Just some fun photos of the girls with their grandparents. Both girls got a lot of additional attention during their visit. That is the best part of having Grandparents! Grandparents play, treat, sneak you snacks, hug, and make good places for naps.

A fun visit with our Florida grandparents just came to a close. Visits are too far apart and always too short. Especially at the speed the girls are growing. During their visit we went to visit the Mayfield Dairy and saw how they make jugs, fill them, and move ice cream around the plant. We also ate some yummy ice cream. During their visit we ate good food, splashed at pool time, did some shopping, and stopped by a park for some quick play before a storm blew in. In and between all the other activities there was also a lot of play, hugs, and stories.

I lucked onto the idea of the grandparent photo by the swing. It worked really well to keep the two year old contained and looking somewhat toward the camera. You can’t get enough photos of grandparents and their grandkids.

What do you do with a pretty day, two pretty girls, and a pool? You have a lot of fun!! We splished and splashed until we were cold and in need of a snack. Emily shared toys really well with Julia and when we convinced her to not pour water on Julia everything was perfect. Julia enjoyed the pool from the floating bumbo. The bumbo wasn’t going to flip over, but it allowed her to move around the pool a little and chase toys. She has never had the ablility to get herself to the toy she was interested in. Like I said, it was perfect!

There are moments that happen that need to be bottled so you can enjoy them over and over again. They are not the big milestone moments, although they would be fun to have, it is the small insignificant moments that show a glimpse into who we are and how we tick.

I had one of those moments today. We were at our Mommy/Kid exercise class today and Emily was enjoying rummaging through the toy box when we arrived. I was getting Julia settled for some floor-time so I could give Emily some Mommy time. Emily shows up with a toy for Julia to play with. Amazingly it was an age appropriate toy too.

I was so pleased that one of Emily first thoughts was to think of her sister. This moment is worth living over again – where is that bottle??

We spent a beautiful hour out picking strawberries with some friends and their girls. It is nice to be out with people that Emily is familiar with; so that, she is so much more bold. She also wants to be like the other girls so she generally acts better and tries new things to be like them too. I think she had a lot of fun, she didn’t have any inhibitions about picking the red strawberries straight from the plants on the ground. No lesson on how to pick was necessary. I might need to check over the ones we picked to see if we have any overly ripe ones.

Emily picked strawberries, visited with the different mamas, hung out with the girls, fell down and required comfort, played in the dirt, found mud, played with Julia, snuck snacks from Elena’s lunch, and sampled Mommy’s strawberry fried pie. I call that a successful outing! It is hard to take photos, herd kids, pick strawberries, and get great photos. So, I have no photos of Julia because she hung out in our front pack and no great individual photos of Emily. But we had fun and enough photos to help us remember it by.

We took a drive to the mountains with the girls to see some sunshine and feel the fresh breezes. We picnicked at Cades Cove, then we took advantage of a nearby stream for a little playtime. After our cold-toe fun, we took a hike up the trail along the stream. Julia rode in the front pack and fell asleep half way out. I take that as a sign that she enjoyed it. Emily rode in the backpack with Daddy. She loved it and near the end of the hike she put her head down on Robby and may have gone to sleep if we hadn’t been overtaken by horses on the trail. That was way too interesting to look at.

Julia is big enough to hold her own in her umbrella stroller. The only problem is that the stroller is small enough that Emily thinks that she should be able to push it. We let her push the ball around in the stroller and decided that she might have to wait a little while until she gets to push Julia on her own.

For as cold as the stream was, you would not have known it by the reaction of the kids. Julia never fussed about her toes in the water and Emily stayed in it until we told her to get out. We were able to trick Daddy into wading into the water. Julia has her usual serious face about having her feet in the water, but I think she was studying it more than showing her displeasure.