Aunties are Awesome! (June 30-July 2)

Saturday night, we put
Emily's hair in pin
curls.  It still curls pretty
well!

Emily in her new church
clothes.  She's getting so
grown up!

Auntie Rachel was here for a visit at the same time as Grandma and Grandpa, so the kids didn't get to see as much of her as we do on some visits.  But she stayed for a few days after Jay's parents, so we crammed in as much Auntie fun as we could in the few days we had.

Monday we met Momo, Popo, Rebecca, and Rachel at the Katy Mills Mall for a walk and a little shopping.  We had a pretty good trip, except that Jonathan thought that everyone spent way too much time looking at stuff.  Once we'd done a round at the mall, we headed over to Momo and Popo's house for lunch and playtime.  Everyone was happy to have TWO aunts to play with.  Emily found a puzzle to work on, so she and I, and eventually Rachel, spent most of the afternoon putting the puzzle together upstairs.  We had an awesome pasta dinner.  Then we had a fun Family Home Evening lesson about reverence with Rebecca.  She had made a really fun slideshow for her primary class with examples of how to be reverent and not to be quite so reverent.  We all enjoyed the fun pictures.  Dessert was an amazing Boston cream cake.  All of us wanted to eat the whole thing!  Emily and I snuck back upstairs to work on the puzzle some more until it was time to go.

Does Rachel have a
future as an architect?

Tuesday Emily and Jay went to Splashway Water Park with some friends, leaving the three and me at home.  Jonathan hates water slides, I'm not big on water parks, and the two littles are really too young to enjoy it, so we had decided that Emily and Jay could just have a father daughter day.  They had a great time.  (Emily wrote all about it for the family blog.)

Rachel and her fan club

Since Emily was gone, the other kids pretty much had a free day while I got some stuff done around the house.  Jonathan spent most of the day playing with Legos.  He loves to create different creatures and buildings.  Abby and Ben played with him some of the time and also played with the play kitchen and their other toys.  They all got along pretty well and we had a pretty good day.  I worked on some job applications, cleaned out my desk, balanced the checkbook, and played with the kids.  The only bump in our day was bedtime; Abby was sure that she needed to stay up until Emily got home.  Eventually she settled down, though.  Jay and Emily got home about 9:30.

The puzzle we did this week.  550 pieces.  We were missing
one, which isn't bad considering I think this puzzle is
about 20 years old!

Wednesday was Rachel's last day in Texas, so the kids and I wandered up to spend the morning at Momo and Popo's house again.  Emily and I finished the puzzle we had started on Monday.  The kids played with the aunties.  After lunch, it was time for Rachel to go to the airport.  We said our good byes and headed for home.

We had a quiet afternoon before gymnastics in the evening.  Everyone was sad that all our company is gone for the summer.  But we're looking forward to other projects!