Kesler Family Reunion

This last weekend was spent up in Donnelly with my family. Everyone was there, well, almost everyone, Eric is still in Iraq. It was a lot of fun to have everyone together, kinda crazy, but tons of fun!

We love to spend time on the lake and mom and dad brought up a boat and jet ski.
I don't go behind boats anymore, not since a prop tried to cut my foot off about a decade ago, but I love to ride in them.
After a long day in the sun we relaxed together and watched a movie. We rented out a home right off the lake.

My girls got to play with their cousins. Charlotte and Carolyn played together quite a bit. However Carolyn likes to put her hands in peoples' mouths and Charlotte likes to bite anything in reach...you can guess what happened.
Lily ended up a little sick an spent quite a bit of time the second day sleeping.
Friday afternoon a few of us decided to go into McCall for a little while. Charlotte just chilled in her stroller.
We got Lily a marshmallow dipped in chocolate, it turned out to be a huge mess.
Thankfully we came upon this little fountain as we walked by the beach so Lily ran over to wash up.


When we got back to the house we relaxed and just enjoyed everyone's company. Charlotte tried to eat her feet,
while Lily and Tyson read her bedtime story.
Also this weekend we got to meet Liz's new baby, Grace. On Sunday afternoon the family got together at our parents' house for her blessing.
Lily was still feeling icky so we just cuddled most of the afternoon.

....Six Months....

I'm a day late on this one. We were out of town for our Kesler family reunion, but we got home today and we got Charlotte's six months pictures taken.

Yesterday our Lottie Lou turned six months old. She has grown so much over these late six months and the time has passed so quickly. I've still been thinking of Charlotte as my brand new baby girl, but after spending the weekend with my sister and her one-month-old daughter Grace I realized just how much Charlotte has grown up already.

She is such a happy child, most of the time, and loves to smile and anyone who smiles at her. She also loves her feet. She grabs them, plays with them, and occasionally bites them...and then cries.

Charlotte is not quite crawling yet, but she manages to scoot around to get to whatever she wants. She'll be crawling any day now.
She has been trying out this position for crawling, but it hasn't been working out well. Nice form though, she is going to be a yoga master.
Lottie has mastered sitting up on her own now. She loves to sit up and look around.
And smile, did I mention that she loves to smile?
She is ALWAYS on the move, always. She doesn't just sit on a lap, cuddle in your arms, she is always trying to get somewhere.
Have you ever read the "Series of Unfortunate Events" books? Charlotte is my own little Sunny Baudelaire. She loves to bite anything that she can, all of the time.
Over the last couple of weeks Charlotte got her first ear infection. We have been giving her antibiotics and she seems to be feeling better, she is thankfully sleeping better which makes everyone happier.

We love our baby girl! She is such a blessing in our home!

Hogle Zoo

Last week we drove down to Utah to visit Tyson's family and while we were there we took the girls to Hogle Zoo. They started out very cheerful. While we waited in line Lily played with her aunts.

And Charlotte relaxed in the stroller and smiled at her mama.
Lily loved the birds that they let wander free.
But her favorite animals were the monkeys, and Hogle Zoo has no shortage of monkeys.
I tried to get pictures of the girls in front of one of the elephants, but Lily just wanted to watch the elephant,
and Charlotte wouldn't look at the camera for anything.
I managed to get a picture of her with one of the giraffes though.
Okay, funny story about the T-Rex. Hogle Zoo has several of these large animatronic dinosaurs throughout the park. They move, roar, and some spray water. Lily didn't really care for them and mostly ignored them, until we came to the T-Rex. She stared at it and kept an eye on it while she walked past it, and then it roared, and she BOLTED! No tears or screams, but she wanted to be as far away from that thing as possible. I wish that I had it on camera, we all got a great laugh out of it.

We got a picture of Lily in front of this wall when she was 4 months old, she was about the height of the infant gorilla then, clearly she has grown. Charlotte was drowsy so I didn't take her out of the stroller for a picture. We'll make sure to get one next time.
Lily was grumpy and needed a break, thank heaven for a little playground. This was a large snake slide and she really enjoyed it.
We managed to wear both girls out, they slept all of the way back to grandma's house.

Swimming with my girls

This evening I took the girls swimming over at Lakeview park again and I remembered to bring my camera this time. We go to this pool probably every other week, but I'm usually too busy to take any pictures. This evening there weren't a lot of people at the pool so I pulled out the camera for a few minutes.

Charlotte loved to stand in the water.

She was less certain when I sat her down in it, but didn't fuss at all.
Mostly she liked to sit at the edge of the water and play.
She watched the little waves as they came up to her.
She is so much happier now that she can sit on her own.
Lily was all over the place. 2/3 of the pool is between 1 foot and 1-1/2 feet deep so Lily can go all over the place. She stands on her tiptoes to move the elephant sprayer that is on the little island.
There is also a splash pad that she enjoys.
Running under the waterfall.
And playing with the sprays.
There is a giant turtle that she likes to climb, or at least try to climb.
Today she finally managed to get to the top.
The girls had a blast playing in the water and now they are both sound asleep so mommy can get some rest.

Lily got her ears pierced!

I broke down today and I did it. I kept telling myself that I would wait until some arbitrary age or date, but I couldn't take it anymore, so I took Lily this afternoon and had her ears pierced. Of course we picked up an ice cream cone for the brave little girl on out way home.She was such a good girl. She was a unsure about the lady drawing dots on her ears, but when it came time to pierce them she just sat on my lap and held my hands. She only fussed for 10-15 seconds when it was all over and then was running around, saying goodbye to the lady who pierced them, and reminding me that I had promised her an ice cream cone.
She came right in the house when we got home and got back to playing with her doll.
I think that it looks adorable. She was good tonight about letting me clean them before bed as she looked at them in the mirror.
My baby girl is growing up so fast.