Kansas

Jason, the kids and I drove to Kansas last week to visit friends and family. We keep referring to it as "home" and we have Jaxon completely confused. So, what is the right way to describe it? We'll debate that later. We had a great visit, but of course it went way too fast and we didn't have near as much time as we wanted to see people and things. I'm pretty sure I got the order of pictures from our visit reversed, but I'm too lazy to fix it now.


Cousins: Wyatt, Braden and Jaxon. Jason's Aunt Brenda bought the kids these cute outfits for Christmas, so Jamie and I were excited to have the boys wear them all together.


Dakota just loves her baby cousin, Caleb. Looks like the feeling is mutual.



Jason's best friend from high school, Curt, and his family came out to my mom's to swim, have dinner and hang out. Jason was so excited to see him. I think it had been two years since Jason last saw Curt.


Jaxon loved pulling his sister and Curt's boys around in the wagon. They all took turns riding and pulling.





CARS 2
Memaw took us, the kids and my niece, Page to Cinema Suites to see Cars 2. The kids were great and we had a wonderful experience.

Dakota and Memaw watching the movie.


He was very in to the movie.






Jason took Jaxon to the Royals game one night, so my mom and I took advantage of "girls night" and put my sponge curlers in Sissy's hair. I forgot to snap an "after" pic the next morning, but her hair is still very fine, so what little curl she had, didn't last long.



Sissy loved getting to take a bath in Memaw's big bathtub by herself while Jaxon was the baseball game with Daddy.





Date Night! My mom got Jason and I tickets and a parking pass to the T Bones game.








Swimming at Memaw's:









Grandma and Grandpa Hager's:

Sissy loved chasing bubbles with Grandma.


Jaxon and Grandpa played a lot of baseball.





Fourth of July:

At Uncle Jeremy's, Aunt Natalie's, and Rowan's house for dinner before fireworks. Dakota loved Rowan's kitty, Repeat.


Daddy helping Dakota pull a confetti popper.


Jaxon pulling a confetti popper.


Aunt Ninny came to watch fireworks with us! Dakota is usually in bed by 7:30pm, so she had a rough time staying awake for the fireworks show.



Jax and I enjoying the show!



We brought a few things to keep the kiddos entertained while we waited for it to get dark. Sissy enjoyed the sidewalk chalk.







Camp out at Ouma's and Oupa's:
Ouma and Oupa decided to have the four older cousins over for a camp out in the front yard. All the kids did great and slept the entire night in the tent.

Enjoying S'mores.


Oupa was helping Jax roast marshmallows.


Mmmm

He was concentrating on getting the marshmallows just the right color.

Jax was helping Oupa fix the red tricycle.

Asleep in the tent.

The morning after the camp out, the kids played outside. Here's Kota and I petting one of the horses. She loved petting his nose and feeding him grass.


Jax and Wyatt LOVE riding on Oupa's tractor.


Beautiful girl.


My favorite three year old in the world!

Just Stuff

When we send Aunts and Uncles and Grandmas and Grandpas birthday cards, Jaxon always gets to leave his "signature" on them. This is usually a few scribbles on the left side of the card and I ask him what he has written. Then I write the interpretation for the card receiver (in case they don't read scribbles). Well, Jax had his last Tee Ball game a few weeks ago and I had gotten his coaches each a thank you card with a little gift certificate to Starbucks. After I had completed the cards, Jax asked if he could write on them. I hesitated because I wasn't sure if two 17 year old girls (who have only known him for 5 or 6 weeks) would get a kick out of the personalized scribble the way grandparents do. But I love his heart and wanting to sign the card, so I let him. What happened next, I will never forget...

This is what my little man wrote. To some, it may look like scribbles. To Jaxon's mom, it looks like a National Honor Society member in the making. Ok, maybe just a three year old who pays attention. I think what surprised me the most isn't that a three year old is capable of this, but that I've never, EVER, practiced this with him. He "helps" me sign his name on cards, but I've always had complete control of the pen. If this doesn't look like anything to you, let me explain some. The first letter is an attempt at a "J", next is a lower case "A", followed by two "X's" (oh well), an "O" and a lower case "N". There might be an "O" at the end, but whatever! So proud!



My super cute kids in an over-sized camping chair at Manard's.

Hot Summer Day

Trying to beat the heat this summer has been a challenge. My kids LOVE the outdoors, so I knew playing in the air conditioning all summer would not be an option. So one day, while Jason was out of town, I did an impulse trip to K Mart and bought a blow-up pool. It's a great relief in this heat. We had our friends over one morning to "swim" with us.


Sissy enjoyed drinking the water out of the sprinkler.



All five kids enjoying the giraffe slide and sprinkler. This was the best group shot I could manage - they couldn't stop long enough for a group picture.




Griffin!!



Pretty Nora says, "CHEESE."



As I was pulling up the pictures for this post, Jaxon kept asking me where a picture of him was. I guess he was too busy enjoying the water to stop for a picture. Oops. He's in the navy shorts with white flowers, you can kind of find him in the group photos.