End of summer photos

It has been a busy summer, with activities and visits with friends. Still, with all the activity, Elizabeth decided in the photo above that despite it being way past her bedtime, sleeping was for suckers. We finally gave up, brought her downstairs to watch a little baseball with Daddy and play for a half-hour before trying again to get her to sleep.  Somehow, even when she stays up late, she is generally up bright and early, typically about 45 minutes before we would like her to be awake! Other random happenings from the last month are below.

Saw her tutu in her closet and insisted on putting it on over her pj's

I can't remember who gave her this crab & fish romper, but it's so cute!

Photos from a sleepover at Grandma's & Opa's. Elizabeth is trying to figure out the stethoscope.

Splashing in a fountain after a trip to our town's farmer's market

After a relatively mild summer, we had a small heat wave over the last 2 weeks. We broke out the beach ball sprinkler from cousins Ruth & Dick and the kids enjoyed it. We also had it out when the kids had friends sleep over and it was a big hit.

Ben tries to catch the water on his tongue

We had a picnic with friends at a local park that had picnic tables, a sand box, baseball field, great playground equipment and a little splashing waterfall/brook. The kids absolutely loved it and loudly protested when we had to leave.

Ben was SO excited to get to pitch on a real baseball diamond!

Splashing in the brook (cute Strawberry Shortcake shirt courtesy of Uncle Tony & Aunt Jen!)

Playing with toys by the waterfall

We babysat for the same friends' kids last weekend and broke out a bunch of ideas I found on Pinterest, including making homemade play dough and this game from the Hands On As We Grow blog. You put painter's tape sticky-side out like a spiderweb and throw newspaper balls at it. Once they got the hang of it, they had a lot of fun! Elizabeth also noticed that the painter's tape made great bracelets.

Elizabeth enjoyed stomping in the paper afterward.

We had a family photo taken for our church directory a few weeks ago. They also take a bunch of other photos in the hopes that you will buy a whole package. There was a lot of posing and requests to hold still and smile. Needless to say, with a four-year-old and an eighteen-month-old, that did not work so well. It was tough choosing one good photo for the directory!

However, we got some cute pictures of the kids when we got home.