One Month Old

Kacie Grace is already one month old (actually, at this point she's almost 6 weeks, 'cause I'm a little late on blogging)!  We are all completely in love with her and so glad that God added her to our family!  Of course, at this point, there's not much to say about what she does (eats and sleeps), although she is a very noisy baby.  She doesn't really cry other than when she's hungry, but she pretty much constantly growls!  We call her a baby bear.  People always think she's trying to poop, but it's just her constant stream of noise!

Haley, Abby and Seth love to hold her and kiss her and laugh at the funny faces she makes.  During the first couple weeks anytime they would see her with her eyes open it was big news and they would yell "Her eyes are open" to anyone who wasn't in the room!  As she's getting bigger (already almost 10 pounds) and she does tummy time, Seth is always pretty sure she's getting ready to crawl!

As I am typing this, she's asleep on my chest and, as cheesy as it sounds, I really am cherishing these minutes, because I know it will be all too soon that she's going off to kindergarten!  The feeling of snuggling a newborn is like nothing else in all the world and I wish it could last so much longer than it will, but I'm also so excited to see her grow and get to know her more and more!

4th Of July

This 4th of July we tried to pack in as much fun as we could handle!  We started with what we like to call "The Longest, Shortest Parade"!  It's a little parade in Aptos that they call the world's shortest parade because the distance it travels is short.  It's not short time-wise though!  Our tradition is to get there early to get the spot right next to where the parade starts.  We get our chairs and blankets set-up and then go get donuts (and Carey gets a breakfast burrito)!  This year we had such a great time at the parade.  Grandma Jackie and Auntie Laura came in our car with us, and our friends, the Rhoads met us down there.  Grammie Lori, Uncle Judah, Auntie Melissa and Auntie Kellie came for a little bit, too!  There was a little girl sitting next to us that was totally enamored with Haley, which was really cute.  I actually think that we may have made it through the whole parade without any tears, too, which is amazing!

All ready to stake out our spot!

I think this is our first family picture as a family of 6 (or 7 if you count Banjo)

At least one of my kids knows how to pick a normal size donut!

Kacie was so excited about the parade!  I'm sure she'll remember every second of it!

I love that my hubs lets me do things like this!

Banjo doesn't know he's too big to be a lap dog!

Seth enjoyed the parade from Uncle Judah's lap.

After the parade we went home and everyone except Kacie and I took a nap!  Our friends, the Orlandos, came over for a bbq that evening.  The kids ran around and played like crazy hoolligans and we had a delicious bbq dinner.  After the bbq we roasted marshmallows and had s'mores!  That's about as much as we would normally pack into a day, but this time, we had more!  We packed the kids into the car and headed out to Watsonville, where it's legal to do fireworks!  Dana had scoped out a parking lot for us to do them in.  The funny thing is that we thought the kids would think it was so fun and they ended up sitting in the car, totally afraid of the fireworks!  Eventually Abby and Seth came out and even did some sparklers!  It was really fun, though, and we decided that next year we'll save the money on buying our own fireworks and just watch all the huge illegal ones that where going off all around us!

Carey and Dominick (aka "Unky") ready to light some fireworks...after they laid them all out from biggest to smallest!

A car full of frightened children!