Chase and Joanna's birthday party... and more flower pictures.

Are you tired of flower pictures yet?  Too bad :P  The other day I had seen a swallowtail butterfly at the bee balm, which I was really excited about, but when I went to go take a picture Bolt followed me out the door and then ran into the bee balm and scared it away.  So I was very happy to see it back a few days later and be able to catch a few shots of it.

Black Swallowtail

This little one is a Red Admiral butterfly.

I had a hard time getting a picture of it with it's wings open.

Since it's been so hot I've been trying to remember to water my flowers every day. 

Little Black Capped Chickadees like to visit my feeder.

I've also seen a cardnal and a couple mourning doves there.  There WAS a fat, pesky squirell hanging around as well but I haven't seen him for a while. Not sure why ::cough, cough::

 (P.S. I'm pretty sure a BB gun could never kill/injure a squirrel, and if it did, we'd just have stew)
My Perenial Phlox finally started blooming as well.  I've discovered that I'm not very patient when it comes to waiting for my flowers to bloom :P

 My butterfly bushes seem to be attracting more bees than butterflies :/

 and I'm still obsessed with this grass.  Doesn't it look so soft?! (and yes, I need to weed out there)

A couple weekends ago I had a birthday party for Chase and Joanna.  Their birthdays are convientently only a week apart so it's nice to have a big joint party for them every year.  Actually, I DID try to keep the party small but it just seems to never happen :P
Everyone got here around noon and we had burgers on the grill with pasta salad, regular salad and chips, nothing fancy.  I had gotten an army cake for Chase and a Princess cake for Joanna.  I forgot to get a good picture of them with their cakes but they loved them... and they were pretty delicious too :)

It was too windy to light the candles so I told Chase to pretend to blow them out and he was happy to oblige :P

We also had a pinata.  there were 18 kids at the party so not everyone was able to have a chance to hit it, unfortunately, but I think the had fun anyway.

Joanna's face in this series of pictures is too funny.

picking up the candy after it broke:

It was a beautiful day for a picnic, not too hot but hot enough to play with water and go in the pool.

 Everyone got to go home with a soaker.

 Not everyone was happy about that :P

A bunch of us played whiffleball in our "field" it was so fun.

And fun to watch, apparently :P

 My mom wanted a picture of all the grandkids together.  I think it turned out so nice!