Madison and Lincoln

Madison absolutely adores her little brother Lincoln.  She is the first to try and soothe him when he is crying or just make him smile.  She always wants to help me do things for him and she is really good at playing with him.  This is a picture of us at Chick-fil-a.  Lincoln was crying so Maddie got her book (that came in her kids meal) and started showing him the pictures and talking about them (she can't quite read that well yet).  What a great big sister!

Lincoln's First Friend!

Our good friends/neighbors had a baby boy named River just six weeks after we did.  We like to think that he is Lincoln's first friend!  We know that as they get a little older they will probably play together all of the time.

Swim Lessons

This summer we decided to put the girls into swim lessons and it has been the best decision ever!!  The place that we go to is amazing and the girls have learned so much so fast!!  Emma is already swimming around with no floaties and is even jumping into the deep end and swimming around.  Maddie started yesterday taking off her floaties and swimming around and is getting more and more confident.  I am so happy that we decided to do this!  Here is a picture of our girls advancing to the next levels!

Lincoln in his Sunday Best

Just had to post these adorable pictures of Lincoln all ready for church.  I just can't get enough of him!

Makenna's "rest" time

When our children are old enough to stop taking naps, but we still like to have some quiet time, we like to call it "rest time".  They are each separated into different rooms and take time to play on the Ipad, read some books or play quietly with a few toys.  At the beginning of summer, we moved Kenna into the room with the other two girls.  We figured it was a good time to stop her naps so that she would go to bed a little easier. (When she has naps, she tends to stay up late talking and singing in her bed!)  Kenna happens to like the toy room and she is really good about quietly playing in there.  However, sometimes it gets a little too quiet and this is how we find her.  I guess she still needs some naps!

                                             I love how she is still holding on to her purse!

 In this picture, we let her watch a show in our room.  Without us knowing, she went and got her blanket and pillow and fell asleep watching "Sophia".

                        Where's Kenna??  If you look closely, you can see her still holding her toys.

Big Bear Trip

This summer we were able to go on a really fun trip to Big Bear with our friends Kim and Greg and their two children.  Greg's parents own a cabin there so it was free fun!  We spent a lot of time playing games but we also went on some hikes, rode our bikes, went to the zoo, shopped Big Bear Village and played at the swim beach.  We really enjoyed this quick little get away.

                                                    We need these chairs at our house!

                                                     Taking turns on the Big Bear "bear".

                                                  Eating treats from the ice cream shop.

                                           The coolest animal we saw at the Big Bear zoo!

                      We went on a really fun hike with the girls - this was the "throwing rocks" competition.

                             The girls had a lot of fun jumping off all of the logs and rocks we found.

                      One of my favorite family pics ever!  Too bad Lincoln stayed back to sleep.

                            The swim beach was a lot of fun but Kenna doesn't love the water!

Emma lost her first tooth!

This week Emma lost her first tooth!  She has waited a long time for this to happen. When Emma first noticed that her tooth was loose, Emma was very excited.  It only took a couple of days for it to really start to wiggle.  I told her that she still had a few more days before it would come out because it wasn't even hanging yet.  However, later that day Emma yelled that her tooth had fallen out.  I asked her what happened and she said she was playing with her legos and was trying to get some of them unstuck so she bit them and her tooth popped out!  She put the tooth under her pillow and the tooth fairy came for her very first visit.  I took her shopping at Target and she picked out some bubbles with her money.

Summer Beach Trip

We had a lot of fun at our annual trip to the beach.  I don't usually make it there more than once because it is so much work with 4 kids!!  We went with our friends Kim and Greg and the girls had a great time.  Lincoln enjoyed sleeping and getting held a lot.  I have to laugh at Kenna because she was not a fan of the sand.  She would sit in her chair and bend over to play in the sand.  Jacob and the girls had a lot of fun playing in the waves, looking for seashells and building sand castles.