June!

June! Vacations and swimming and worms and more :)

We finished up our trip to Omaha with a day at the zoo. Fun times! Here's Hannah and Nora on the carousel.

Lauren holding a giant worm that she found in the garage. It really comes in handy to have a kid who likes to hold worms and remove them from the garage :) This one was more the size of a small snake.

Hannah with her masterpiece baking creation--Cream Puffs :) I let each of them pick out one thing from a cookbook to make and she chose these. She did a great job! Lauren chose a gingerbread house with about 300 ingredients...I convinced her that we could make gingerbread cookies instead.

Lauren in front of the field in back of our house...soon to be a neighborhood.

Hannah in front of the field behind our house. Last pictures of the view before the bulldozers came!

Just another Summer morning in pjs :)

Pool time!

Pool time!

Greg was away in Chicago part of June, so this is a selfie of the three of us..along with Lauren's worms of the day in the Shakespeare's cup.  She insisted that they were in the picture.

Little girl in a big chair at the dentist :) She did great.

Washing her car.

More selfies :)

Lauren had her first day camp this summer. She went to Martha LaFite Nature Center's Bug Camp. She loved it! She got to go on little hikes, play in the creek, and learn about nature. She was the only little girl, but that didn't bother her at all. She loved learning and exploring. Proud of my little naturalist/entemologist :)

Hannah at Martha Lafite

In June, we ventured on a long road trip to Gulf Shores, AL. It was a great trip! It was about a 15 hour drive, but overall everyone did great. Here's a picture of the girls at the halfway point of the journey.

We arrived in Gulf Shores only to realize that there was a 2 hour wait for the ferry. Thankfully, Aunt Geni and Uncle Dave had the idea for the girls and I to ride the ferry as pedestrians (no wait) and Greg waited with the car (2 hours of silence following a 15 hour road trip...he didn't complain!). It worked out great. Here they are right before we got on the ferry.

On the ferry! It was a fun boat ride and we even saw dolphins from the ferry! No pictures of dolphins...I was holding Lauren up so she could see. We were all really excited to see them though!

Loving the beach!

Exploring the beach for the first time.

Shells :)

Deep in concentration while they play Blokus :)

Aunt Carla's milkshakes are yummy!

Hanging out at the pool. Our beach house had access to a pool and it was a good break from the beach. Lauren actually preferred the pool most of the time.

The pink one was our house--an awesome house that fit our huge group well!

Taking a break for a Sprite. Uncle Dave brought down a bunch of sodas for the kids (and adults) and Lauren loved her Sprite :)

Waves on little toes

Shoulder rides on the beach :)

Some of the best fun of the trip was just hanging out with the cousins in the beach house. Games, giggles, movies, junk food, and fun times.

This is a picture of what most of the kiddos were doing most of the time--riding waves, boogie boarding, swimming out in the ocean. They couldn't get enough of that boogie boarding!

Surfin' girl!

There was plenty of playing in the sand too :)

Snow cones together after a trip to the souvenir shop!

A beautiful sunrise on our last morning.

We stopped at the Memphis Zoo on the way home, and it was really great! We saw pandas!

At the zoo!

She was the only one of us that ran through "Old Faithful" at the zoo. Really neat that they had a giant splash playground. It was a HOT day.

It was a great vacation :)