Vacation!!! Part 1

This vacation is going to take a few posts, hehe :) It was a super fun 3 weeks and even though there were many things that I have no pictures from, I still have tons of pictures! Please excuse my nonsensical rambling today- I have the WORST headache that just will NOT go away...

Anyway, back to vacation...

The girls love being spoiled while we are home, imagine that ;) 

Nanny got some really cool paints last time we were there and they continued to be Addison's favorite throughout this trip too. 

Grammy is great about coming over while we are home and visiting and playing with the girls :)

Carting them around non-stop for two weeks is too much so we really appreciate her coming to us!

Papa bought Addison her very first bike a while back to keep at "Texas" and

Kaitlyn has become quite jealous so we were all in agreement that Kaitlyn needed one too :)

Yay Papa for coming to the rescue! This trike is supposed to last through age 5 so

we should get tons of use out of it!

While we were home, Wendy and the girls came down to visit and then,

as it turned out, Richard got to come too! Avery and Olivia have struck up

a great friendship with the boys so we had them come over too :) 

Addison LOVES playing with all the big kids and they were very sweet

and tried to include her in their games.

In this picture Zane was playing iPhone or DSi games with her and generally just being SUPER sweet.

We turned around and she had her arm around him and was leaning on his shoulder :))

I just love all the memories they get to make on our trips home!!

That same day it had been raining off and on all day (yay!!) and when I looked out the window,

there was a gorgeous double rainbow that stretched all the way across the sky.

Everyone made fun of me because of this video but it was an amazing sight nonetheless ;)

More to come...

The Fountains and Build a Bear

The day before the day before vacation I took the girls to the Eastern Shore Center Fountains to play. They, especially Kaitlyn, love to run and play and get soaked :) Some of our best friends here were closing on their house that day so I volunteered to take their four little girls with me... it went great, though I must say I can't remember the last time I counted to six that many times in one morning! haha

Their girls are great and are a great help with my girls so it never feels like any trouble.

I didn't manage to get any good pictures of the Debruin girls though.

 I guess I was too busy counting to six (?) hehe ;)

Kaitlyn is non stop action while we are there. She loves it!

One of her old cry room buddies from Mars Hill happened

 to be there so she even had a friend her size!

AND Addison's BFF Breanna came to join us!

Addison is always SUPER excited anytime we get to see her :)

Just so happens I love hanging out with her Mommy so it works out nicely!

Breanna really brings out the silly side of Addison which is great!!

Thankfully we had two big buckets so Addison could be just like Breanna.

They were quite pleased with themselves :)

Addison had been saving up her money for quite a while and with a coupon,

had enough to get a new animal from Build a Bear!

To make it even better, Breanna came along with us!

It was a fun day to say the least :)

A big thanks to Mrs Anna and the Debruin girls for occupying Kaitlyn

in Build a Bear and joining us on such a fun day!!

I love this picture of them, so cute!!

The Time Between Vacations

This has been a great summer so far!! We have spent about 5 weeks on vacation out of the 9ish weeks of summer to date :) Tons of fun and many, many great memories being made. I blogged about our first vacation here. When we came back to Alabama, it was only for about 3 weeks. Addison was super sick before we left Texas and for a few days after we got back. Add that to unpacking (which usually takes me a week to really be completely back into routine) and Kaitlyn had a well check and... well I can't remember but those weeks FLEW by. Here are some of the fun things we squeezed in during that time:

 We spent some time out in the backyard while the weather was still nice...

Kaitlyn loves being outside 

 She also loves danger, therefore she loves the big slide on our playground!

I love this picture of her. It cracks me up...

shopper in training! 

We celebrated Memorial Day with friends and had a great time as always. 

The girls and I went to a Ladies Craft Day hosted by Friends of Internationals.

We saw some friends that we had met at the last big event and met some new ones too.

I was SO PROUD of Addison that day. She brought her sunglasses in and at some point she set them down. Later, a little girl was wearing them and Addison came to me very sad wanting them back. I told her to wait and she could get them if the little girl set them down but to remember that the other little girl probably didn't have any sunglasses at all. Addison was VERY generous and was excited to be able to share- I mean, how can little girls survive without sunglasses?!?! hehe

That same day Mrs Mary gave Addison some stickers and with a little encouragement from Mommy she walked around saying hi to all the kids and giving them stickers. This type of thing is WAY out of her comfort zone so I was incredible proud of her great attitude.

After lots of visiting time, craft time finally arrived. (Working on an International schedule means most things run verrrryyy late ;)

Addison painted her pot next to this beautiful little girl and was oozing sweetness as she chatted away explaining how to paint and that they could share paint and..... all while oblivious to the fact that the other little girl spoke little to no English. Innocence is bliss :)

Saturdays make for fun times with Daddy... 

and sweet snuggles...

 especially for a certain little Daddy's girl ;)

We also discovered that Kaitlyn is now old enough to really enjoy PlayDough

without eating it and otherwise making a huge mess, yay! 

What would Summer be without pool time and popsicles??

My little helper is earning her commission a little more all the time! 

I had it in my head one day that I would just wipe down the cabinets "real quick". 

Sweet Addison wanted to help and thereby earn some $$ 

Someday she won't be quite so satisfied with a few coins anymore :/

Thank you for bearing with me through such a long post!

SOOO far behind!

Oh my goodness, I am so far behind with this silly blog!
It has been a crazy busy month, in the best way of course, and I just had to let some things slide.
To top it all off, I accidentally set the date on my camera off a year (who knew 2010 was over already??) and when I imported my pictures into iPhoto they, obviously, imported with the wrong date. No big deal, I thought. I changed the date and expected the events to change accordingly. No such luck. I can NOT figure out how to fix it so atleast half of my summer pictures are up in the middle of the 2010 pictures. This is not only driving me insane but also making it very difficult to pick pictures for blog posts. URG. Anyone know how to fix this??
I will try and catch up soon, pictures in order or not ;)