Pirate's Cove and more

Today we went to Pirate's Cove at Pohick Bay Regional Park. This is the first year they had "Pirate's Cove" and we had been meaning to get there all summer. We finally made it on the last weekend. Basically, it's a couple of slides and some water spray things in the middle of a huge pool, a sand area with buried treasure, and lots of pirate themed decorations.









On the way home we stopped by our favorite concrete maker, Tubby's! Yum! (These Tubby's pics are dedicated to the Farmers.)





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Here is Anna's 5 month growth picture.





And one of Anna and Erin. Notice the contrast in eye color and skin tone between them.



See all the August pics here.

Erin's Co-Birthday Friends

Erin was born on August 19 between two of our friends' kids. Their moms have been blogging (The Farmer Files and The Eekhoff's Plain Life) about their birthdays and put up a couple of pics from back in the day. I searched our picture archive and came up with a couple of pics as well.


L to R: Farmer, Melody, Eekhoff

This was taken a month before the kids were due.



L to R: Eekhoff, Farmer, Erin

This was taken at 7 1/2 months.

Happy 4th Birthday to all the kiddos!!

The Party

Erin requested a princess party this year. So we obliged.


Most of the kids in front of the castle.

Melody created a huge castle on our entertainment center and we had the kids create crowns. We also had a pinata and played pin the kiss/crown on the frog. (We figured the boys might not want to "kiss" the frog. We were wrong!)

Instead of everyone bringing gifts for Erin (she has enough stuff as it is), we decided to have a Book Ball. Each child brought a new, wrapped book and then played a game to distribute a gift to each one. Everyone seemed to enjoy getting a new book. At first Erin wasn't too keen on not getting gifts from everyone, but she got presents from family and that seemed to satisfy her.


Erin gets her book read to her by Laura.


Clockwise: Erin, Andrew, Taidou, Laura, Kaela, Nico, and Michaelah

Everyone had fun and the weather cooperated so it wasn't too hot.

See all the pics HERE.


The princess cake.

Four Years Old

Erin celebrated her 4th birthday on Tuesday. At her request, we had chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes, and cooked broccoli. (What kid requests broccoli?!?)



We are having a princess/prince party on Saturday, so we'll have more pics coming.

Michigan and August Pics

We had a good time in Michigan earlier this month. Even with two 7-hour drives to get there and one 14-hour drive to get back, we can say we had a lot of fun. Erin did great on the drives with only one meltdown. Anna did pretty well also. In fact she did better on those drives than she did on some of the shorter ones up north.



We had good visits with Melody's family. We visited the farm and spent some time with Grandma E. at the nursing home. Most of our time was spent at Aunt Esther's cottage on Douglas Lake. It was pretty cool even for Michigan (upper 60's some days, with a breeze). But Erin had fun swimming in the lake with her 2nd cousins.



We had a mini celebration of Erin's 4th birthday in Michigan as well. She had a lot of fun and got some good gifts.



After Michigan, Melody and Anna went off to a weekend with some college girlfriends and Tim and Erin went to his parents' place and had fun at Hershey Park with his mom and sister's work picnic.



We finally made it home 12 days after we left.

See lots of pictures HERE.

Anna's 4 Month Stats

Weight: 15 lb 4 oz - 90th percentile
Height: 24.75 in. - 75th percentile

Even More July Pictures

See them all here.