A camping we will go

We were able to take our family camping a few weeks ago with some families from our church. They have an awesome place that they go to often which had a huge open area for tents, camp fires and playing. PLUS there was a river that was super slow moving and very shallow - perfect for little kids!

Our kids were in heaven sleeping in tents, being outside, and playing with their friends all day! Melia especially loves being outside so she was in a great mood the whole weekend! Some of the families had older kids who were super sweet and played with our kids. Oliver loves being around older kids so he spent a lot of time following them around! He also loved chasing and keeping tracks of the dogs that were there. Gabriella was thrilled to have one of her best friends, Olivia, on the trip with her and they enjoyed playing babies and pushing each other around in Melia's stroller!

We had fun...

...chasing kites

...eating smores (Oliver declared this to be his favorite part of camping and I don't blame him!)

...watching for "pirates" on the water

...throwing rocks

...going exploring, while singing of course!

...climbing trees

...riding bikes

...SWIMMING!

...eating, eating and more eating

...and spending quality time bonding with mom and dad!

Thanks to our friends for making our weekend so special!

Growing up, it happens every day

Our littlest, Melia, is growing up. Every day. Now while that doesn't come as a surprise to us, it is quite shocking to see the rapid development she has been exhibiting of late. But more than the shock of the quickness of it, we have truly been delighted by the cuteness of it.

Some recent developments:

• Crawling - that gets better and better every day. The big kids are so impressed with her. Oliver makes sure to point it out to me every time he sees her going and informs our guests of her skills as well.
• Growing hair - this girl is quite adept in this area. Bald men all over the country could take pointers from her. But alas, it was growing into too much of a mullet for this mommy. So we tamed her wild mane with her first real haircut last week. The first day took some getting used to, but we adore her new do!

Here are some before an after shots of Melia's mane...

Before

And after...

Her bangs are not really that uneven... I promise. They just dried funny. And there's also her huge cowlick to take in.

LOVE her!

Here are a couple videos of our little girl in action. First we have some long haired, early crawling:

And now some short haired, crawling a few days later: