HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANIEL!

Here he is on the day he came home from the hospital.



And here is the little rascal one year later! So far, he's a very adventerous little boy who loves to tease and knows exactly how to do it. He loves hugs and trucks. He likes following Nathan around and likes a lot of activity. Unlike the rest of our family, he is an early riser.

The next time you see us, please refer to us by our proper names:(left to right) Bobcat Bird, Backhoe Cat, Digger Dog, Cherry Picker Chicken. The Backhoe Cat has created quite an imaginary life for us over here. In this new world I'm hoping there's a maid and a cook included.

Camping

We've been gone a lot the last few weeks. Here's some of what we've been up to.

This year's Sandman and Nathan playing with his new best play dough friend: Kari.

Putting out the fire.

Joel's happy that Daniel is showing early interest in one of his favorite sports: windsurfing.

As is usual when visiting grandparents, both of their mouths are crammed full of food. Gram has some of the best treats: "appicots and ass-sauce" as Addison likes to say. (read: apricots and applesauce)

Nathan is very proud of his way big tower of sticks in the dump truck.

Swimming with cousin Caleb. He didn't seem to mind that one of the kids was usually crying about something.

Out to lunch

Playing the kazoo and doing his business in Grandpa and Grandma V's car. Hey, whatever it takes so that I don't have 2 kid's butts in diapers.

Swimming Lessons

For the past 2 weeks we've had unseasonably cool weather with plenty of rain from about 10-10:30am. But Nathan didn't seem to mind and is quite a little fish now.

My future superstar athletes: Michael Jordan and Andre Agassi

Four Boys

Joel worked on the fourth of July and I got to hang out with these little rascals all day. Here we are all peacefully eating lunch.

It is more accurate to say that only one of the four boys was a little rascal. Here is Nathan in perhaps his 50th time out for the day....by the end of the day all I had to do was point and he would go put himself in time out.

By 6pm I admit that I resorted to the TV for entertainment. But overall, it was a pretty good day!

Reeling 'em in at Pine Lake. Here's a shout out to Bryce for letting us use his fishing pole.

Not to be outdone, Daniel is planning his mission. I think at this point he had it set on permanent press.

Nathan and Shontel crammed in the cockpit at the K-zoo AirZoo. Shontel had done plenty of missions by the time the day was done.