Rhen's drink

We recently took away Rhen's bottles and she is now on sippy cups only. She has figured out that if she tips her sippy cup upside down then her drink trickles out until she has a puddle on her high chair, on the floor or wherever she is. Her favorite thing to do is make a big enough puddle on her tray that she can then splash all over. I had to document this because it happens at least a few times a day.

She is my mess maker.

Smelling the Flowers

My girls love smelling flowers. Whenever they see any flower, real or not, they have to stop to smell. Every time we go to Papa's office we walk by all the flower beds full of flowers and I happened to catch them in their smelling routine.

Brownie disaster

We were going to visit some friends and made a batch of brownies to take with us. I put the girls in the car and strapped them in and then set the hot brownies on the floor. I ran back into the house to get a couple more things and by time I came out this is what happened.

If you look close, the hole is in the perfect shape of...

Yes. Rease's shoe.

Rease had gotten out of her seat and stepped right into our brownies. She kept saying, "Mommy I stepped in the brownies." Yeah you did. Don't think that it stopped us from eating them though. We ate everything around the footstep and still had a delicious treat!

The shag

I love this picture of Rhen for a lot of reasons.

1) Her hair is getting to be the shaggy type. We're to the point that if I don't do something with it first thing in the morning, then she goes through the day looking like this.

2) She is still slow in the teeth department. She does have 4 top teeth along with these 2 little ones you can see, but so far there's no trace of any more bottom ones.

3) This is her innocent look. I'm sure that she just did something mischievious but is trying to act like nothing happened. We get this look a lot.

We love you Rhen!

Flour girl

Rhen is, can I say, a little mischievious. She may seem very calm and sweet - and she is sometimes. But most of the time, this is her...

A mess? Yeah that's Rhen.

Time out

I texted Josh from work one day and asked him how the girls were doing. He said, "Rease is good and Rhen in is time out."

I said, "Wow, time out huh? How did that go?"

"She thought it was fun until she realized she had to stay there. Then she started crying."

I saw these pictures of the scene when I got home.

Poor girl doesn't quite know what time out means.

Hairdo

Rhen will not keep a rubberband, bow or clip of any kind in her hair. She usually takes it out while we are driving and ends up looking like this.

Boating

We started our 4th of July weekend out by going to Delta a day early to boat at the Res. We wanted to have perfect water so we were on the lake by 7:30 am. And it was perfect. We were the only ones on the lake for the first hour and had great water to ski.

Josh hung Rhen up for a quick shot before we headed out.

Dad started the day out. Many of you may not know this, but dad is a great waterskier. He grew up with a boat and learned to ski as a kid -so he is still an awesome skier.
I'm not sure what Rhen is scowling about here but she is not happy about something.

Rease loves the boat and is enjoying just watching the skiers

We forgot to take the wakeboard so Josh tried out the skis as well. He started with two and dropped one. He looks good!

Me and the girls.

Rhen stylin.

The girls jumped in the water with Uncle Caleb for a quick swim.

Rhen loves her daddy.

After a couple of hours it started to get windy so we spent some time on the beach before we left.

As you can see, Rhen doesn't have a swim diaper on. Just a normal one the filled up with water and makes her look like she had a big bum.

Rease loved running up and down the beach and splashing in the water.

Rhen found an egg underneath the tree and bit into it thinking it was a candy egg.

Nope. A robin's egg.

Josh taught the girls to throw handfuls of sand into the water.

It kept them busy for a while!

And it looks like Rhen ate her fair share of it!

Enjoying some time with Papa.

We had a great time at the Res and had great water for a couple of hours at least!

Office summer party

Every summer we have an office retreat as a staff. Part one of that is spending a day reviewing goals, training, role playing and of course just spending good quality time as a staff. We did that at dad and mom's cabin this year and had a successful and fun day.

Part two of the retreat is a day on the lake - so fun! This year dad had his boat, Pat brought her boat and Kilee borrowed her parents jetskis. We were set for a day of fun on the water.

Rhen helping Papa drive the boat.

Rease snuck rides on the jetskis with whoever would take her. Aunt Hayley...

And daddy both took her on rides and I'm sure she roped a few more people into it as well. She kept saying she wanted to ride on the "tiny boat."

Enjoying the big boat.

Kilee, Beckem, Rease and I took a leisurely ride on the tube. I made dad promise that he would not go fast - mainly because of the kids, but also because I have visions of crazy tube rides as a kid and, though they were fun when I was 15, I just don't like that stuff anymore. He was very nice and we had a good, fun ride just us 4.

It also happened to be dad's birthday so Pat made this delicious German Chocolate Cake which is his favorite and we celebrated!

The girls were tuckered out by the end of the day - can you tell?

Thanks to dad for being a great dad and papa and also an amazing boss!