Happy Independence Day!!

A holiday weekend gives me the opportunity to catch up on things around here.  On Saturday, we returned from a whirlwind tour of McKinney - Norman - McKinney (with Daddy flying and driving back and forth from San Antonio).

On the positive side, the boys got to spend time with all their grandparents, their uncles, their second cousins, and many other "aunts" and "uncles" in Dallas.  On the down side, this was because Great Grandma Kaldahl passed away last Sunday.  Fortunately, Autumn and Jeff were able to spend time with Grandma the week before she passed, and she was able to see the boys several times over the previous six months.

Four Generations of Kaldahls!!

The trip to Norman was an exciting one for the boys.  Besides seeing Granddaddy Greg and Gigi, the boys had their first trip to the zoo.  They didn't really notice the animals too much but they did enjoy splashing around in the water.  It even managed to draw big smiles from the normally stoic Ezra.

The boys also go to run around outside Granddad and Gigi's backyard (a true honor).  They avoided the koi pond and instead, enjoyed bottomless plates of watermelon, cuties (procurred especially by Grandaddy Greg), and picking up sticks!

While the drive home to San Antonio was one of the toughest yet, everyone is happy to be home.  Baby Girl's nursery is painted, the front room was cleared out (at least for a day), and all of the boys' toys were waiting for them.  They have wasted little time getting back into their routine which includes waking up at 7am, milk, playtime, breakfast, playtime outside, nap, lunch, playtime inside, nap, dinner, playtime outside, fruit snack, baths, and bedtime around 8pm.  More importantly, daddy is happy to have his whole gang back together again for lots of wrestling, tickling, and the occasional reminder of discipline!!

A Visit From Dear Friends...

The past week plus a few days, we've been blessed to have our dear friends the Santoros visit us from our old stomping grounds, Arizona.

Mark and Jeff both had to go TDY for the week, so that left Autumn and Dawn with six kids to handle.  Fortunately, Jacob and Elijah have grown up to be really good boys so they were as much of  a help as they were a handful (Jeff is writing this so perhaps Dawn might have a different perspective ;-)  ).

You could tell our little brood of boys enjoyed watching how big boys played.  They would just watch Jacob and Elijah in everything they did.  They weren't necessarily ready to try many of the things they did, but the did get to play with them some.

Here's Ezra laughing at Jacob growling at him!

Everyone also had a blast on the new play area (play set and sand box).  This included playing on the play set, throwing sand around, and making ice cream and hills with the rocks.

Jacob (blue) directing his workers building their hill.

Elijah dumping sand on Trinity (FYI...she loved it!)

Looked so fun, Elijah dumped it on himself too!!

Finally, everyone settled down for some yummy watermelon.  As wild and crazy as all these kids could be, nothing settled them down like placing some watermelon on the table.  Everyone enjoyed their pieces and even sat still enough for their first group photos...

The first of hopefully MANY double family pictures together!!

It was a busy week for everyone involved but we truly loved it.  We call can't wait to get together again when our kids will be older and yes..the number of kids will increase by 33% (I'll let you figure out the math)!!