Eloise

This little pile-o-pudge is so fun to photograph. She is the happiest baby.
She is now seven months and nine days.
She crawls and hums and loves to eat anything she finds on the floor.
She often falls off the single step up from our living room to our dining room.
She thinks her older sisters are hilarious.
Her first word was "mama."
(She is my first baby to say mama first.)
She has a lot of hair. Sometimes she catches a breeze that blows it in her face and she holds still and looks around like, "what was that tickling my face?" Then she reaches up and tugs on her hair a little bit, remembers that it's just her hair, and moves on.

Love her.

The Farmer's Market

This year I decided to sign up to become a vendor at our local Farmer's Market. I've been collecting old frames and mattes to "refurbish" for my home and then started collecting even more to sell at the market. I repainted the frames (and some mirrors) to look bright and more modern. I also covered the mattes in fabric to really brighten up a framed picture. I covered some of the smaller frames in fabric as well. I loved how they turned out.







Sadly, however, the people at the market weren't buying. I bought a booth with my good friend Lisa who was selling hand-made burp clothes and baby quilts. We both only made one sale (hers was much bigger than mine, but still only one customer each!). What was frustrating--besides the fact that we spent a lot of time and some money to be there--was that TONS of people stopped to admire our stuff and told us how awesome they were, and then they kept walking.
Either way, it was a great experience and now my frames and mattes are sitting in a consignment shop called 'Tookiloo" (that also takes %50), hopefully selling like hotcakes.
We'll see.

So, all in all I made a grand total of negative $4 with my one sale (considering booth fees) but I got to try something new and visit with my good friend Lisa without kids all day.
It was worth it.

The Coop

Our little chickens finally grew big enough to move out of their box in the basement to a brand new coop in the backyard. David built this beauty for us and we decided to paint it together for a family night activity.

I found some cheap paint brushes at Home Depot and the girls used a LOT of paint.



Of course, some of that paint didn't make it onto the coop...





I love that they look so innocent in these pictures.

It was a fun and productive family night! Now we're just waiting anxiously for some eggs! Our little hens make their way into the coop at night all on their own.
We love our chickens.
(I should have a picture of them, but I don't!)

Bathing Beauties

These are the pictures you pull out when they're older...
I can't believe I have three little girlies that LOVE bath time together.
Ellie thinks that water is the greatest thing ever.

4th of July

We always spend our 4th of July in Liberty at David's parents' house. This year David's oldest brother, Chris, and his family joined us from Denver, CO.

Friday, July 1st

On the first day we rode horses over at Julie's house. (Every time we go to her house now, I can't help but remember arriving there at 3am, smelling like a bonfire!)








Love those hats.








My man is HOT.


Little Ms. Kate is eight. And Hazel thinks she is the end-all. I think Hazel's really eight, stuck in a four year old body.




Behind the house, Julie has a little cabin with pioneer, cowboy and Indian dress-up clothes. (This unfortunately was the only picture I got of Charlotte!)

Sat, July 2nd

And here she is again in Kevin and Vicki's backyard with marshmallow all over her face. The cousins were pulling one another in this wheelbarrow.

OH my goodness, this baby makes life so good. We would lay out a blanket or towel on the grass with some toys and she'd play happily for an hour or so.


Gram helped the kids make these minty napkin rings for dinner.

Gram gave the kids these lovely lolly pops for the rodeo that night. They were a huge hit, of course. Everyone was a happy, sticky mess afterward.


After dinner, we all gathered around a bonfire in the backyard.
Grandpa Phipps brought up his harmonica and played beautiful songs for all of us.
It was a little bit of heaven on earth.


And then there were fireworks.





I have a picture of myself holding a sparkler just like this, but I was bawling.





I'm so grateful that my girls can have such great cousins!







Need I say more?


This is a girl after her daddy's heart.


Grandma Phipps and little Chrissy, the dog who will live forever.




These little stumps used to be snowmen with hats and scarves, but in the house fire they were burned a bit. They are now "S'mores" that the kids sit on around the fire.



July 4th
Liberty Days! We started with the parade in the morning which was actually the LOW POINT of the day for me. It had taken all of my energy to get the girls dressed and ready to go by 7:30 am and I was feeling good about myself, because we were going to be on time. Then Hazel had a meltdown about her hair and a necklace or something and it went downhill from there.
Once we arrived, I asked Kate to run and tell David something and she took Hazel by the hand to go with her. Her eight year old legs were much faster than Hazel's and I watched in horror as Hazel did a cartwheel across the dirt.
But there was a parade to attend, so we brushed her off
and she threw candy happily out of that wheelbarrow.




Some of the kids entered the chicken catch. James got pretty close to catching one...
Hazel kept herself at a safe difference.

And little Sam decided last minute to just STEP OVER the chicken and keep running.






This is our least favorite event: the Sawdust Find.
Yet we still enter our children every year. And we still elbow through the other hundred stressed-out parents who are worried, like us, that their kids will get shoved out of the way and won't find a piece of candy and cry for the next hour because their paper bag is empty.
It's quite an ordeal.
I think my husband shouted, "Just push that boy out of the way!" at one point.


So Hazel may ADORE Kate, but she always makes her way back to Sam-bo. She loves him.


David and Chris entered the Sack Race.
(David won, of course. It reminded me of the time we were roller skating with my sisters and they had a race where you had to squat and use your arms to pull yourself across the rink. David and I had about twenty years on most of those kids and there he was, competing like his life depended on it. He won a free cotton candy. I'm tearing up just remembering it.)