Family sleepover

Since we were on the count down for Ben's departure the kids made a sort of bucket list of stuff they wanted to do with "daddy" before he left. One of them was a family sleep over in the living room. So we pulled the top mattress off of our bed, plus made a few extra on the couch.
While working at Bed, Bath and Beyond Ben came across a recipe on how to make a great banana split. So we decided to make it for the treat at the sleep over.

We also rented three kids movies to watch while
we ate some really good "movie" popcorn.

This is how they turned out.
I'd have to say that this is one great banana split!

We all really enjoyed them...

It sure was a great night and I am so glad we had the
opportunity to do this with the kids before Ben left.

Happy birthday Emry

I know that this happened a while ago but I still want to post this.
Our sweet (not so little) Emry turn 11 last month.
Talk about time flying by.
Chelsey had another great birthday party for him over at my mom house.

We did presents.

Had cake.

And even did a pinata.
After they broke it open and collected all the candy,
we had a great canned string fight.
We were covered in it and it was a blast.

This is the party walking back over to my moms house
once we finished with the pinata across the street at the park.

Then we got back to the other fun.

Chelsey rented two bounce houses for us to play on.

One was this water slide that everyone
took turns going down.

Bayleigh dropped her lollipop and was
not at all pleased with the dirty covering it!

The other one was this big bounce house.

Happy birthday Emry, you truly are an amazing kid.
I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

Our fun camp out in Grandma Ami and Grandpa Duane's backyard.

A few weekends back we went over to my
dad's house to have a sleep over in the backyard.
Since we have so many little kids this had been one of the best
ways for us to enjoy camping. Ami set the whole
yard up for the event. There were tents,
sleeping bags and even a place for a fire.

My dad barbecued hot dogs and steak. There was a game of badminton going off and on and Grandpa even had a t.v. out so the boys could play video games. As the night went on we did a bit of roasting marshmallows.

We hung out by the fire,
enjoying a nice evening outside.

The kids all had so much fun hanging out with their Grandparents.

Bayleigh loved being outside the entire time.
She is our nature girl for sure.

Sleeping went really good during the night. All the kids slept in two tents and Ben, Ami and I slept under the stars. Grandpa got sent in the house, Blake said he snores way to loud.

We all ate donuts for breakfast
and hung out enjoying a nice cool morning.

After we were all finished we got ready to head over to the pool at my dads elks club.

We swam there for over an hour. It was a great pool and we were the only people there. The pool was 8 feet deep and we all had a blast swimming.

Before we left we had one last snack by the pool.
It sure was a nice camp-out.
Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for letting us all come over.

Happy 3rd Brithday Bella

(So I know I am a bit behind in the blogging world so here is my attempt to catch up)
We Celebrated Bella's 3rd birthday in June. She wanted to go skating for her party, we did it a few days before her actual birthday so Auntie Ashley could be included in the festivities. We all met up at Roller King for a afternoon full of skating.
Camey also came and brought her twins that she watches.
We were so excited to meet Jordan and Jasmine...
( I promise Bella has two shoes, even though one seems to be missing in this picture).

We were so happy Ashley was able to be apart of Bella's skating party. Even though Ashley didn't skate, it worked out great cause Bella decided that she wasn't going to actually skate either, once we were all there with our skates on.

However, I made her keep her skates on and she just rolled around the skating rink. She was not a big fan of anyone trying to get her out on the hardwood floor. I did take her out once just to show her how fun it really was. Emry joined us half way around and after crying the entire way she looked up at him and said "That was not fun at all."

Grandma Joy and Brooklyn were best buds skating.
They had so much fun out there!

Dallas was a stud out on the floor in his roller blades.

Blake did a great job getting around the floor also.
He was so brave having not been skating in over a year.

Bayleigh on the other hand wanted
NOTHING to do with the skating floor...

I love this boy so much.

It sure was a great day and we all had a blast.
Even though Bella didn't end up skating she sure had a great time.
Little Bayleigh was happiest with her cup of ice water!