Summer

It is hard to believe it is the middle of summer, and it is hard to believe I have really been ignoring this blog! Since the last post, Matthew has started crawling and pulling himself up. He is dying to catch up to Peter and my parents are taking bets as to when Matthew will begin walking.

All that to say, we have been busy.

Here are Peter and Matthew spending their last evening with Auntie Nova before she moves to Kentucky for a year. Ugh. We will miss her!

The magic of Toy Story 2 enables any parent to take awesome pics of multiple children at once. From left to right: Zeke, Peter, Harper, and Matthew

We spent 4th of July with friends at the beach. I was kind of busy having a fun time, so the above picture is one of the few I have to capture the moment. :) That's Gino, Shaylee and Eli taking the brunt of their weight there.

After the 4th of July, we made a very spur of the moment visit to Rancho Mirage. It was a great time. Again. I was relaxing, so I had to depend on other people's pictures. :)

Peter messed this shot up with his weird aversion to getting his picture taken. But he and I were both lounging by the pool prior to this picture being taken. Seriously. You see, he had gone to sleep at 11pm the night before...ahh vacation....and so he was just completely tuckered out the next day. He sat with me on a lounge chair for about 20 minutes, almost falling asleep. It was nice!

Matthew, modeling the latest in boys' fashion with a lovely pink hat. You gotta do what you gotta do to keep his head from burning up!

What is summer without cherry pie? My mom taught me how to make a lattice crust. Next on the menu is peach. Yummmmm.....

We have spent a lot of time at the beach this summer. Because of this, Matthew has spent a lot of time eating sand. It is pretty much his favorite thing to do at the beach.

Peter on the other hand, loves seagulls. In this pic he is telling me how much he loves them. "Seagulls!" Oh, that is another thing. After our trip to Palm Springs, Peter started to talk a lot more. I think hanging out with other kids spurred him on. He probably says about 100 words now.

Some of the best ones are: bubbles--pronounced "bee-bulls"; Molly (his stuffed cat)--pronounced "Mo-wee"; Gramps--pronounced "amps"; Omi--pronounced "Mi"; Banana and Nana sound the same (sorry! I didn't teach him that I swear!); and sometimes when he is being naughty he calls his daddy, "Mike!"

Peter seems to have developed a crush on Gabriella....when we were at the beach he kept asking her to pick him up and he followed her around a bit

And who doesn't love Eli? Peter and Matthew both love hanging out with him.

Matthew, taking in some rays

it is tiring relaxing at the beach!

We had the opportunity to spend some time at this private beach club below my parents' house recently. My family spent a lot of summers there so it was really fun to take the kids down for some time in the sand.

Matthew clowning around.....

At dinner we were cracking up at this....

more sand!!