Upon returning from Wyoming it was time to prepare for birthdays! First up was mine and I celebrated with a hilarious game night with good friends, then a day of relaxing, dinner and cake with family. I promised my friends I wouldn't share pics of the game night, but the kiddos were up for letting me take some pictures while they tested out the games! We did a combo of games from Minute-to-Win-It and they were an all ages hit! Not surprisingly, Matthew still asks every few days to play "face cookie" :-)
Catherine still sings me happy birthday every few days :-) We took the rest of the weekend to finish up moving our firepit. With James and the kiddos built it for me a few years ago we put it in the far corner of the yard. Unfortunately, that meant every time we wanted to have a fire we had to drag out a table, chairs and run back and forth across the yard every time we roasted. Right off the deck however, we had a rotting wood platform where the hot tub once was, a giant hole where June was digging and a mess of hydroponic rocks, weeds and sand. Over the course of a few weekends we converted that area to a place for the firepit. I'd say we're pretty happy with the results:
Catherine was pretty intense about the stick she found while Matthew (in the background) was peeking over the fence to spy on the neighbor girls! We'll have to stop that sometime soon I'm guessing!
Once my birthday had come and gone it was time for to start prepping for Catherine's. I was on the fence about having a "friends" birthday this year, but when I asked her who to invite she could only name the friend we had just seen, and then listed all of Matthew's suggestions! We figured 4 is a good age to have a "friends" birthday party which made everything a bit easier. She woke up and found her new dollhouse. She was in awe!
There was lots of playing with the dolls each day:
We opened a few packages at breakfast, including a happy birthday hairbow:
By late afternoon Catherine had finally decided on a Batman cake! Of course she had to wear one of her many new crowns for the occasion.
Catherine was blessed with many wonderful gifts from friends and family! More pictures with those will come soon!
The next weekend was the Yellowstone Half Marathon. I had been training for this race but due to some pregnancy side effects was unable to complete it :( However, I wanted to be there to cheer on the rest of my team and discovered that if I volunteered for the race I could essentially transfer my registration for the next year for free! I went down on Friday with friends and then James and the kiddos met up with us for a mini-Yellowstone adventure. After the race we headed to the park with some good friends and their kiddos. As it started to sleet we made our way out for lunch and then the kiddos had a ton of fun in this undeveloped lot with their happy meal toys. We named this the "canyon of trees" and it probably would have kept the kiddos busy for hours.
Next up was a picnic with one of my best friends from elementary school and her friends and family! They were camping along the Madison and while we couldn't get a campsite there, it probably worked out okay as it was wintery weather and cold toddlers in the morning aren't a ton of fun! We stayed and had a campfire dinner with them as well as checking out the bison and their babies! I left my good camera in a friend's car but phone photos are just as beautiful in Yellowstone.
The kiddos tried on the sheep hat courtesy straight from Wales!
The weather cooled quickly and we pulled out the full winter gear for a walk to the river:
And some more warming up by the fire with the kiddos favorite campfire treat!
We came back late Saturday and for Father's Day took James out for breakfast. Then the kiddos got an "indoor" Yellowstone experience while James got some time to rest. Matthew was a firefighter most of the time!
The sun eventually reappeared for all of 2 hours, just in time for us to do one of our favorite hikes. The kids dressed to impress:
Later they got to enjoy their father's day gift for James, homemade popsicles using our new dinosaur molds! A dear friend of mine and certifiable supernanny also spent the week in town with us. Though she was at a conference during the day, the kiddos had a blast with her in the evenings.
And during the day we had an oddly busy week, interrupted by a mild tummy bug. Once everyone was better James and I headed to the midwife to take a peek at #3 who is doing well, stubborn and very active. This was not a surprise to me as I'm already getting a good share of kicks but it's always fun to see. Afterwards we had planned to meet up with some friends to hike the "M". I definitely didn't make it to the top by myself with both kids (and refuse to carry Catherine at this point) but they made it a good ways and it was a gorgeous day for a hike. It's nice for the trail to be so green right now!
We made it to the second "bench" and have come up with a conditioning program to get Catherine up there on her own steam by the end of summer, at least in Matthew's mind :-) Next trip we'll get to the rocks, then to the next bench and finally to the top. It'll work out perfectly in Matthew's world!
We stopped at a small patch of rocks and the kiddos would have played her forever if I had let them. Matthew has a very keen interest in rock climbing right now!
Last up this weekend was a circus birthday of good friends! There were games, sno-cones and a bounce house. The kiddos were in heaven!
The kiddos even willing did the photo booth!
And of course, my kids never day no to tattoos!
The nice weather only lasted as long as the birthday party and we are back to some rainy, grey skies. This gave us the perfect opportunity to tackle some indoor projects like finally bunking the beds:
I won't lie, the naptime version of this was ROUGH and they definitely kept each other awake. Hopefully once we exhaust the kiddos with the help of some more good friends this afternoon the evening will go much better.
No comments:
Post a Comment