Visitors from VA

Our good friends the Saunders, who moved to Virginia last year, visited us this past weekend and what a wonderful time we had! Chad and Aimee have two children - Elaina (5) and Jonathan (2) so they are the perfect ages for our boys. And of course Elaina is the perfect mother's helper for little Abby as well! Chad and Andrew have been friends since they were little boys and Aimee and I have known each other for about a decade.

Here are the kids in their jammies, getting ready for bedtime stories the first night. Little did Nate and Jon known that Ben and Elaina would come back downstairs with us for a special movie night after all of the babies were in bed. It's so hard to be 2 years old with older siblings :).


Ben and Elaina all ready for movie night with their own boxes of popcorn and some chocolate milk. We watched Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which Ben and I had seen in the theater but nobody else had seen. He seemed to enjoy it even more than he had 8 months ago when we went on our "date." Literally, these two laughed from beginning to end. They were hysterical and had the best time having movie night before heading up to Ben's room for a sleepover since Ben has the two twin beds in his room. Such fun!


The terrible two-year-old twosome at breakfast the next morning.

We had perfect weather for the Saunders' visit so we spent a lot of time outside with the kids. Here are some candids in the yard. These four play so well together. Apart from their minor obsession with having us push them on the swings (every mother's nemesis :)), we barely even knew they were there, they were so content and happy playing.

Chad showing Jon how to use the ever-popular CAT excavator.

Me, Aimee and Abby. How nice to have me and Aimee in a picture for once!!

Sweet baby Abby...

Ah, the swings...how the children love to be pushed on them...for hours :)

Bathtime for the three little men after a looong day outside in the heat, sand and dirt. We tried to talk ourselves into the idea that they didn't need a bath since it was so late by the time we headed in for the evening...but we just couldn't do it, these guys were so grimey!! So they had a blast procrastinating bedtime even longer and we were glad we had a crew of clean kids to put to bed that night. Elaina got to take a shower on her own, being the only girl. So we got out a pretty princess towel and washcloth and she was happy :).

What a group of handsome little men!

We had such a nice, relaxing visit with the Saunders and were sad to see them go, but we are looking forward to several other plans to see them over the second half of this year so that appeases us for now :).