Girls Trip!

On Tuesday Katelynn and I loaded up with Great Grandma Rowe to head north to Topeka. We went to go visit my mom, Kevin and the jewelry shop.

We had a fun time getting "girly" at Mom's jewelry shop. Katelynn and I even made bracelets together :)

Katelynn loved trying on bracelets and making them jingle!

3 generations...

...the 3 generations with one birthday! And it's coming up soon ;~)

Katelynn had fun feeding the geese at Grandma's place!

While Katelynn and I were in Topeka the boys went fishing with our good friend Jamie in Goddard. They didn't catch anything for dinner (that's okay, we don't know how to clean fish anyway) but they sure did have a lot of fun! Caleb had his last baseball game yesterday, and he finished out the season really well making some good plays. Next will be football in the fall! :O

Update:

Last Friday Mark made it home safe and sound from his trip for work to Missouri. The kids and I tried to keep very busy to make the time go by. On Friday before he returned, we went to the library for some fun music and story time. The kids loved it!

(Caleb and Katelynn are the kids to the right in the blue and pink shirts)

Being silly!

We made Daddy some of his favorite cookies for his return home. The kids love to bake!

The best part about baking is looking at recipe books, and of course all the tempting pictures...

This week we're trying to stay cool as the temperatures have continued to remain in the high 90s to low 100s. Hope everyone is having a good (and cool) week!

Fun in the Sun

This morning we went to Katelynn's gymnastic session then decided to go back to the YMCA for some pool time. We decided to do some splashing around!

The kids really enjoyed the water slide :)

The kids loved playing in the cool water on such a hot day! Afterall, this is what summer's all about ;-)

Keeping busy!

Since Mark's departure on Monday afternoon, we've been trying to keep ourselves from going crazy. My solution was to keep the kids (and therefore myself) as busy as possible. What I didn't count on was how absolutely tired and worn out we are by the end of the day. On the positive side, we seem to be sleeping better!

Tuesday I took the kids to the zoo for some time with the animals. We started out early so we wouldn't be there for the hottest part of the day. We packed a picnic lunch and enjoyed walking around the zoo, as well as riding the train.

"Indiana Jones Caleb"

"Just Katelynn"

Later that evening we went to Caleb's baseball game. He did really well, and even played in the infield quite a bit!

Wednesday (is still in progress) we had a day with Papa Rowe! We woke up early and went to Newton and to the famous Druber's for donuts :) Afterwards we took the kids to Exploration Place to see the fun exhibits.

We went home after Exploration Place for lunch and naps! Katelynn was so tired she was begging for her blanket and pillow. That's a worn out girl!

Long week ahead...

Mark left on his trip to Missouri for work late this afternoon for the week. I am hoping to keep the kids and I busy enough so that we don't have to sulk around the house for his return. I've been ambitious enough to come up with a plan to keep us entertained, active, but most of all distracted! I'm hoping that I will be able to live up to this ambition and actually do all that I have planned :) I suppose the content of the next week of blog posts should tell the truth...

On house projects-we finished painting our bedroom this week, so this completes the painting upstairs. I am hoping to have the basement completed before August. Although I love to paint, and have been recruited by many in the past to help with projects because of this love, I must say I have become rather burnt out. I asked Mark to help paint the majority of the basement, otherwise I'm afraid it would not get done! Being the great handy man that he is, he's agreed to help paint the notorious K-State purple walls of our basement a calm neutral color. Next month I am still planning on having a garage sale, and am hoping to really "clear out" a lot of accumulated stuff!

The kids have been doing well. Caleb has two more games left for his baseball season. Katelynn is on her 3rd week of gymnastics. We are still trying to get out and about as much as possible, and last night we went on a family walk at Sedgwick County Park. We took Nikki with us this time, and I must say she did rather well! Except for the occasional car she would try to chase. It was a great evening to get out (like most evenings in the summer), and the park was rather busy. We're trying to find new parks around the Wichita area to visit because it seems the whole city of Wichita ends up at the new playground in Sedgwick County Park.

Well, keep Mark and our friend/his co-worker Tony in your thoughts and prayers this week as they are traveling to and from Missouri.

Happy 4th of July!!!

We hope you all had a safe and Happy 4th of July! We kept it pretty low key (like we do every year), and didn't participate in all the fireworks and firecrackers. Caleb is still very sensitive to the loud cracks and booms they create. Katelynn did pretty well with them, when we were watching the neighbors set them off. We went over to Papa and Grandma Hain's house and had a good old fashioned 4th of July BBQ-we even celebrated with silly string and confetti =) Unfortunately I did not get any pictures of the event (I've been in a really bad habit of not bringing my camera with me).

We've been getting the interior rooms of the house painted and cleaning out closets, etc. A lot of organization to be done. We have decided to have a garage sale in the first part of August, so much of our time has been spent "weeding out" the rooms of our house. I can't believe how much one family of four can accumulate over the years! I'll post more information about our garage sale later on and feel free to come by.

Caleb is still doing well in baseball and Katelynn started gymnastics last week at the YMCA. We've also been trying to get the kids outside more, and bought a fun sprinkler last week that they enjoy playing with. Unfortunately Katelynn likes to get in the dirt and eventually mud, so it's quite the clean up afterwards (my parents are smiling right about now). I used to be quite the "mud magnet" myself =)
Hope you all have a great week! I'll try to get better about capturing more with my camera!