Just Keep Swimming!

Our summer consisted of a ton of pool time. It was fabulous! Avery improved her strokes and skills a ton. She can now swim all the way across the deep end, can dive for rings in 6 feet deep water, and has just gotten much more comfortable. 

Camryn started out the summer wearing her life jacket all the time and was back to being afraid of getting her face wet. Now she can jump in and swim to the side, plus swim about 15 feet unassisted, and I think next summer when she's grown a few inches she will take off even more. Right now she's still a bit too short to touch the ground in the shallowest part of our pool. But that doesn't stop her from swimming happily without any floaties.

Lily wore her little puddle jumper life vest all summer but she is our little fish and has no fear of jumping into the deep end. I think we'll do some lessons for her next summer.

It has just been soooo nice to have a pool right near our house and we have loved it so much. 

Lily's Birthday

My baby turned three years old at the end of July! How did that happen? She is so grown up. 

We do family parties for our kids until they turn four and every other year after that. But we still always have a fun theme. Lily chose a Jessie the cowgirl theme (from Toy Story 2). 

A little cow print, red, and yellow and we were set! Here is a picture of the cake I made. It was chocolate inside with Oreo frosting and then I bought a tub of dark chocolate frosting I piped on to make it look like a cow print cake... :) 

Lily was pretty happy to wake up to that. 

We opened a few gifts in the morning, played with those, then headed to the zoo. It was a fabulous day. 79 degrees for the high, sunny, a nice breeze. We had fun. She looked so cute in this hat and her new "This Birthday girl wants cake!" shirt.

I told Lily I would either buy her something from the gift shop or we could ride the zoo train. She picked the train. I'm glad I got this pick of her excitement-

Because the train ride was l a m e. Like $8.00 for all four of us to ride and it was such a dinky short ride. It was our first and last time riding that train! :) 

Then we went home and opened a few more presents. Lily especially liked this Our Generation doll from her grandma and grandpa. She has been wanting one to be just like her sisters. This one is named Lily Anna. :) 

She got tons of fun toys and the girls played with them happily for days! 

When Merrick got home from work we had pizza and went swimming at our neighborhood pool. It was a pretty great day for a three year old!

Time to blow out the candles!

We love our three year old! She is so fun and spunky and she makes us laugh a lot. She is also very stubborn and did not want to potty train for the longest time. But a month before her birthday she started showing signs that she was really ready and so once our company left after Avery's baptism I put her in underwear and printed off this Daniel Tiger potty chart. She pretty much potty trained herself! When she needed to go, she told me and would run to the potty. We did it cold turkey and didn't do pull ups at night or anything and in the past 5-6 weeks she's only wet the bed three times I think. It has been great and it make her seem extra grown up to me too. Thank goodness for a break with no diaper changing for a few months before baby #4 comes! :) 

4th of July Festivities

I don't have a whole lot of pictures but we had a really fun 4th of July this year. The first event was our annual neighborhood 4th of July party. There was food, a live band, swimming at the pool, crafts, face painting, and a few fun games. Not to mention the fireworks show at the end of the evening. The weather was perfect and everything turned out great.

Then on the actual 4th of July when we had family in town we headed down to Franklin on the Fourth, a festival in our area. They advertised a nice kiddie area but the prices were pretty steep so we let the kids each pick one thing to do. Lily opted for the pony ride. Wasn't she cute?

Avery and Camryn chose this bungee jumping bouncing thing. It looked like jumping on a trampoline in a harness, not too exciting to me. But they had fun. And Avery did a backflip. 

 We bought some super long overpriced corn dogs and then we went home. It was hot and we cooled off at the neighborhood pool. The kids wore all the adults out and I fear that they will want ME to be throwing them up into the air and giving them piggyback rides every time we go to the pool now.

That night we went to see the fireworks in Franklin and our seats didn't end up being that great, but the girls had fun catching fireflies and enjoying the company of the family we had there. It was a great 4th and the weather couldn't have been better! Hope you all had a nice one too.

Baptism Day

Avery was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Saturday, July 5th. We were lucky to have some family join us here in Tennessee for the event - my parents, Merrick's mom, Merrick's sister, and her husband. Can you believe that the weather was PERFECT?! Like 80 degrees, perfectly sunny, not too humid? I was in heaven. Last year when the Wells came for the 4th it was a wet mess, the year before apparently it was a record breaking 102 degrees. Somehow we got it right this year! Woohoo!

Here is the Baptism Announcement I gave out to friends, family, and ward members.

Then a few days before the baptism we went down to the field in our neighborhood that has beautiful wildflowers. We took some pics. Here is the one I framed for her baptism day. 

And here are a few more I edited and liked. I'm not very good at editing. I just used an app on my phone and I took the pics with my phone, too, haha but I thought they were cute.

On her baptism day we took a few family pictures before the baptism.

Here's the Baptism girl.

And here she is with her daddy, who baptized her. 

Here is a copy of the program I made up for the Baptism.

She was baptized with a girl from another ward. It was a good amount of kids. Sometimes when there are 3 or more kids getting baptized it makes for a lengthy program.

Everything went very smoothly and we had a great time. We invited everyone over for lunch afterwards but there were only two families from the ward who came so we had a lot of extra food. I made pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans, cole slaw, sliced watermelon, chips, and fruit pizza for dessert. It was all very yummy.

Here's a pic Lindsey took with her husband and Avery after the baptism. So sweet.

Thanks to our family for coming out and supporting Avery on her special day!

Avery's 8th Birthday

Avery turned 8 this year and we decided to hold her birthday party on the Friday before her birthday. After Camryn's Frozen Party I was so worn out from the party that I felt like we didn't have that fun of a day besides the party so I wanted Avery's birthday to be a nice low key day. Here's the birthday girl. Did you notice she chopped her hair? Apparently it's the cool thing to do for a 7 and 8 year old girl.

We had swimming lessons in the morning and then stayed late to do some extra swimming in the pool, then we headed to the zoo. Avery loves meerkats so they are always fun to check out.

Do you get to pet kangaroos at your zoo? Well, we do. It's awesome. One of my favorite parts of our zoo.

After the zoo we met up with Dad for dinner at an Asian restaurant. Avery had been requesting sushi on her birthday. She's her father's daughter that's for sure! Crazy girl. 

After making all those cupcakes for her party a few days earlier, I wasn't about to make her another cake for her real birthday. But Merrick and Avery decided we needed something so we stopped at Ivey's Cupcakes after dinner and picked up 6 mini cupcakes. They were really, really yummy and we each got to pick our own flavor. Yum!

Avery had a great day and we can't believe we have an 8 year old now!