Happy Father's day!... and Happy Birthday Chase!

I have to share another shop from a friend of mine.  She makes hair bows and headbands and even has boy stuff like bow ties and such. Crabby Baby Boutique, check it out.  I got the girls a few headbands when she had one of her sales and they love them.  Joanna wanted to wear them all at once :P

And Katy looks especially cute with hers :)

We like to do naked meal times to keep the mess somewhat contained.

Last Tuesday my parents decided to come up for a visit and it was so nice to have them.  I had gotten a whole flat of strawberries that I intended to make freezer jam with and just hadn't gotten to by the time they arrived.  So I recruited my mom to help me with it.  Katy was very clingy the whole time they were here so I only kind of helped.

We got it all done though and it was a lot!

That's definitely enough to share :)

poor Joanna didn't really get to see them at all though.  She smacked my dad in the face at one point and then wouldn't apologize to him.  So she spent all night up in her room.  I was sad that she wouldn't just say she was sorry so we could move on with it, we don't get to see them as much as I would like, but she wasn't budging.  After they left I asked her if she wanted to call Pop-pop and say she was sorry and she said yes, but then when we had him on the phone she clammed up, oy vey! Well the next morning when she woke up I had her draw him a picture and helped her write "I'm sorry" on it, put a stamp on and put it in the mailbox.  She was very happy to do that and keeps telling people how she hit pop-pop and then drew him a picture :P
So Chase ended up getting all the attention to himself, which he did not mind at all.

For dinner we had Chicken Rollatini, it was a new recipe that I hadn't tried before but looked good.  It turned out really good too!  I'm definitely going to add that to my "recipes" page.  I think Dad said like five times about how much he liked it :)  My mom made a really yummy salad too and brought some of her famous dinner rolls which we ate with strawberry jam, of course.

I was holding clingy Katy all night :)

After they left, Ricky decided he wanted to give Chase his birthday present early.

He got a bow!

and he was very excited :)

Ricky had to help him pull it back at first but has since gotten it turned down and he is able to pull it back on his own now.  He LOVES it and shoots with Ricky every night.

Saturday we spent the day cleaning up and doing work around the house and then went fishing in the evening.  Joanna gets tired of fishing pretty quickly so we ended up sitting in the van while Ricky and Chase fished.  They had fun though and caught and released a bunch.
Sunday was Father's Day and Ricky had said that all he wanted was a fun day out with his family.  So I had the brilliant idea for us to go to Gettysburg for the day.  We left a little before 9am and stopped at the Lyndon Diner for breakfast.

 Still no teeth for that girl, sigh.

 It's really not that far of a drive from us and we got there around 11:00.  All the kids were free to enter so we just had to buy tickets for us big kids :P

We went in and watched a movie on the Civil war and Chase was enthralled. Joanna was not too thrilled with all the gun and cannon fire but sat on her daddy's lap the whole time.  After that we went up to the "cyclorama" where they have the largest painting in the world. It is a 360 degree painting of the war that was done 50 years after the war had ended and was recently restored.  The restoration took 5 years!  They had another kind of re- enactment up there which was pretty cool.

 Joanna once again held her ears the whole time

After that we walked around the actual museum a little bit and then the gift store and then Katy decided she needed to eat. So we walked back to the van and I nursed her.  We drove around a little after that and then got to the lookout tower and decided to go up.  It was a beautiful view up there and you could see the whole battlefield up there.  It was quite the climb up to the top though and the kids were literally crawling up the last flight of stairs, Ricky and my legs were shaking and we were huffing and puffing, ha ha :P

 [little round top, and big round top]

 [little round top a little closer]

After we made it back down we went and found a picnic spot and had lunch and then headed home.  It was a very fun day.

The puppies are getting so fat! they still don't have their eyes open but it should be soon.  They are already starting to crawl better every day.  

 I'm a huge fan of this picture:

 And, my favorite puppy.

Ricky's chickens have gotten pretty big too:

They still aren't laying any eggs, and it will probably be another couple months til they are.

Monday was Chase's fifth birthday.  We didn't do anything really special though.  First thing in the morning he came down early and snuggled with me in bed so I told him the story of when he was born and how happy we were to have him.  We went grocery shopping in the afternoon, which he loves to do, and then I made him spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.  Ricky also called him from work to wish him a happy birthday and he just loved that :) 

We're having a party on Sunday for both him and Joanna.