Blueberry Ranch

Prince Charming took over taking the kids to the Blueberry Ranch since I was not feeling up to it.

They came home with 20 lbs. of fresh blueberries and 10 lbs. of frozen.  Thankfully everyone loves blueberries!!!!

At the Stable

Curly Bear at an early morning riding lesson.

Swim Lessons 2012

The older kids look forward to swim lessons all winter.  They love Ms. Grace!  They also love looking for the pet tortoise that roams around their yard!  Cuddlebug took lessons this summer too and at first was not excited about it but by the end couldn't wait to go.

No, their teacher is not yelling at them.  She is cheering for them.  Listening to swim lessons always makes me smile.  I love how encouraging she is. 

B.W. has a pretty mean freestyle.  Curly Bear's favorite stroke is the breaststroke.  Both kids don't care for the backstroke because they both are worried about hitting their heads on the wall.  Ms. Grace taught them how to count their strokes but they still would always be looking back.

Lovebird joined the lessons the second week.  She fell in love with Ms. Grace's daughter, Laura.

Cuddlebug made such an improvement over the two weeks.  The first day she was terrified.  By the end she was diving to the bottom to get toys with a little help from Ms. Grace.

More importantly she became much more comfortable in the water which means it's much easier to take all the kids to the pool by myself!  The kids might take a few more weeks later in the summer or early fall.

Curly Bear is 8!!!!!!

Curly Bear's birthday turned into five days of celebration.  She started the weekend off by having a friend stay the night.  It turned into an impromptu spa night and avocado masks were sported.  Now these two L.O.V.E. their avocado so there was some eating of the facial masks going on.  Which was fine since it was just an avocado mashed.  There was pizza for dinner, movies watched, swimming, and McDonalds for lunch the next day.  

Later that evening we grilled out and then had Curly Bear's Duffy Bear cake.  This was a cake that went together in a flash with no problems.  Which was good considering I was making and decorating it a few hours before we ate it!

Curly Bear's big present was a trip to the American Girl store.  The Girl of the Year is McKenna who is a gymnast so Curly Bear was pretty excited about seeing her. 

Cuddlebug also joined us.  She loved that she got to come on a big kid trip.

We had brunch at the cafe with the girls dolls.

Lanie thoroughly enjoyed herself.

So did Curly Bear!

After brunch we made our purchases.  Curly Bear decided to use her birthday money and some she had been saving and buy the McKenna doll.  Daddy and Mommy added in the fun bar and beam set.  It was a very fun trip.  We then headed to IKEA to pick up some dressers and then it was back home.  The next day we went to Uncle B's skating party.  It seems to be a new tradition that for your 30th birthday you rent the skate rink to feel young again.  Because Curly Bear and him share a birthday she got to take a ride in the big skate and have Uncle B push her around.  They almost ran over a few people with there crazy speed but much fun was had.