves trying tricks off the diving board...
and has even learned to walk on water!
The girls love swimming with friends!
Jealous much Megan? Haha! We brought out some water balloons and Miss Megs walked around a little top heavy. 
I have a coral shirt that I like. I like the shape and the neckline and the length. Not a big fan of the matching scarf anymore. So, I cut it up!
I cut random circle-y, flowerish shapes out of the scarf.
Then I arranged them on top of each other like a flower.
I arranged them around the neckline of the shirt and handstitched them to the shirt with needle and thread. I also threaded a few beads on the needle and added those to the center. I also scrunched the edges a bit and tacked them down with a few stitches in places to keep them from flopping around.
Here it is on! I am totally embracing the embellished tee trend! This was so easy, don't throw out any of your shirts or kid's shirts before you can see what you can do with them! 
Lookin snazzy in our red, white, and blue 
The parade had really small horses...
really old fire engines...
really big tractors...
really old trains...
a really weird, welded-together-from-scrap-junk dragon...
and one really cute baby!
At dusk, we went to the Biggs football stadium to watch the fireworks. Mikayla and Noah got to climb in the dragon and work the levers to move its head up and down. Then we all stood back as the owner made the dragon breathe fire! Quite a spectacle!
I thought little Miss would be too tired for fireworks, but I guess 9:15 meant partytime in her mind!
Even with all the loud noises and bright lights,
all she wanted to do was play with Papa's hair! She couldn't have cared less that there were fireworks going off directly above her head! It was pretty funny! 
We enjoyed a pancake breakfast at our church the next day too. Here's my honey's looking chipper after a late night.
Megan chose a scooter for the bike parade.
And Mikayla chose her two-wheeler, she is loving the training wheel freedom!! We had a great holiday, saw the BEST fireworks show around, and enjoyed spending a whole weekend together as a family since Christmas!
My parents got me a fabulous new sewing machine for Christmas and I have been loving trying to sew new projects with it this year. I whipped these up, again without a pattern, because, well... I don't do patterns. Not that I'm above that or anything, I think I'm afraid of patterns and being constrained by them. The flowy dresses and skirts seem easier to me! So, for $3 in fabric, we have some Princess sundresses!
Mikayla has learned how to get the doorframes dirty in seconds by scaling the sides in barefeet. This strong little girl is getting quite brave lately and is trying new stunts and tricks wherever we go. She's trying to learn to dive into the pool, flip on the trampoline, and do cartwheels. None of them are perfected, but she sure tries a lot!
Kendra is still eating anything and everything in sight. She has two teeth now. This past week she had a double ear infection and 3 teeth coming in at once! Fortunately, one broke through relieving some pressure and the amoxicillin took care of the ears and the fever and cranky baby. She is crawling all over, up stairs and over toys. She pulls herself to stand and cruises on furniture and is virtually unstoppable! She is 8 months old and 15 lbs. 4 oz.
Poor Megan is tough as nails. The other day she got stung by a bee on the foot while playing in the backyard and then an hour later at the park, got stung by ANOTHER stinkin' bee on her hand! We couldn't believe it! She barely cried and got over it pretty quickly. 
The girls(older two) got to spend a week in Chico with Grandma and Grandpa. After 3 days, Kendra and I joined them for some fun. Magaw kept them busy with all kinds of activities: gymnastics play center, out to the movies, swim lessons, a petting farm, a science discovery museum and so much more! They had a blast and just love visiting in Chico.
They got to bottle-feed a baby goat.
They held 2-day old baby chicks.
We went to see Pippi Longstocking.
Grandpa took them on bike rides, Megan even fell asleep on a ride from being so worn out from all the activity!
They played with the water table and all the fun toys in the backyard (and yes, it was clothing-optional that day).
We of course went swimming a bunch!
Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for such a fun week! Can't wait to do it again!
I took these awesome oval-shaped cylinders, slid the wrapper off and emptied the contents.
I found some simple images with the help of my friend Google and printed them out. Attached them to cardstock and mod podged all to tongue depressors. Now, we have a fabulous new summer morning routine in our house!
Oh, and our new summer thing with tv: after the one morning show, more shows must be earned. You can earn a show in our house by doing age-appropriate learning activities. Mikayla can read 2 short books, do 2 pages of a 1st grade workbook, write a letter to someone, do flashcards, work on her LeapFrog Tag, etc. Megan can do 2 puzzles, draw/color, read counting books with Mom, things like that. So far, this too is working really well! 
I am super proud of these skirts!!! The girls wore them to church last Sunday and I love them! I don't have a pattern or a tutorial, because they are a compilation of a few ideas I've seen and then I tweaked them how I wanted. 
Putting it simply: it's 3 ruffled tiers sewn together and topstitched with white thread for contrast. The top was folded over, I made a casing and inserted elastic. I guessed on their waist and length measurements and did pretty well! Next time I think I'll make them even fuller. I wanted them to be more twirly and a little fuller, but when you're guessing at measurements without a pattern, you get what you get!
I cut some strips of fabric from a stash my mom had and used leftover elastic. So basically, I made cute skirts for the 4th for nothing! 
My fabulous friend Megan had some friends over to her place for a craft night. She, in her 8 months preggo glory, cut out and sanded ALL the wood for us! Bless her. Then we painted, picked our own papers and cut them to size, mod podged them on, and now have a new decor item for the 4th!
The semi-before. The blocks are painted and I inked the edges with a brown ink pad. A few of my papers are cut out but not roughed up around the edges yet here. Oh, and did I mention I hate Mod Podge? Love the idea of it, but the darn stuff bubbles everytime for me! I am totally Mod Podge-challenged and grrr....it makes me mad. Oh well! A thin coat under the paper and a thin coat over the paper to seal it on and you're good to go. When I got home I hot glued a few buttons on my star too for a little more pizazz. Oh and talk about cheap and easy, all my patterned paper strips were from one sheet of paper from Michael's--nice!
I made room for it on the mantle and love it!
I've been meaning to try this for awhile now and am so glad I did! I had leftover material from Mikayla's orange skirt and a pair of Megan's jeans with holes in the knees--a match made in heaven! Just cut off the pants below the zipper and pockets, attached two ruffles and then topstiched them down. About 15 minutes for this project and it is so cute on Megan, I can't wait to make more! Now I actually WANT them to wear out the knees in their pants or get them terribly stained so I can transform them!
I saw this really cute idea over here: http://eoberrys.blogspot.com/2010/01/ctr-towel-quick-tutorial.html and knew I had to try it! I printed the CTR emblem onto printer paper and then ironed some Wonder Under onto a square of fabric. I used the emblem as a template and cut out the letters and shield shape from the fabric. Then I simply fixed them to the towel where I wanted and ironed them down. To ensure it would stay and not fray, I stitched around everything. I used white thread so it won't show on the back of the towel. 
I printed out this cute poem and stuck it with the poem and the card on the towel and tied it up with raffia.
Voila! Totally cute and easy and a nice baptism gift!
