West Coast Visitors

Last week Andrew's sister Michelle and her 11-month-old daughter, Madelyn, visited us for a week from Seattle. Maddie is Ben and Nate's only cousin so it was so fun to have them with us and for the kids to be able to interact with each other for a full week. We had so much fun taking pictures of all the kids and spending time with them.

Here are some photos from home that we took throughout the week. Luckily we had beautiful weather for the most part so we were able to spend some time outside. Here we all are in our backyard.

Maddie is having so much fun on Ben's little scoot-along trike that he used last summer.

Maddie and Mommy.

Nate slept through our outdoor adventure in his travel swing.

Ick! Grass is really, really strange (at least Maddie thinks so!). It doesn't help that the landscapers had not been here in a week so it was really long.

Barney, of course, is part of the action. Maddie has a Yorkshire Terrier so she is not afraid of dogs (which is huge since most children are). In fact, all she did was giggle and try to grab for him whenever Barney came near her!

Bubbles are always a fun outdoor activity. What a way to occupy little children for more than a few minutes!

Our little "mo-mower man." Ben is obsessed with the landscapers and calls them our lawnmower, or mo-mower, men whenever he sees them outside. How exciting to discover that he has his own lawnmower in the garage that he did not remember from last summer!

While Ben napped one day, Nate and Maddie had some time to interact on their own.

Thanks to G and CC, the kids had a few coordinating outfits to wear throughout the week for our visit. It's a tough job to get three little ones to sit still for photos but we did alright and thought the photos we got were really cute! :)

Eating dinner together... we have two fairly good eaters in our family, veggies and all!



...and especially dessert! Here's our redneck son in his bib without a shirt, covered in chocolate dessert. Ha, I thought this photo would be a lot funnier than trying to get chocolate out of his white Polo shirt :).

Playing together. Maddie is very girly but she loved all of Ben's trucks and boy toys. She always went for the biggest truck of all when given the choice!




And here's Maddie in Ben's Anywhere Chair. She loved it!

Maddie took her first steps right before she came to visit us so here she is walking (and very proud of herself, too, I might add!)

Just some miscellaneous photos of Nathaniel. Here he is with Aunt Chel and also alone below that.

Finally, we had fun giving Ben and Maddie their bedtime bath together in the tub. They did surprisingly well, give or take some sharing issues and some standing up in the tub. We, of course, loved the photos!

Maddie, post-bath and curly-haired!