Visitors!

Sometimes being home with the littles can be pretty isolating.  We moved here with three littles, so I didn't get out much right off.  Nate was a little baby, but very adventurous, making the park a real challenge.  In the past I always found a MOPS group to get involved in, but here I had Kate starting home school, so that was out too.  We're slowly finding relationships with people around us, but this summer has been a real treat for us.

 

We've had friends from west Tenneessee visit for an overnight with their three girls.

We had friends from Justin's home town visit for dinner while they were vacationing with her family in town.

 We had friends from Kansas (who had also left, but headed off to Indiana) stay with us for a few days with their boys.

Then a friend that was visiting her parents here in town stopped by for a playdate with her girls, when she was here from Maryland--I didn't get a picture of that group.

The kids have loved having extra people around, and I always enjoy it too.  I have teased my introverted husband that we should open a bed and breakfast when the kids are grown.  He's not quite on board yet with talking to strangers over breakfast each morning!  But we are thankful for all the visits and to get to see so many people without loading up our entire crew.

Swing Set

When I was a little girl, my Daddy built a swing set for my sister and me to play on.  We spent a lot of hours on it--two swings, a tire swing, trapeze bar, and a set of monkey bars.  It also had a balance beam next to it.  We made a little obstical course out of it.  Across the beam, up on to the tire swing (without touching the ground), across the step for the monkey bars, and onto the trapeze bar, where we would flip over.  I remember growing too tall to set the trapeze bar so that I could sit on it and flip without hitting my head one way or the other.

When it became clear that Kate was out growing our metal A frame swing set, I had my old swing in mind.

 

Justin and I opted for a web swing in place of the old tire swing, and we'll still have a baby swing up for Ellie, but for the most part, it is my old swing set.  We added an extra post to stabilize the bar for the web swing too, since it is made to hold up to three children.

Holly, want to come swing?

Or we could just play in the mud...

 

Thanks for all your (hot) hard work, Justin.