Mommy of Five

Last week, we had a playdates with Eva'w friends Aila, Haleia, and Violet.  As soon as the party got started the girls immediately got into "princess mode".  They enjoyed putting on their beautiful crowns and jewels, prancing around the house feeling as beautiful as ever.

Dana and I committed to delivering our neighborhood community newspapers since we've lived at our house.  We've made it a family event from the start, but now Eva has taken on the role mostly by herself.  She dresses up in her mailman uniform (just like her Granny), then brings each paper to the house.  She LOVES the job...

Over the weekend, we had a fun sleepover with Rowan, Kierce, and Merrick.  Merrick and Eva were two peas in a pod (as the usual has been).  Merrick loved the responsibility of helping me take care of Eva.  He actually saw her shivering after swimming and brought to my attention that she needed a towel and a chair.  Initially he asked her if she would like to sit on his lap and he would wrap his towel around her to keep her warm (yes, adorable!!), but when she wasn't in to it, he suggested I wrap her up with her own towel.  Naturally she wanted her chair as close to Merrick as possible...

All the kids had fun rolling around in our huge inflatable ball, which they all fit in together, but I could only get two in the pic at a time...

The next morning, the girls and I made breakfast and right as we finished, Uncle Dana came up with the idea to take the kids to the Botanical Garden.  Being that it is typically a 45 minute drive, I was a bit apprehensive, but I called a family meeting in the kitchen and said if everyone wanted to go then they would need to be changed, teeth brushed, and shoes on in 5 minutes...And, within 20 minutes we were all ready to go and in the car, snacks packed, strollers in back, kids all buckled in and pulling out of the driveway!  It was awesome, and we had the perfect amount of time to play and get back before the 'rents picked them up for home.

As soon as we got to the gardens, the kids enjoyed walking the beautiful paths and even let me stop them for some photo opps...

Once we made it to the treehouse, Eva showed Enzo how to get to the top...

They have a really wonderful children's area, so we tried to take advantage of as much as we could in a small amount of time.  We found one area that really worked our problem solving skills.  We built a track to see how far we could get a ball to roll...

There were alot of test runs before we conquered the task at hand...

And once we conquered that, we moved on to the sailboat stream where Eva had fun with the sailboats...

And Enzo got to dip his feet in the water, which he thoroughly enjoyed...

We had a blast with all the kids together and hope we can squeeze many more of these days before they start back up with school.  :)