Backyard Bugs

 Chloe is the great moth catcher, but I have stopped trying to grab a camera for every bug these two find every single day.  Evan really loves the stinkbugs that are everywhere this summer, but they are just kind of ugly in my opinion.


However, last night's katydid was too cool not to photograph.  Evan spent most of the time being the handler as they both inspected it from head to toe.  Chloe had a turn too, but my camera battery died.

Sparkly 6 (part 2)

Birthday morning.... such excitement for presents!!  This year a package from Gramma was added to the fun.  After breakfast we went over to visit Granny and Grandpa for a birthday celebration in the morning and then Aunt Bryce came bearing gifts in the afternoon. 

Chloe weighs 37 pounds and is 44-1/4" tall -- that's 1-1/2" taller than Evan was at six.  (She was over the moon with that announcement!)  She is wearing size 10 shoes and size 5 clothes.

Evan was feeling a bit jealous today, as all the attention (for an entire day) was showered on his sister.  It was alleviated greatly by Chloe's generosity.  She shared so many of her gifts with him, giving him portions of whatever she had lots of.  So sweet.

It was the year of glitter and all things sparkling for Chloe.  She loved every single gift: a wooden chess set, Breyer horse books, a box full of sparkly gems that made her eyes bug out, a sparkly headband, sparkly nail polish, a sparkly notepad, gel pens, bright colored markers (her favorite colors), paint by numbers set, and lots of velvety art color pages. 

Thanks to everyone who loves our precious little girl so much and enriches her life in so many ways!! 

Sparkly 6

Those are not gang signs she's showing but rather six pretty sparkly painted fingernails.
Her first nail polish :-)

Well, I'm having issues with photobucket again this afternoon, so the rest of her birthday pictures will have to wait.... 

Six sparkly things about Chloe:

1 -- her eyes
2 -- her clothes
3 -- her voice when she's not mad
4 -- her hair in the sunshine
5 -- her church shoes
6 -- her mud shoes

Okay, that was just filler... I'll have a real post as soon as the pictures are available.

A Morning at the Beach

Blue skies, lots of sunshine and a lovely breeze.  Perfect.

We went out to the beach this morning with Bryce and Ajay (who amazingly don't appear in any of my photos) and just watched the kids do their usual thing.

They built some small sand castles, and dug some pretty decent holes. 

 They tried making one into a waterfall....

After that I only saw Evan and Chloe together if they were in the water.  They love jumping waves and never seem to tire of it until they are cold -- and the water actually was cold today.

Evan went back to his hole, and this time he wanted it to be DEEP.  

I asked him if he could at least smile as he popped up to fling sand :-)  So he did.

Chloe is usually running all over the place chasing birds and collecting the feathers they leave behind.  My zoom lens usually can't focus in on her since she ventures so far.....

 
If she's not running around, she's usually alone, far from where I am sitting.... just digging.

But usually she just wants to have her own time to enjoy the beach....

Backseat Jungle

The kids like to bring stuffed animals in the car quite often.  It's always funny to turn around half way through a trip somewhere and see the animal land they've created --  kittens hanging from ceiling handles... snakes draped over our headrests.... puppies blocking the rear-view....  There is way less fighting when they have a project to collaborate on!

Built for Speed

There's a new rock crawler in town and it's FAST.  Like, run-at-full-speed-and-you-still-can't-get-in-front-of-it, fast.  The kids were pink-faced and dripping sweat drops after about 15 minutes of straight running.  If there's one thing that could convince Evan that bike-riding isn't the only way humans can get anywhere quickly, it's this new machine we own.

And the amount of belly laughs it generates is priceless!!

Wild Sprinkler

We played in Bryce's backyard for the morning and afternoon yesterday, and it was all about staying wet and cool.  They have a really wild sprinkler that I tried to capture the craziness of with my camera.  Here's what I ended up with:

You get zapped in the face a lot with this contraption, as you can tell by Chloe's face in these photos, but they really loved it!