Aunt Sharon and Uncle Tom!

On the way home from Michigan each summer we stop at my Aunt Sharon's and Uncle Tom's house for an all too brief but most pleasant visit. Aunt Sharon is my dad's mom's sister, and since I don't know my dad's mom too well, and since my grandmother on my mom's side is dead, she's the closest thing I have to a grandma. Lucky for me, she's an amazing substitute.

Aunt Sharon has these two bears that stand about as tall as Jacob. Her sister sews various outfits (many of which are seasonal) for the bears. Hannah took an immediate liking to the bears so Aunt Sharon got out their box of clothes. Hannah dressed up the bears, and then she dress herself in the witch costume prior to posing for this picture.

Meanwhile, Jacob followed Uncle Tom to the garden where he scored a giant tomato that he was busy devouring during photo time.

It's not often we have someone else to man the camera so we took advantage of the opportunity for a family shot, and then we bid adieu and hit the road. Until next year!

Summer time...family time

We're time traveling back to June tonight on this, my once-every-other-month blog post, to my annual family reunion. As has been the case lately, I didn't take any pictures...I should probably change the name of this blog if I'm no longer going to be obnoxiously photographing my kids. My cousin Kim shared a few of her pics with me. Only the younger kids are represented since both Hannah and Clay are eating in the pics I have of them and the adults don't look so hot either. So here are Jacob and Mason!

This year we rented a pavillion in Waynesburg and spent the day chowing down, running around the playground, swimming at the water park, and visiting with family.

On the way home the next day, we stopped at my dad's. Hannah remembered riding the tractor on her last visit there in the winter and went straight for it this time. She got to drive it herself this time!

Then she let Jacob in on the action.

 And of course Ginger was a huge hit as well.

They'll have their own tractor to ride soon since we'll be needing one to mow 2 of the 5 acres we just bought, and maybe they'll even end up with a dog sometime in the next year! Big changes are coming soon for this family!

Upside down family photo!

Thank you Bianca for taking and sharing these super fun family photos!!

Hannah gets an archery lesson and other pics from the family reunion

In addition to the obvious highlight of seeing much-loved family members who I pretty much only see once a year, my favorite part of this year's reunion was watching Hannah shoot a real bow and arrow with my Uncle Donny. I went totally mamarazzi and snapped a thousand pictures (which you'll have to scroll a bit to see because I'm far too OCD to post them out of order even though I'm okay with talking about them out of order). I'm thinking we need to visit my Aunt Pam and Uncle Donny more often so Hannah can add "skilled archer" to her list of talents.

She's also working on adding "skilled photographer" to that list. My aunt Pam gave Hannah and Clay their very own cameras upon arrival, and Hannah set out immediately to document the day for me. She stopped documenting after about 15 minutes, but she got some fun shots in that time period. Check 'em out:

Ta dah!! Aunt Pam was Hannah's first subject.

I'll have to teach her how to avoid cleavage shots...or Grammy will have to learn to not bend over like that in the future.

Daddy-ohhh!

Clay's smiling eyes.

Her beloved ponies, a present from Grammy.

Alrighty then! Our budding photographer has taken a few fun pics since this day, but I'll have to post those separately since this post promises to be large and in charge already.

Grammy and Aunt Pam always have bags goodies for the kids to keep them busy. Butterfly nets were in the loot stash this year.

Hannah sprawled out inside with a crocheted coaster balanced on her head to beat the heat. I love the pose. I feel like this could be a painting.

Some random shots of Hannah running wild in the wide open grass, which further motivates us to find a house that has at least some grass...

And now we come to the point in the day where Hannah gets her first archery lesson, the highlight of my day.

 

Clay's turn!

 

I'm going to be lazy and say very little about the next few pics, after all, there isn't much to say beyond "here are some pictures of people I love doing stuff."

Here's the part where I share/save for posterity some pictures that other people took. My Uncle Wes snapped this first one of Jacob laughing at my Aunt Pam.

Photo courtesy of Uncle Wes

I stole the rest of these pics from my cousin, Kim.

As usual the kids have monopolized the blog and my entire memory of the reunion, which makes sense given their monopoly on the universe as I know it. I suppose that's included in the definition of a mother, along with "one whose hair smells like baby vomit" and "schlepper of more gear than can fit in the bed of a truck." It's not a terribly glamorous role, but then again, I'm not a terribly glamorous person, and let's face it, when it comes to the universe, kids are right up there with trees and stars on a level of coolness (with mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, and all other vampire-ish bugs being on the opposite end of that spectrum).

An impromptu Memorial Day potluck at Chip's place

The to-do list I was keeping on my phone was a little too out of sight, out of mind so I broke out an old-fashioned pen and paper earlier this week, filled up a bunch of lines, and now, finally, some of the items are getting crossed off. I love crossing things off a list so much that I've been known to write something on a list after having completed it just so I can have the satisfaction of scratching it out. I love it so much that in an effort to quickly bust out all the blog posts that are on the list, I'm going to TRY to curb some of my usual rambling. I'm not off to a great start though...

On day two of Memorial Day weekend (day one was spent hucking tadpoles at Oregon Ridge), we drove to Chip's place for a mini, last minute family reunion of sorts that we'd planned mostly without Chip's advance knowledge. Oops! We brought him Eric's old grill though, so I think that made up for the home invasion.

Kim and Aaron brought an unreal amount of seriously good eats including some super fresh and sweet local strawberries with cream that Kim whipped by hand (I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would do it by hand, but props to her for being hardcore). Hannah ate the daylights out of some strawberries and whip cream, well, she ate the part of the strawberry that had the whip cream on it, that is, the bottom half. The rest of the strawberry she passed to someone else to eat so she could go for a fresh one.

Photo courtesy of Kim and Aaron

My aunt Pam and uncle Donny got to meet and 'nuggle Jacob.

No trip to Chip's is complete without ample time on the tire swing.

 

Photo courtesy of Kim and Aaron

 

 
After seeing the little cousins all together on the swing, Pam insisted that the big cousins hop on and cheese for the camera. We grumbled, but obliged...and we even smiled. Well, two of smiled. Chip just kept grumbling. 

Mason likes to pop Jacob's spit bubbles.

Then the baby kitty came out from wherever it was hiding, and I bet that it was wishing it had stayed hidden because Hannah spent the rest of the day following it, chasing it, carrying it, and obsessing over it. 

Photo courtesy of Kim and Aaron

Photo courtesy of Kim and Aaron

Aaron is a huge hit with the kids. I mean, he's a hit with the adults as well, but his natural ability to connect with kids is more notable. The fact that Mason hung with him is evidence of that--I can't even get Mason to come to me most of the time because he's so shy, but he warmed up to Aaron in no time.

Photo courtesy of Kim and Aaron

Photo courtesy of Kim and Aaron

And here are a few more random, very close-up photos that I stole from Kim.

Photo courtesy of Kim and Aaron

Mason looks JUST like his daddy did when he was little. It's uncanny and a bit freakish. I stare at him every time I'm around him because it's just so unreal to me.

Photo courtesy of Kim and Aaron

Photo courtesy of Kim and Aaron

Photo courtesy of Kim and Aaron

Awww! My cousin is so perty! I love that this worked out and that we were all able to get together at the last minute. In spite of living less than 2 hours apart, we rarely see each other except for the family reunion each year (which happened to be today so you'll see those pics soon and think that I am BSing when I say that we hardly ever see each other, but I swear it is a freak incident that we got together twice in one month).

I don't have any pics of the BBQ we had with the neighbors on the third and final day of Memorial Day weekend so we can say au revoir to May now! Time to hit "publish" and then scratch this off the list....