Fun morning

 Rielee's friend McKenna spent the night with her so they were over early for breakfast and to play with the girls.  Rielee and McKenna were pretending that they were twins, too.  They all had an early morning tea party in the playfort.  It was such a beautiful and warm morning that we were all in the pool by 10:00 a.m., the water was really warm, too. 

Harper floating around all by herself. 

 We had such happy faces this morning for breakfast, everyone was up early to see Ava and Harper.  Then they headed outside to play at the playfort.  Harper was driving her "car", taking everyone for a ride, she kept yelling "all aboard" and was pretty surprised when Uncle Alan came onboard.

 After they were done at the playfort, it was hot enough to go to the pool.

 Papa got the girls this little boat to play with, they really got a kick out of it.

 Ava wanted the floaties on and jumped in to me over and over.  She was really comfortable floating around, but wanted me holding on to her.  She is frowning because she didn''t want her picture taken.  Harper entertained herself by squirting everybody with the water guns.

Parker re-opened the treehouse today, cleaned it up and somehow managed to move the desk up there by himself. 

Parker's garage sale find

Parker found a bunch more golf balls at garage sales today, plus Papa had found him another 100.  Add those to the 200 he ordered off E-bay and he should be set for awhile. Now he just needs to find some clubs, he borrowed one from David tonight to practice with until he finds some. 

Playing with Jillian and Bridget

 Cathy called this morning and asked if any of the girls wanted to come and play.  Since Rielee was already at Auna's playing with Jack and Gracie, I took the twins down for a little while.  They did some driving and they seem to be getting the hang of it, at least the stop-when-you-are-about-to-run-into-someone-or-something part, so there was progress.  Ava was content to ride along or in the wagon but only if Harper was driving.  She tried driving herself and riding the other little ride-on but it was a little scary for her today.

After playing at Cathy's, Jillian and Bridget came up and played in the sandbox with the girls, plus Rielee, Jack, Gracie and Auna all showed up at the playfort, too, so it was a very busy place for awhile.  

Sandbox volcano

 Rielee and the girls had a bath together and then dressed up and played Princesses and Queen.  Rielee brought the girls presents this morning, she gave them some of her old stuffed animals, a puppy and CareBear for Harper, and a kitty and big Lil' Pony for Ava. 

 It wasn't warm enough today to go swimming so I let the girls flood the sandbox instead.  They made a volcano and then let it "erupt", pretty exciting stuff,  Ava and Harper thought it was pretty cool. 

Parker, Riels, Auna

 Parker spent last night with us.  He and I couldn't agree on what to watch on TV, I wanted the Olympics, he wanted golf, no! Or Pawn Stars, so we watched some of both, but no golf.
We spent the morning playing an Olympic volleyball tournament, in the house, with the beach ball.  Rielee was very serious about it,  she and Auna made medals for the winners.  First it was just going to be the 3 of us playing, but then Parker wanted to play, too.  Auna won the gold, Rielee silver, I got the bronze.  Parker received several yellow cards for various rule violations (he was Auna's coach for the championship game) and almost got tossed out of the tournament!  It was fun, but the silver medalist was kind of disappointed afterwards, so we headed to the pool.

The kids jumped in while I took pictures, over and over,

 as they tried to land on the tube,

 Rielee landed this one perfectly, and then they did one last crazy jump for me, it was a fun pool session.



Parker cuts down a tree

Parker, dressed in his new chaps and ready to cut down a tree

We decided the pine tree beside the playfort had to go, too much mess from it's many little cones.  Parker had been asking Papa if he could fall a tree, so Papa finally said yes.  They rigged a line from the tree to Papa's truck so they could be somewhat sure it would fall in the right direction and not wipe out the playfort.  Parker did the cutting with instruction from Papa.

"It should fall over there."

And it did!

   

Now the hard work of cleaning up the limbs and cutting it all up begins, glad Gabe showed up to help.

 Even though they started at 10:00, it was starting to get really warm out, by the time we finished up it was noon,  Parker was ready to hit the pool!     Note:   Rielee was helping by collecting the green pine cones off the tree, she thinks they are special.  And who was in charge of safety here,  Parker forgot to wear his safety glasses!