Best of the best.

These cuties were racing and I love running pictures because everyone is happy without having to say “smile”, so I grabbed my phone for some quick pictures.

Then Georgia started standing, which was her newest and most exciting trick, so we stopped to watch.  Hard to believe she will be running with these guys in no time.

Like father like daughter.  Georgia is constantly putting things in her mouth like this and I love it.

The next day was Father’s Day, so Harriet and I made breakfast in bed for Brian.  Elna slept in, or she would have helped too.  This picture is blurry, but I love it anyway—Hattie, wearing nothing but an apron, proudly taking breakfast to Brian.

Then, right before church I snapped some pictures of Brian with the girls, but Elna was the only one outside at first, so I got a couple of just her.

Beautiful, inside and out, this girl!

Growing up way too fast!

He’s our very greatest blessing!  These girls are so stinkin lucky to have such a great dad!  He’s the best decision I’ve ever made.

Goodbye Lymans

Our friends, the Lymans, moved to California in June.  Sad!  Ericka had a goodbye party at her house.  We will miss Emily at our girls nights!

A lot of kids and only one swing—Elna is kind of hiding behind the first girl in line, and Hattie is at the end of the line.  There are a lot of kids between all of us—this wasn’t even all of us—no Jillian or Brandi.

And a funny one—I never know what to do…

See?  Still trying to figure out something funny to do,

I figured something out.

Me, Katie, Ericka, Emily, Ashley, Stephenie, and Becca--I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends!

Home again

I lost all of my pictures from the North Carolina segment of our family trip back east, but I’m still hoping to get them from a friend, so that post will come—I hope!  When we got back, two things happened right away:

We put Georgia in a forward facing car seat.  I think she likes it…

I kind of took more pictures than necessary for a relatively insignificant event…but it was obviously pretty significant to her, because she doesn’t smile like this very often—thus the pictures!

And then the next day, she was still beaming, so out my camera came again…tell me you could have resisted!

Can you even?

When your one year-old isn’t very happy, you take a ton of pictures when she is.

The other thing we did right away was get Elna’s birthday fish.  More than anything, this girl wanted a cat (and if not a cat, a chinchilla, a hamster, or a guinea pig) for her birthday, but since Brian said no to each of those, she settled for a fish.  On the way home from the pet store we asked her what she was going to name her (actually a him, but don’t tell her that) I told her it might take a couple of days to come up with the perfect name, and she sweetly interrupted me to say that she already knew her name.  Meet Adelia—our first pet.  Now, to keep her alive!

Happy new pet owner!

Emerald Isle

After Brian’s meetings were over Saturday, we drove to Emerald Isle, NC to meet with the Summers for a week at the beach.  Brian and Kyle grew up together and are still good friends.  Kyle’s boss owns a house right on the beach, so we were able to stay there for the week.  We had such a great time!

Georgia, Elna, Emma, Ava, Clara, Oliver, Hattie, and George

Kyle’s wife, Lindy, is really crafty and productive, so she made a bucket, filled with beach toys, for each kid—8 kids between our families.  Elna’s face here is making me laugh—she was bugged about something sweet little Georgia was doing.

How could you be bugged with that face?  Ha!

Elna picked up and kept every single shell she saw on the beach.

Favorite picture of Harriet maybe ever!  Her little spirit shines so brightly through her eyes and smile

My girls love Emma and Ava--they were so nice to my girls!

George and Hattie--I just couldn’t pick one of these—look at Hattie’s smile!

Georgia rocks sunglasses!  She loves loves wearing them!

Lindy brought craft supplies and the girls were in heaven—crafts are my girls’ love language.

This was my crew coming back from the beach—I stayed at the house while Georgia was napping.  You can see how close we were to the water.

Elna had the best time riding the waves.  She was so brave and adventurous!

On one of our days we went on an excursion to Fort Macon.  It was beautiful and very interesting.  This sign was great too!

I loved the wood tile flooring throughout the fort.

All eight of our kids.

Kyle, Lindy, Clara, Georgia, me, Brian.

Gorgeous!

Just being good dads.

Cute Summers family!

Elna was in heaven!

She’s happy, in case you can’t tell.

After our Seaside beach trip in April, I kind of figured Hattie wouldn’t like the water here—but she loved it!  Probably because it was pretty warm.

Harriet was copying Georgia’s crawling and Georgia thought it was hilarious.  I kind of love this picture because all of the Harris girls are accidentally in it—Elna is way back there in the background.

Elna buried in the sand.

This was our last night there.  We stayed out there pretty late to soak it all up.

Building castles and waiting for the sun to set.

Lindy tried to get a shot of me and Brian, and Harriet wanted to be a part of it—love it!

Our trip home was loooonng.  We left the beach around 11 a.m. and drove 3 hours to the airport in NC, then flew to Chicago, where we had a 3 hour layover—brutal!  It was about 11 p.m. eastern time when we left on our final leg back to Portland.  The girls were exhausted, obviously!  Luckily, we were so blessed to be able to get a spare seat next to each of our older girls so they could sleep.  All 3 girls slept the entire 4 hour flight back home.  We didn’t get home until around 1 a.m.  We had the best time on our trip, but we were so happy to be home!