Lake Fun!

For Maysie's 7th Birthday we organized a trip to Tahoe with her birthfamily. We had SO much fun! Maysie got to meet her sweet half sister, Rylie <3 She was pretty enamored with this cheeky little girl. We also met Brent's mom and Maysie's Uncle Daniel and his girlfriend Kelli (who was very pregnant at the time and now Maysie has a new little cousin!). We are so blessed with the beautiful relationship that has blossomed, it's so easy and natural. We look forward to our next get together!

Maysie commandeered a volleyball from some nice strangers so we could play. I almost forgot how much volleyball hurt!

Elise and Maysie both kept doing sneaky spikes :)

How precious is this!!?

We stopped at a vista point and nearly got blown off of the giant rock! We had the death grip on the kids so we wouldn't lose them!

The beach we went to wasn't dog friendly :( This is what Brute did to entertain himself while we were gone.

Maysie Lou is SEVEN!

I can't believe how big this girl is getting. SEVEN years! She's our fun loving, charming, empathetic, smiley girl. She loves sweets and comfy clothes and being in the limelight. She is quite opinionated these days and has some spunk that emerges more often than it used to. She and her sister know how to get crazy together and have fun and spend time each day driving each other nuts too. Maysie has a sensitive heart and about 50% of the time will try to cover for her sister because she doesn't like to see her get into trouble ;) 

For her birthday we picked up donuts and went to play at the park. She made sure we went to the dog friendly park because she wanted Brute to be part of her birthday celebration. Then we took a picnic lunch to the splash park. The girls loved the feature that filled up buckets of water to dump on their heads. We made our first time debut at Costco with our club membership, YAY! And since it was Saturday, the free samples kept the girls happy while I perused the store and spent a small fortune. I think I wore the birthday girl out! After we revived ourselves we picked up some Carl's Juniors for dinner (because that's what the birthday girl wanted) and went to the grass outside the library to eat with Brute of course who got his own order of fries :) Mark was going to be home Sunday but had to work an overtime shift. Oma came over to join us for dinner and I made a horse cake as requested. We are so blessed to have this sweet thing in our lives!

This little monkey does stuff I've only seen Olympic gymnasts do!

Fun in the water!

Nothing like a little sisterly love to end the evening.

Bits and Pieces of Summer

Maysie and I spent an afternoon creating this masterpiece. She did a fantastic job, and the girls love using the set to eat tiny snacks .

A huge black oak on Mark's parent's property fell across a neighboring fence line. Mark and I spent a couple mornings out there getting it all cleaned up. There is still more to cut, but at least the fence has been repaired. I like to watch him work ;)

This little cutie thought she should wear her bathing suit with her "belly button hole" in the front. lol

Daddy date. She and froggy were pretty excited!

Cousin cookout. They gathered all of the apples off the ground and "seasoned" them and "roasted" them and "ate" them :) So fun.

 Took Brutie dove hunting with us on opening day. He did SO great and stood there by Mark til there was a down bird and he was released to fetch it in. We were so proud of him. There were 8 birds, but I cleaned most of them before I remembered to take a picture.