Dinner with Papa and Grandma Mary

All dressed up and ready to go!

A Tuesday night date with Grandma Mary, Papa and Mama V. Rylan was set to go but got a broken arm the morning of! (Poor fella!)

Grandma Mary and Papa got SKV some fun, new hair clips on their trip. She has colors for every outfit!

Their meal included driving around town until the little one was content...that meant pizza and ice cream. :) (Just like her parents!)

Tough Life!

Ah the life of a 2 year old...tough!

Having to clean bugs out of your pool...

Having to stress over which toy to play with...

Having to get the darn golf ball out of the Easter egg! Ugh!

Her quotes while she worked on getting the egg out. "Come...on! Come on ball! I get you! Ugh!"

Derek is Five!!

I can't believe but our little "Baby D" has turned 5! Saturday we went to his birthday party which included a Slip-n-Slide!
Sidney Kate wasn't a fan of the thought of flying down this strange contraption with water squirting her...she and Kevin attempted a warm up exercise.

Riley was going and going hard. He somehow managed to get down this thing a few times in a row before the others went...he was fast!


Rylan was all over the place too. It didn't take much for all these boys to land off of the slide into the grass...which quickly turned to mud.

Daddy and Sidney Kate's first and only attempt going down the slide. Maybe next year. :)

Daddy's Little Helper

Saturdays are "Daddy Days."
On Saturdays, Daddy takes the time to slave drive all of us until the housework is complete...just kidding!
This Saturday, SKV decided to help Daddy put up his tools.

Kevin bought two trees this spring. Tree number one is looking great!

Tree number two, not so much.

No, he wasn't using his chainsaw on those trees! A tree fell on the lot next to us. I think he wanted to use his Christmas present; he hasn't really had the opportunity to do so yet. Sidney Kate felt he needed her assistance. I allowed it until there were signs it was going to be used...the we bolted for a nap!

Special Snacks...by Amy

Okay, so Sidney Kate and I are the luckiest girls ever! We have these wonderful neighbors that invite us to play and eat with them! Saturday morning around brunch time, Amy and Jackson came over to invite Sidney Kate to come and eat a special snack with the boys. Ben was so kind to sit with Sidney Kate and show her how it's done.

She proved to be a fast learner! Amy said they were "fishing." Amy dipped their pretzel stick into peanut butter and they dipped them into a bowl to catch goldfish. How super fun is that?!

Yum! After snack we all formed a musical band using various VBS-made instruments. Sidney Kate and I had big fat fun!

Community Movie Night!

So it all started a few Friday evenings ago as Sidney Kate and I were driving home from Kevin's softball double-header...
We pulled up our little road and the neighbors were projecting a movie on their garage door!  Let the fun begin!  Sweet little (he's not little anymore-he's 10!) Jackson ran over to invite us to come watch.  I told him we needed to bathe the little one and put her to bed.  Well...as soon as he was out of sight she began wailing, "I wan-na see Jack-son!"  So, being the super-strict mother I am (haha)...I marched right over for her to see Jackson...and we didn't leave until the movie was over.  I was thinking, "She'll watch some, get tired and we'll go home." Nope.  That girl powered through the whole movie eating 3 cups of popcorn and drinking ?? ounces of liquid.  She sat next to Jackson and was in Heaven!
So...that start led to our other neighbors hosting it at their house last Friday.  They built a huge screen out of PVC pipe and a king size sheet.  So fun!  We watched Toy Story since Toy Story 3 came out that day.  (I guess I have TS2 and TS3 I need to watch!)

Again she made it through the whole movie.  When it was over she proclaimed, "That was a good movie!"

Visiting Kylie...again

We went over to check on our growing Venable family and found Kylie drinking her bottle. Once Keith, Emily and Rylan's food arrived Aunt Emily let "Uncle Kevin" feed KAV
the rest of her bottle. Sidney Kate wasn't quite sure about sharing her parents, but she did pretty good. Sweet little Kylie feel asleep, so (with Mommy's direction) Kevin changed her diaper in an attempt to wake her so she could finish her bottle. Poor sweet girl just wanted to sleep and here we were messing with her!



Our little foot comparison...hard to believe SKV ever had feet that tiny.

Our Little Pool

GG got SKV a swimming pool for her birthday and we finally got to try it out! For a week I had been attempting to come home and let her play, but it stormed at 3:30(ish) every day for a week. We finally got a clear day and it ended up being GG's visiting day. Sidney Kate begs to go to "swimming lessons" everytime we pass the local community center, so he was eager to jump in her pool when we filled it up. She had a blast and GG got to sit for once.


She showed off her diggers and splashing ability.

She had a big time kicking too! I'd say those swimming lessons were worth it!

Just Call Me Diego

That's right...just call me Diego, Animal Rescuer! Driving home from dinner with the Hausers we saw this stray cow just eating grass in a field. By the time we turned around it had made its way to someone's yard. Consider this "most fun ever" and something my dear friend Jeremy Strader would love to have been apart of!
I called Momma and my uncles came to the rescue. Turned out to be someone else's cow and not Grandpa's...but sure was fun finding out!
I went to snap a picture or two and got called back by Sidney Kate, who then put me in time-out.  (Funny child!)

Happy Father's Day Daddy!

"Happy Father's Day Daddy!"  We made this little video to let you know how much we love you!

Summertime Fun!

Yeah for summer! Summer means warm weather and water play!
This is the cutest, easiest water toy ever! (Thank you Liz & Marty)
You plug up the hose and walah!
She claimed, "I love playing in the water, it's...so...much...fun!"
The fish in the middle had fatter holes, so if you stepped (or sat-see below) on them the water came out with more force and went higher.

Here are some things she said when I took this picture...
"Stop it water!"
"Water, get outta my way!"

Always one to drink the water.

PreK Graduation Performance

For weeks, Sidney Kate's teachers have been telling us funny stories about her singing and acting up when they performed. Daily, they practiced for the PreK graduation. Even though she wasn't graduating, her class was singing songs for the event. Kevin and I snuck in the week before to spy on her. We were so afraid she wouldn't perform the night of the graduation because of the huge crowd.
Here is her beachy outfit.

Her super cute hair accessories, thanks to GG!

Those lieus didn't last a minute. And when she got to daycare she refused theirs too.

The pictures were horrible, but I was able to crop one a little. She was looking for us the whole time she was up there. She finally spotted me and Kevin and she talked to us under her breath while playing with the decorations on her dress. The minute we starting singing the "ABCs" she burst into a screaming cry.
We had warned grandparents not to let her see them and we're the ones she cried over. Poor little girl-but she lasted a lot longer than I thought!

Visiting Kylie

After her brunch, we learned that Sidney Kate got to see Kylie for the first time. We heard she was told to be very careful and easy...but still almost landed on her twice. (Grandparents...) :)
So this was taken on our visit later that afternoon. Kylie was snoozing away.

Seriously, beautiful baby! She's so tiny and I don't remember Sidney Kate being that small!

Rylan has grown to like SKV a lot over the past months, but I love to see her say to him, "I wanna play wif you" or him come and ask her to play. I think he's figuring out she can do more and more as she gets older. Of course, taking your football helmet isn't cool...we're working on that.