Friends at the park!

We are so lucky to have friends who rearrange their lives to meet up with us when we travel to Minnesota! A high school friend of mine has a 6 year old boy, 4 year old girl and a 6 month old girl. Perfect playmates for our kiddos! We've gotten together before, but it's been awhile. I think the last time the big girls were only a year old!

They weren't happy about pictures, but sometimes a mama just needs a picture!

Above:Jacob and William
Below: Amelia and Mariella

Sadly, Gemma wouldn't hold still for more than minute so we don't have a picture of the little girls.

Camp out

William was thrilled to be invited to camp out with Kaye and Scott at whitewater state park this week in their camper. (Amelia was invited also, but I made the executive decision that very day that you need to be 5 to spend the night away from mama because I didn't want to drive and pick her up at midnight).

Kaye sent me some great pictures of William camping. The first words out William's mouth were: "where's Scott?"

He is Scott's little shadow, which I think (I hope) both enjoy. Scott, among other things had promised to take William fishing for his breakfast in the morning.

William was disappointed he didn't catch anything, but was thrilled when Scott offered to share his catch. William was ALL about eating the fish and talked it up a great deal. Until the fish hit the table. Then he decided he only liked fish that look like chicken nuggets. (Full disclosure: we don't eat fish at our house. At all. Ever. So, I'm not sure how he arrived at this conclusion.).

William settled on a sparse breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast and fruit. Possibly banana bread? From his telling he ate a whole pile of food.

After breakfast, everyone went for a hike. A hike in which William ended up building dams in the creek with Cece the dog looking on.

It is no surprise that he crashed hard when they brought him back to town!

A big thank you to Scott and Kaye for giving our big guy an awesome camping experience!!

Snores

We went to whitewater state park last night to join my family for dinner at the campground.

William: I'm done eating!
Kaye: good! Do you know what we have for dessert?
William/Amelia: what?!?!
Kaye: S' mores!
W/A: cheering
Amelia: snores! I love snores!!!!!

Sent from my iPhone

Lunch with grandpa

Grandpa came home for lunch and Gemma hopped right up to the table to keep him company.

Which didn't last for long. Soon she was up on the table requesting a bite with her chubby finger. Who can resist that?

Diving board

Despite both of them being terrified, bit kids insisted they needed to jump off the diving board into the deep end at the end of their swim lesson.

First is Amelia and second is William.

Swim!

This post keeps being rejected. Here is attempt #019153825.

William and Amelia are sharing a swim instructor this year and are the only 2 students in the class ( it's a super long story, not that interesting). They did very well together and had a lot of fun!


The first shot is them swimming together. The next pictures will now be in a separate post.


Sent from my iPhone

William's map

We were at a pizza restaurant that has butcher paper for coloring. William made this partial map of the United States. Not bad!