i lied

So, I lied.

I did not get around to editing pictures and posting them soon.

To be honest, I still haven’t.  I now have over 500 pictures from the last month alone to figure out what to do with.

I’ve been too busy chasing my girls, coming up with fun projects and outings, settling disputes, reading chapter books together with my girls, riding horses, sailing on a boat, going to the park, school shopping, researching and planning new places to take the girls, doing laundry, taking all three girls to swimming lessons, figuring out new hair styles to try on Kait and Pendo, hosting a little shin dig for Rose’s 5th birthday, hosting several play dates with school friends, exploring G’s new-to-him/make-his-childhood-dream-come-true Jeep Wrangler, driving it with the top off, and not editing pictures or blogging and enjoying every minute of it.

In fact, I’m enjoying it so much that I’m seriously thinking of not feeling guilty about not it.  I’m just too busy living life and enjoying my family to have much energy left to blog at the end of the day when everyone is finally in bed and I’m “off duty”.  Not to mention I’m about to start my next grad class in a few days, and I know my perfectionistic/obsessive desire to do well in school.  I doubt I’ll be posting much for awhile.  We’ll see how things go when all of us are back in school.

I have discovered and am enjoying Instagram for those of you who have a smartphone.  I’ve started posting more often there if you want to follow me.  I’m saraaustin123 on Instagram.  I usually tweet the pics, too, if you’d rather look for me on Twitter.  I think my user name is sara_austin on Twitter.

For now, I hope to edit a few pictures from Rose’s 5th birthday and post a couple soon for the grandparents.  Or I might not post anything for a long time.  I’m not committing to anything.  🙂

sand dunes

We just returned from our annual trip to Lake Michigan, but this year was even more fun-filled.  Our closest friends from college joined us for the week.  They have three girls, too, and all of our little ladies had an amazing time playing together.

I’m going to try to post a few pictures over the next several days to commemorate all of our fun, and I’m starting with the afternoon at the dunes.

Colleen wanted her girls to experience some good ol’ Michigan sand dunes since those don’t really exist where they are from.  We had never been to Warren Dunes State Park even though it’s not far from Silver Beach, so we packed up our two mini-vans and headed to the dunes.  It was the perfect, not-too-hot day to explore, and we had SO much fun!

Right before the first ascent

This is harder than it looks.

We made it to the top!  Now for the best part . . . .

running down!!!

After a quick lunch, we were ready to head back into the dunes.  We also decided to add a little geocaching to the afternoon which led us deeper into the dunes.  We never did find that particular treasure (it appeared to be buried in some thick, most likely poison-ivy filled woods), but we enjoyed exploring the dunes and certainly earned the ice cream cones that we enjoyed later that evening.

glamour girls

This is what happens when your big sister lets you play with her Build-a-Bear’s glasses.

P.S.  Those poor glasses didn’t have a chance.

They lasted all of about one hour before breaking.  It was fun while it lasted, though.

jeni’s

Within the last year, G has become a huge fan of crafting specialty home made ice creams.  It all began when we splurged on a home made ice cream machine at the beginning of last summer.  He’s made allllll kinds of amazingly delicious ice cream.  Seriously.  They are AMAZING.  He’s done quite a bit of research on it, and that research led him to Jeni’s.

When we were in Columbus visiting some of our best buds, all 10 of us headed over to one of Jeni’s stores to get the full experience.

I don’t know who was more excited, G or the girls.

The flavors beckoned to us from a brightly colored menu.  Many of the flavors are the same ones G has made by following the recipes in Jeni’s book.

We were not disappointed.

Many napkins and many smiles later, we headed home with bellies full of delightful ice cream.  Hope we can find our way back to Jeni’s again sometime when we head back to Columbus.

who says?

Who says you have to go the lake or beach to play in the sand?

We took some sand from our sandbox, mixed in a little water, and made some sand sculptures.

Just practicing for when we go to Lake Michigan with the girls.

s’more, please

What’s summer without s’mores?

A few days ago we invited some of our friends to come over to enjoy some of these summery, ooey-gooey treats.

Here’s all the girls together.

I love how Baby B looks as if she’s asking for some of that goodness.

And here’s Pendo being sweet and tender with Baby B.  Sweet girls.

fun at the lake

We traveled across the state for a family reunion early in July.  It had been a couple of years since we’d seen some of our extended family, and we had a nice time catching up with them.  The highlight for us was the afternoon we spent on a lake.   Some close family friends have a house on a lake and were kind enough to share it with all of us one afternoon.  The girls immensely enjoyed playing in the sand and the water, but their favorite part was tubing.

I like this picture because it looks like G has bunny ears.  🙂

Both G and Grandpa are avid water skiers, and they’ve been working on Kait to see if she was ready to give it a try.  She agreed (after being bribed with a milkshake) to try it out for the first time.  Grandpa and Daddy gave her some pointers and she dug deep to find the courage to try it.

It didn’t take long to get her up on those skis!

 

She’s excited to try again sometime soon.

 Way to go, Kait!!

family weekend

We had a fun-filled full house last weekend.

Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Mel and Nyanya (other grandma) were with us most of the weekend to celebrate two big events.  We had a party for Pendo on Saturday.  She was soooo excited about her Tangled party,

and she fully enjoyed opening her presents.

 It was really special to have so many family members with us this year.

 On Pendo’s actual birthday I took the opportunity to take a few pictures of her.  This girl is a hoot.  She loves to make silly faces,

and one of her favorite things to do in the whole world right now is to dig in any dirt or sand, usually with her hands but sometimes with a stick.  I’m glad she doesn’t mind getting dirty.

 The other big event we celebrated was Kait’s baptism.  She was ready to take the next step in her faith journey, and we were all blessed to be part of that celebration service.  I’m not going to post any pictures of that special event, though we have many.  As Kait gets older, I’m very conscience of trying to respect her privacy and opinions about what she would and would not like me to post on our family blog.  I’ll just say that being part of her step of faith was a very emotional and moving experience, and we are so thankful she has a heart for walking with God.

 It was such a nice weekend and now we are busy preparing for our annual family trip to the lake.   It’s going to be better than I ever.  Well, it’s got to be better than last year when we all came down with the stomach flu.

a big day!

Today we celebrate  very special day at our house.

Pendo turns four years old!!

I’ll write more about that soon when I have time to edit some pictures, but G and I began the celebrations early.

For quite some time (probably almost 8 months), we’ve been counting down to Pendo’s 4th birthday because that’s when we planned to switch the girls’ car seats.  Yes, Rose has been old enough to move to a booster seat for almost a year, but we decided (for several reasons) to switch both little ladies to boosters when Pendo turned four.

Last night we took one last drive using the hard to buckle harness car seats

and we took the littles to WalMart to select their new booster seats.  They were so cute.  They both wanted to carry them through the store to the cashier, but the boxes were a bit heavy and bulky for them to make it the whole way.

After we arrived home, we took the old car seats out of the car and put the new ones in.  The girls did a practice run by sitting in them and buckling themselves in.

Today we tried them out on the way to swimming lessons and everything went perfectly.  It’s much easier to get them in and out of the car and with a little more practice we will likely only have ourselves to buckle in the car.  It’s been nine years since I’ve only had to worry about buckling myself.  I think I’m going to like it.

A lot.  A whole lot.

Happy birthday sweet Pendaroo!  We love you SO much and love watching you grow and change into a girl who is tenderhearted and kind to others.  You add so much spice to our lives, and we are forever thankful that you are an Austin.

ain’t no tree high enough