Cousin time!

My sister, Shanda, and her four children came for a visit at the end of May. It was heavenly. We had so much fun together and the kids played and played and played together all day. We would wake up and go to the gym while the kids played in the child center there(it's kid-heaven - so much to do). Then we would come home for lunch and naps. And then usually we would swim in the afternoons before heading home for dinner and bedtime.

One day, before we went swimming, Shanda (who is an amazing photographer), took pictures of my Elsie Kay.

Here are two of my favorites:

As soon as we took her dress off, she was off to the pool, mogli-style.

And later, we caught her crawling mogli-style again. It is so funny to watch. Her core must be hard as a brick!

Elsie does not love the pool right now. For some reason, swimming is not her thing yet. But she does love to crawl and play while everyone else swims, especially if she has a piece of watermelon to gnaw on. She eats it clear down to the green and probably would eat that too if I let her.Here is Aylen.
And here is Aylen showing off her crazy face. She is SO good at making faces, it cracks me up!

ShelleyBean

Thomas J

EmberD

Thalyn

Kinnon

Jorgen thinks Kinnon is the coolest person to walk this earth. He would laugh so hard at the jokes Kinnon told, to the point of needing to use the restroom ;). Kinnon is so good with all the younger kids and is always so helpful.Shelley and Aylen had a face-off

Here are some more pictures that Shanda took.
I am in love with these three.
Shanda must have been doing something funny to get this reaction from all three of them :)And I think we were telling them to straighten up in this picture :)

Thomas Jorgen

Can you see what Jorgen is looking at - a bee that was buzzing around his face.

Shelley Eliah

All four of Shanda's children.

Mad faces!

And no, Erik isn't trying to beat my child. We all laughed so hard at this picture, it looks like Erik is being so mean to Shelley but he wasn't at all. He was trying to help her up and Shand just caught the moment perfectly :)

Happy faces.

We celebrated all six of their birthdays in one big birthday party.

Aylen was trying so hard to blow out her candle, it was so cute.

We are sad they had to leave and couldn't just live with us the whole summer long but we are excited that we get to see them in just under two weeks!
Happy Summer!