New Niece

Some of the biggest news that came this month was the birth of Kevin's new little niece, Claire! She came a little earlier than expected, but we are glad to welcome her. Don't know when we'll get to go down and see her in person, so all my pics will be from family members of course.. I stole this one right off of my SIL's blog!! :) But she is a cutie and we're thankful to welcome her into our crazy family!! Click here to go to my SIL's blog to see more pics... some great close ups and family pics too.

August Recap

BLINK! And summer is about over! I can't believe I let all this time go by since blogging last. I guess it's mostly because I've been working full time all summer and haven't been much in the blogging mood. So, now I'm trying to catch up.... keep reading below for July and June's recaps as well.

For whatever reason, Stone loves to be upside down. So, whenever Kevin and I get tired of holding him upside down, he finds a way to do it himself....

A big purchase we made at the end of July...a new used car.. our other one was not long from dying, so we shopped around and ended up with a H*onda C*ivic... we love it.. I love to drive it, but it's mainly for Kevin, since it was his car that was about to die and he drives 45 minutes to work every day, so he lets me enjoy it on the weekends (it's a manual, which I miss driving!!)

This is a picture of all the things Stone made in the art camp that he just finished this week.. the theme was "things that go vroom" so they made a firetruck, boat, rocket ship (his fav) and a car.

July Recap

July 4th weekend was spent with my parents in WV. We had a great time hanging with my family and then left Stone there for an entire week for "camp grandma's" with his cousin Nate. They had a blast, even though he was a bit homesick at night, specifically wanting me, but during the day, he did great. I think I did worse than he did, being away for him for so long!! But, we both made it and I am glad for the time they got to spend together.


Sitting on the front porch swing with Ma-Ma and Pa-Pa and then me...


We spent the actual July 4th at my uncle's house about an hour from my parent's house... here's stone and Pa-Pa matching....

Riding a trike for a first time, with a little help from dad...
Cousin Hailey.....
and cousin Nate

Random pics from the month... stone has really gotten into "building construction" things as he calls is.. here they are in their safety glasses... k's been taking him to l*owes for those "build and grow" sessions they have for kids... stone loves it.. particularly getting to paint whatever he builds.
Very cool astronaut helmet Aunt Gini found for Stone... he loves it!

Stone in his "phone booth" ha ha ha.. it took us a while to figure out how he even know what a real phone booth was, since hello, you hardly ever see those anymore. We finally discovered that he had seen one on a video of "richard scary" which are fun cartoons... one of the characters goes into a phone booth to call someone, so stone, being creative as he is, turned an empty CD shelf holder into his own personal phone booth!!
Towards the end of July, my good friend Jen (whom I grew up with) came for a short visit.. a stop-over on their way to the beach. They spent the night with us (the picture directly below shows them in their p.js.)... he looks so happy because he's sitting between 2 sweet, beautiful girls!
The next day, it so happened that at my work, we had gotten inflatable water slides for our camp kids. So, Jen and her girls got to enjoy that with us. This first picture is of Stone sliding down with one of our older campers.. I couldn't get him to go down by himself at first, so Paige helped!




July ended with a bit of a scare though... it turned out that my dad needed to have by-pass surgery.. this was the 2nd time for him to have this done (the first being done 15 years ago) so the risks were high. So, we were thankful and felt blessed that he came through with flying colors and is recooperating quite well.

June Recap

June flew by, and right after Father's Day, Stone had a week of "art camp" through an organization that runs art camp all summer long and so happened to have one for 3-5 year olds. It was a half-day camp and this week's theme was "pirates." Here's a couple of pictures of all the piraty things he made. The following week, he went again, but had cousin M to join him for a "Backyardigan's" camp. They had a blast getting to go to camp together! During that week of shared camp, we celebrated cousin W's 1st birthday and M's 4th birthday.. so much fun! I made the "dog" cake below (although it looked a little more like a bear than a dog) and they had fun opening presents. We were thankful to have fun with our cousins this week!