I seriously cannot believe it has been this long since I have blogged.  I have so many things that I have wanted to post, but ain’t nobody got time for that!

I LOVE SUMMER!

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE summer!

I love the fun.  I love the lack of any kind of schedule.  I love swimming pools.  I love lunch with friends.  I love lying around in pjs until 10, and not worrying about needing to run anyone anywhere.  I love summer nights.  I love running at 8:30 pm, and still having enough light.  I love the heat.  Oh, yes I do.  I even love the East Texas heat.  I would take heat over cold any day of the week!

I love having these wild maniacs home with me.  Not that they are always nice or fun to be around, but they could say the same about me.  But I would still rather them be home playing than at school.

The tough thing is bedtime.  AnnaLeigh says almost every night, “But I can’t go to bed!  It’s the middle of the day!”  And then she comes out of her room 400 times until it is no longer the “middle of the day” and it is officially the “middle of the night!”  We have tried and tried to explain that in the summer time, it stays light longer and she has to go to bed when she can still see a little light.  However, come October, I will be happy to put her in bed at 6, if she is judging bedtime by when the sun goes down.  Two can play this game!

Soooo, what have we been doing?  I know you are dying to know.  Preston didn’t get out of school until June 6, which is a SIN as far as I’m concerned!  Labor Day to Memorial Day!  Why is that so hard to get?  Labor Day to Memorial Day!  I vote we bring that back!!!

Well, P got out of school and then we spent the next week with hand, foot, and mouth...again! :(  It was a fun start to the summer, and we did nothing that week but hang at the house.

So here are some pics of us hanging at the house.  Exciting!

Sweet Georgia scoots around our bathroom in the morning and she often puts this headband on her head.  I just love this picture because it shows my little monkey with her two favorite things…her pacifier (her “peep”) and her blanket.  She is my first paci baby, and her teeth are such bad paci teeth!  I’ll worry about it later.  Fourth child!

My beautiful girls were playing in the den as P was resting on the couch, watching The Rookie.

LK and AnnaLeigh were smiling in the pic above, but G wasn’t.  I said, “Smile, Georgia!” and this is the face I got!  Oh how I love her!

Lilly Katherine is always begging to have a garden.  She has a little tomato plant this year, and she loves it!  She is so proud of the puny little plant.  We have been watching the tomatoes turn from flowers to green tomatoes to red tomatoes.  She was PUMPED when she got to pick and eat this little jewel!

My little nugget loves to make faces.  She copies anything I do.

We are such an exciting bunch!  We did nothing for a week.

Almost nothing.  Brad and I did celebrate out 13 year anniversary.  I love this cute man!

The next week P had baseball camp.  I seriously can’t get over how big he looks in this picture!  He looks like a giant!  Like he’s all “growed up!”

I had my four maniacs and 2 of my sister’s maniacs (Truett and Caleb).

While P was at baseball camp, the girls and I picked blueberries one day.  AnnaLeigh had a blast, can you tell?  That is her face/attitude of choice lately.

This little monkey wanted us to give her little balls (blueberries) to eat.  She loved to hold them, bite them, squish them in her fingers, and rub them on her outfit.  She did not like to eat them!  Stinker!

In case you don’t know, Monday night is family night at Carino’s, and the family platters are half off.  It is by far the best deal around!   Our whole family can eat for about $17 plus tip.  It’s hard for me to cook anything for less than that.  Therefore, we eat Carino’s on Monday a LOT!  This time, my sister’s family and my parents joined us.  The kids always have so much fun together.

Last Saturday, my sister (who has a baby just 6 days older than Georgia…remember this?) had another baby!

First of all, let me tell you that she was due Friday, June 21.

On Saturday, June 22, she had been timing contractions for a long time.  She and Alan finally went to the hospital.  They told her she was at a 3-4.  It was her FOURTH child.  She was passed her due date, and they SENT HER HOME!

She was home for about 2 hours when she realized she needed to get back to the hospital…and QUICK!  She got there, Alan dropped her off at the door, she was taken to the room, and she was at a NINE!  From the time she got to the hospital to the time her sweet  baby was born was 45 minutes!  Now, that would be very typical of my life, but my sister and Alan are Type-A planners!  This was crazy stressful for them!

However, the fruit of her labor (literally) was a precious 7 pound, 1 ounce baby BOY!

Meet David Montgomery.

And this is the happy little family!  I never dreamed my sister would be the boy mom and I would be the girl mom.  She now has 3 precious boys, Caleb (5), Truett (4), and David, and beautiful Laurabeth (17 months).

Oh my goodness, I love him!  I am so excited about spoiling this little baby boy!  How could you not want to spoil that precious face?

This is going to be David’s life, so he better get used to the chaos!

This week, I got to take my 4 people and Caleb and Truett to the zoo, so Ash could hang with her littles.  We really had a great time, and the kids did really well…her kids did really well.  Two of my maniacs had a few “moments” but that’s life with 4 kids!

We put Georgia’s hair in piggies for the first time, and she was so proud!

Then we went to the zoo.

Picture before we went in…

Picture about 45 minutes into our zoo trip.  Recognize that face?  Yep, there’s a glimpse of the “moments” to which I was referring.

As rotten as that big boy is, times like this melt my heart.  He loves his baby sister!

I mean, look at that hair!  I just want to freeze time!

Snow-cones make everyone happy!

Especially this stinker!

And this is the picture we took right before we saw the mountain lions mating!  Or playing piggy back…  It was the most horrible noise I’ve ever heard.  They were growling so loudly and so constantly.  I couldn’t pull these kids away and all 5 big kids were making the same loud growling noise from the lion cage, through the zoo, and all the way to the car.  They thought it was hilarious!

Whew!  That was quite a post!  I promise to keep up with life a little better.

Yeah right!

Have a fabulous weekend!

-kate

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