Thanksgiving Point Gardens

When my Mom was here a couple weeks ago we took a trip to The Thanksgiving Point Gardens in hopes to get some landscaping ideas for all our flower beds. Needless to say I now have outrageous ideas that I'm afraid will never come about. I guess things always start with a vision, maybe I'll just hire their landscaping crew to finish mine! :) Yeah right! Here are some pics of their beautiful flowers...
These flowers were really cool, neither my Mom nor I had ever seen anything like them.





Madalyn was so funny, she kept naming everything in the gardens. These stairs were "Hercuele's Stairs", I'm guessing from the pillars at the top.

These were Cinderella's stairs...

And this was Ariel's rock...

FINALLY! We have GRASS!

It has been an ALL summer project getting our yard in, and well it won't be for many many years I believe until it is at the point I envision it, but at least we now have grass. At the beginning of the summer Erik decided he wanted to do the sprinklers himself so he could learn how to do them, I agreed as long as they were done by July 4th. HA! We weren't even close.
This is Erik diggin the trenches...you wouldn't think but Erik was terrified of this machine. He kept picturing hitting some electrical or water line or that the thing would just take off and dig right through our house. :)


It was really hard to keep Madalyn out of the trenches and out of the mud and dirt. Let's just say she had multiple baths a day for quite awhile.




After ALL summer the sprinklers were finally done. What a job! Let's hope we never have to do that again. Then came the top soil...this was a job that definitly seemed easier than it actually was.

Madalyn especially had fun helping with this. She even got her shovel out and helped put dirt in the wheelbarrow. However that only lasted until she found how fun it was to climb all over the dirt mounds instead. :)



The next and most exciting step...SOD laying. We had the sod delivered on a Friday evening and within a couple hours after it being in our yard, a bunch of our neighbors were over ready to help. It was AWESOME! We were planning on just getting a head start Friday night and then doing most of the work on Saturday when my Dad and some other people could be here to help, but with all the help that came we were completly done by that night. It was amazing. We have an awesome neighborhood that is for sure! Thanks everyone!

...Cousins...

Kristeen was in town this weekend with Brylee so we got all the cousins together for the first time since little Samuel was born. Needless to say dinner at Bjorg's is getting more crazy every week! It was fun to see them all together. Brylee (left) Layna (right).. they are about a month apart, Brylee being older.

Who's going to get who first?

Ava is the best older cousin too...you can tell she likes her little girl cousins a lot. Even Madalyn has grown quite attached to her. We left that night with a kicking and screaming Madalyn because she didn't want to leave Ava. So sad! :(


All the girls!


The three little ones

Thought these were cute!

Time to go night night!


Let's go running. I've been running a lot with the kids and Madalyn has decided that she can't leave without her glasses. And yes, I've tried to correct her multiple times in saying that they are upside down, but she insists that is they way they go. Whatever works.

It may not look like Layna is enjoying herself, but as long as she is feed, she usually really likes the sroller rides.

Happy Independance Day!

We began our 4th of July this year by attending the Parade. The kids liked it because of the candy and toys they got, the little girls liked it because of the "princesses" in it, and Erik liked it because he was sitting in shade. :) Erik and Allen weren't invited in this picutre because they were too cool to dress festive for the day...it was really hard to get a picutre with all kids looking, out of many taken I'm sorry but this was the best.




Our favortie part of the parade were these jeeps. It's kind of hard to tell exactly what they are doing from this picture, but one jeep would stop in the middle and then the four jeeps around it would all ride up onto one of the center jeep's tires. Everytime they did it it looked like they were all going to tip over, but it was pretty cool.



Later that afternoon we had them all over to our house. We went swimming first, had a BBQ and then watched the Thanksgiving Point Fireworks from our neighborhood.
Thanks to Allen and Gretchen these glow sticks were a life saver for the kids. Waiting around until 10 at night for fireworks with a bunch of tired kids isn't always the best experience. :) But these glow sticks kept them all very happy, until the fireworks came on and then they all wanted to go home. KIDS! They are so funny. They all couldn't wait for them to start, and then after about two of them they all want them to end and are begging to go home. :)

Our girls!

We love our neighborhood pool!

Oh no!

The other day Madalyn really wanted to put Layna in her dolly stroller and take her for a "walk". So just for kicks and giggles I put her in it for Madalyn...however I didn't let her push her more than a few inches. The last thing I wanted was an injured 3 month old.
Layna did look pretty adorable in the stroller though. It was JUST HER SIZE!