The Sun is Shining (thank goodness)

This first picture was taken on Sunday. We went to lunch with the Nelsons and the kids actually sat still long enough to get their picture taken. Tyler has a minor crush on the Nelson girls, I'm convinced. At least we don't have to worry about it quite yet. He is my sensitive one, the one always concerned about the little ones. He was holding Anna's hand and teaching her "ring around the rosie." It was pretty cute. I was telling Emily that he'll be one of those boys who have lots of girl friends but not many girlfriends. They'll be telling him all of their relationship woes. That's ok with me! Today was beach day. Valerie, Emily, Mina and I dragged our kids to the beach today. OK, you never have to drag my kids to the beach. I was a little worried at first..where was the sun?? You know when you talk up a place so much and say how wonderful it is and then you get there with your friends and it's just a disappointment? You wonder if they're thinking, "Riva...wow, this is SOME beach. Glad we drove ALL the way out here for THIS." That's kind of how I felt this morning. Where I usually sit on the nice, warm, DRY sand, it was soaking wet (the tide had come up quite far that night) and there wasn't a sun ray in the sky. In fact, my daughter kept mentioning the fact that she was "freezing." *she can tend to be a little dramatic at times* but by noon the clouds had burned off and it was a beautiful day. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did. It looked like the kids ran around enough to take good naps in the afternoon. Valerie is probably still nursing the wounds that Emily's umbrella left after it crashed into her more than once. Sorry, Josh, I'll be impressed if you can fix the damage to your new"er" umbrella.

Lynnea enjoyed her chew toys the whole time. Mina pointed out that it was nice that she just sits there right now. I am enjoying these times before she feels the need to crawl all over the place. We may have to give up the beach for a while once she becomes mobile.

Tyler was showing Bekah the invisible "thing" on the stump. She was such a good helper to him by holding his hand to climb the stumps since he's a little scared of being up so high.

Let me say up front..I don't understand this "Mikayla" face. Either I was getting annoying with the camera or she was in the middle of conversing. *isn't this what teenagers do?* Lately, I've been wondering just how old she really is. This was her reaction to my instructions of, "smile pretty." *sigh* It looks more like, "mOmmmm"

On Saturday night, we had the pleasure of dinner with just the 2, I mean 3, of us. Another class from our church volunteered to watch our kids for us-the whole class' kids! We were all so grateful and spread out around the city to find a restaurant that wasn't so "kid friendly." We had a great night and yummy food. Lynnea enjoyed the view of the fountain most of the night. It's so nice when someone just volunteers to take your kids for the evening. Sometimes I find that I just don't ask for time away. Maybe we need to do that more...