We recently had our sister, Tera, and her two precious girls (Sadie and Ruby) with us for 10 days ~ which we have concluded is NOT long enough! We crammed in almost every possible activity, making the most of every moment together and had an absolute blast together. Lets get on with the pictures and I’ll comment along the way! 🙂
The girls arrived at 3:30ish in the morning and I couldn’t help but wake up my girls to see them because I was too excited! It took all of 3 seconds and they were out of bed playing and loving on eachother! This continued for about an hour… 🙂
This picture was taken around 4am 🙂 Too cute!
Sadie and Ruby checking out their room 🙂
Our first meal together!
Tera relaxing after the long night
Then it was off to the beach (these girls make it look warm but it was actually quite chilly!)
Cousins and best buds!
Brrrrrr….!
Spending time in the backyard hanging out with friends ~ Nick, Steph, Ben and Hannah
Our precious little nieces ~ oh how we love you!
As I was going through pics to post I had a good laugh over all the funny looking candids (we all make really funny faces when we talk!) but there were two that topped them all ~ and the winner is…..
oh wait, it’s a tie…
A trip to the Potawatomi Zoo where we saw some very rare breeds of monkeys and lions…
Yip, this was the best we could do at trying to get a group shot 🙂
Elli’s 3rd birthday was Sept. 3rd and we’ve managed to celebrate it four different times now! We purposely waited on the big party until Auntie Tera and the cousins could be with us, and it was well worth the wait! The day began with making the cake (off to a great start!)
Auntie’s famous chocolate cake was divinely delicious as always and we had a bit of fun decorating it as well!
Party time! 4 little fairies as cute as can be!
Enjoying dinner on the deck for probably the last time this year 🙁
Elli had so much fun opening her presents ~ she squealed over each and every one!
We thought it would be fun to let the kids decorate their own cupcakes with the leftover frosting we had ~ it was so cute watching them layer on the frosting as thick as could be and then pile on sprinkles, and a bit more frosting! Even Ruby Cakes joined in!
This day was precious to me… having the cousins together for Elli’s birthday, watching them flutter around in their costumes, hearing the giggles and laughter of kids throughout the evening … what joy!
A couple quick photos after church on Sunday 🙂
A rainy Monday made for a great relaxing day for crafts & games!
Then the sun came out and it was time to play play play ~ at the beach!
Yes, we pretty much had the beach to ourselves!
A quick trip to Warren Dunes to watch the sunset was a must! If you look closely you can see all us girls hiking up the big dune.
A morning trip to Stover’s for apple picking was so much fun ~ and even more fun has been baking all the fun things you can make with apples!
So sweet, brother and sister 🙂
Ruby picking some apples 🙂
The “apples of my eye” ~ tee hee, sorry, just had to. Seriously though, aren’t they just precious?!
We stopped to see some beautiful horses at Concord Ridge after apple picking.
And one last trip to the beach on our last night together ~ ice cream required.
Ruby loved chasing Elli and Elli loved being chased!
Playing in the fountain ~ Sadie was the first to be adventurous enough in the brisk weather!
How cute is this?!
These two were pretty cute together 🙂
We just couldn’t stand for the fun to end so the kids got to stay up until 10:30pm watching a cartoon together!… then we drug them out of bed at 6:30am, what kind of parents are we?!
(Ruby is wearing a tank top that Ty wore when he was just a toddler!)
And alas, the dreaded day came… the last picture we took, all of us in the van almost to the Chicago Airport.
Thank you Tera, Sadie and Ruby for flying all the way to Michigan to see us. We loved every minute with you xoxoxo