Memorial Day Weekend 2016

Every year we have a fun, super full weekend at the Lake house over Memorial Day, and every year, I don't get around to posting any of it until a month later.  Haha.  For convenience sake, I'll back date it to May, but I think it is safe to say that our summer may be even busier than our "school" year.  So, I'll just let these pictures filled with people I love a lot do most of the talking. Hint:  there was a boat, a slip-n-slide, snow cones, and sparklers. 

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

I know some little people who were awfully excited to see MarMar and PapPap. We got there Friday night (the Sweetens came on Saturday), and I think they enjoyed their monopoly on the grandparents. 

Though I got to meet McCoy back in March, my family hadn't seen him yet. It may have been a good thing that he got to bake for another two months before these girls got their hands on him. :)

 

After the Sweetens arrived and we all got our McCoy fix, we spent the rest of Saturday out on the lake. 

Since Sam started call on Monday (boo. reall big BOO!), we did our traditional Memorial Day cookout on Sunday, but first the guys golfed and the girls did some hair. Naturally. 

 

 

Clearly, Harper was very pleased with Leah's not-just-a-boy-mom beauty skills. 

Everyone thought we were out there grilling out and slip-n-slide-ing to celebrate freedom and family, but really it may have been this. The unprecedented. 

After fifteen years of playing Dutch Blitz, Mom pulled out a rare victory. Haha!  We kid, we kid, Mama. 

 

The annual picture is getting harder and harder to take, the older the kids gets an the more babies we add. 

This is what the majority of the 28 pictures I took look like: 

Since we had to be back in Roanoke by Monday morning, but wanted to maximize our time at the Lake House, we left around 10:30 pm on Sunday evening. It made for a miserable (though quiet) ride home after such a big weekend, but it was nice sleep in and be local on the Holiday. We took the opportunity to go to the river with the girls and explain a bit more to them why Memorial Day is set aside as a day of remembrance. 

Even if all they may have heard was, "Don't hurt the ducks!"  :)

Birthdays at the Lake

Boy has March turned out to be the birthday month for our family.  We have three March girls, and we are soon to add a March baby boy when McCoy makes his appearance toward the end of this month.  We decided to do a meetup at the lake the weekend after Mom's birthday/before WK's birthday and got to love on them both.

Since it's really hard for MarMar and PapPap to make it to Virginia for the girls' birthday parties (8 hour drives are tough to do in a weekend), Mom is always so sweet to do a little birthday party for them there.  She decided on a Princess Party for my little princess. 

  

 

 

The girls enjoyed helping MarMar make the cupcakes for our party and some homemade baby pizzas for lunch.  I don't know that she'll ever get all those little glitter sprinkles out of her kitchen!  I definitely made sure to take note of which ones the girls iced and decorated so I'd know which ones to avoid.  Haha.  Good news, it wasn't hard to pick them out.  ;)

 

 

  

Mom and Butch manage to make neighborly friends wherever they go, and they've recently gotten to know some neighbors at the lake that just moved in a few weeks ago.  They have two little girls who are six and four, so Mom invited them down to have some cake and ice cream with us and play with the girls.  The four girls picked their favorite princess cupcake, and after they were a 10 out of 10 on sugar consumption, they played pinned the crown on the princess and took pictures with the princess photo props.  I love all the cute little party decorations Mom had.   

Hattie and June (how cute are their names?!) were the perfect playmates for my girls.  They all played upstairs in the playroom for two hours, and we never heard the first peep out of them.  No fighting, no tattling, just one big giant mess to clean up at the end.  Small price to pay for adult conversation over some coffee downstairs.
 

 

 

 

As their party favors, Mom gave each girl a princess kite, and good news, Sunday was the perfect kite flying weather-- warm and windy.  The girls and I were packed up to hit the road when we saw Hattie and June flying theirs down the road, so then we ended up staying another hour to fly kits all together.

We didn't get to celebrate Mom as much as I would've liked (she's too busy hosting to stop to be celebrated!), but I so appreciate the effort she makes to love on my kiddos.  Willa Kate is pretty excited about the prospect of turning three this week!