Jayme's baby shower

At the end of June, I co-hosted a baby shower with Jenny, Stephanie and Allyson for our good friend Jayme. Steph and I were on the "decorating committee" and came up with the theme 'Cute as a Button'. The shower turned out totally cute, and Jayme LOVED it! Here are a few pics of our decor.

Cute as a Button banner

Late night diaper game. Everyone wrote messages on newborn diapers to Jayme and Dave so when they are up changing baby boy in the middle of the night, the sayings will help encourage them or bring a smile to their faces.

Welcome Baby Henchon!

Drink bar!

Onesie door hanger

Table outside. Luckily Jenny has an awesome covered back porch, because it rained the entire morning! Each place setting had button cookies as a favor.

Me and the Mama to be!

Lukey is back!!!

After a long year (for me), the Injays came home to Indy for the summer. I missed Trish so much, and I know Ollie missed Luke. Of course they fell into playing and hanging out like no time at all had passed. This is one of the first afternoons after they arrived. Trish was out running errands, and Lukey came over for some backyard fun with Ollie. They always have such a good time together, and are such boys shooting each other with giant water guns!

The Injays were home for a bit over two months, and we spent as much time with them as we were able to before they headed back to Japan for the year. In exciting news, Mike got promoted into an awesome job for the next year and a half. Sadly, the promotion came with an extension in Japan, and our most favorite neighbors sold their house. Happily though, they will be back for good after this stint is over. In the mean time, we are going to look for two awesome houses next door to each other so we can be neighbors again as soon as they move back!

Elliot 5 month photo bomb

Mr. Elliot is 5 months old! On his 5 month birthday, he figured out how to roll from front to back, and is getting great at rolling both ways! He loves his little feet, and is still the most chill, smiley little guy. He doesn't cry very often, and totally goes with the flow. As you can tell from the following, he is pretty much able to pass out and nap whenever he needs to. He has never really gotten into a great nap routine since we are always on the go with Ollie and Evie. Here are some pictures from month #5!

My feet are delicious!

Passed out on the back tailgate of the car.

Snoozing in Mommy and Daddy's bed.

Working on sitting! He will prop sit for a few seconds. Such a cute, smiley boy!

Me and my buddy.

He likes to chew on things. He looks like a sad little puppy here!

Snoozing on Gramma. Someday he will nap in his bed...

For now we will all enjoy the snuggle bug!

And we are done with the baby swing! He was trying to escape in this picture. He prefers to be down on the floor so he can roll around.

And snoozing on Daddy. See, napping on the fly works!

Playing with his favorite sister.

Cheese! They love to help take care of him.

And hanging out with Bubba.

Swingset construction

At the beginning of summer, Marie decided that the kids needed more of a swingset in their backyard. The existing one consisted of a bar with a few swings on it. So poor Papa Jeff was in for a project. Gramma was out of town, so Jon, the kids and I drove up so Jon could help carry lumber and start putting things together. The kids had a great time helping as well!

Evie was a little sleepy and grumpy when we first got there...

Carrying the boards for the new platform/slide/climbing wall.

 Elliot and I hung out on the porch and watched.

Digging the holes for the posts.

Ollie got in on the action! He loved the digging tool.

Things took shape really quickly!

Mixing concrete for the posts.

Evie only got a little bit on her...

They were both a mess! Luckily, Gramma had some clothes waiting on stand-by for such occasions so we didn't have to drive home with two wet, concrete and dirt covered messes!

Touch a Truck round 1

For the last few summers, we have gone to Touch a Truck at Broad Ripple Park. They bring in every truck you can ever think of, and the kids can climb in, explore, pretend to drive, etc. This year we were planning on going after gymnastics. Daddy took the day off to go with us. Of course, this was the one day that gymnastics ran over, so by the time we got to Touch a Truck, we had about 30 minutes to run through before the trucks started taking off. The kiddos still had fun, and we went to Thr3e Wisemen after to make up for it.

Zamboni!

Watch out, coming through!

Elliot in his usual hangout. He spends a lot of time in the carrier; but luckily, he likes it much better than Ollie and Evie ever did!



That evening, one of Jon's friend Rich was in town with his daughter Annabel. She is 3 1/2 years old, and after getting over an initial bout of shyness, played great with the kids. She even pretended to be a dog with Evie in the 'Jump' dog show that Ollie was putting on. They had such a great time playing together!

Happy Father's Day!

Things were a little crazy with the big two on Father's Day, so we ended up putting them to bed early and I made a nice dinner for Jon. Elliot decided he wanted to stay up and party, so he hung out with his twin Daddy while I cooked. So cute! He really does look a lot like Jon. Happy Father's Day, honey, to one of the best!!

Backyard fun

This summer we have had a lot of water fun in the backyard! We fill up the water table, little pools, and have had several water balloon fights! Well, they don't so much throw the balloons at each other as squeeze them over their own heads or just throw them at the ground. They love them though! Here they are playing with Vivian, their partner in crime. She lives behind us, and often when we are in the backyard you will hear a little voice say "Oll-EEE, EEE-VEEE!" or my two will stand at the side of the garage and yell "Viv-EEE-EN"!!! They have a ton of fun together. She is almost exactly right in between them age wise (will be 4 in October), and is going to be in Evie's class this year.

Gymnastics!

The kiddos have been begging me for awhile to take gymnastics. Our neighbor and Evie's BFF Vivian has been taking classes at Rec Room Gym. I looked into it for the summer, and they had 2 4-week sessions. Perfect! If they hated it, we only had to go for 4 weeks. If they loved it, then we were all in. Of course they have absolutely loved it!

Here they are, ready for their first class!

Summer teachers Miss Kathy and Miss Kristy. All of the kids stretch together at the beginning of class. The teachers make stretching into a game, and the kids love it! They work on splits and back bends, and then are divided into two groups for class.

Evie swinging on the bars. Usually one group works on the bars/trampoline/balance beam while the other is doing a circuit where they do back walkovers, cartwheels, rings, somersaults, and head stands. So much fun!

Balance beam!

V-sit! After a few short weeks, they know pike jumps, straddle jumps, and tuck jumps as well!

Elliot is also very excited about gymnastics...

Bye tree!

This spring, we very sadly noticed that our big Tulip tree in the front yard did not have any leaves on it. We have had some major storms in the past few years, and didn't want to chance our poor dead tree falling on our house, or our neighbor's house, for that matter! So we called a few companies for estimates, and Treeo came out at the beginning of June to remove our tree.

They have done some work for us before, and are so great. The guy who did the bulk of the work was hilarious. We watched the entire time, because what could be more exciting to a 4 year old boy than bucket trucks, chain saws, and stump grinders? He would pose for us with his chain saw, and was smiling the entire time. When they were done taking the tree out, Oliver proceeded to play tree trimmer in the backyard for a long while!

Goodbye tree!

Of course the kiddos wore their head phones to block out the noise.

The branches are gone!! Now on to the trunk...

Watching intently!

This guy got in on the action too. Look at those cute little smooshy cheeks!!

 High fives all around!

The stump grinder. Cool stuff!

My own little tree trimmer with his tools.

Trimming the "tree" with his "chain saw".