family & friends

 Adam, his brothers, & dad all enjoying each other's company. It actually looks like I told them to pose for a picture, but this is truly natural.

These cousins find small spaces in Opa & Oma's garden and play house. The dolls & strollers come out. They have night time & they take turns being mom & dads. Watching & listening to them talk brings many smiles.
I tell Adam not to worry about our boys playing with the girly stuff because we don't have one girl thing in our home & they are just toys that are different & new.

While the other children play, Andrew finds things to do. Sometimes it is helpful, other times it is not so helpful. Just a note. I wish that these were our gardens but they are not. These are my in-law's gardens & their gardens could pass for a park. Their soil is amazing & I tell myself that they have more time to garden than we do because they don't have young children to keep you hopping:)

Ida is my mom's cousin from Holland & she spent three weeks at my parent's home early this summer. We just love her. She has a tender & kind heart, always willing to help, & we loved spending time with her. Ida, if you are reading this, we hope that you are booking your plane tickets for next year!

James, the last of the boy cousins to be born, was the first one to be walking. This is not surprising since he has a super competitive father who wrote down the time, date, & location of James' first step just in case one of the other boys started to walk on the same date. Just so you know, Tyler was a close second & we did not practice walking with him. We know from experience that this is something that we did not want to rush. Once they start walking, they walk away from you & find things to get into.

I was feeling all creative and thought that I could make a Canadian flag on my dessert out of strawberries. Do you know how hard it is to do a maple leaf? Hence the real flag.
Poor Nate came back from a few days of camping with a huge, swollen cheek. Dentists already do not work long hours (in my humble opinion) so it was a challenge to find a dentist that was willing to come into work on Canada day. But we did, & with the help of antibiotics the pain faded away.

Andrew is looking pretty beat up. He is full of poison ivy & he got a good scrape on his forehead. He was doing acrobatics in the living room & something happened. I just know that he didn't cry. At the beach everyone was asking him about his forehead & it must of bothered him because when we came home he picked his scab & then told me that his forehead fell off.
Poison ivy has become our number one enemy. Nate has had it all over & now Andrew. We cannot find it on our property but their itching & scratching drives them crazy. We have emptied the pharmacy of every cream, lotion, tablet, you name it - we have bought it. Now my kitchen looks like a mini pharmacy.

For the third year in a row, Adam has taken the two older boys camping for a few days. Andrew was supposed to go, but when I saw the cliffs that they hiked along, I thought that he better stay safe here at home given his past history of accidents. The boys look so forward to spending time with their dad & Adam loves it to.  They brought books, a special devotional, games, and sport stuff. Adam makes a menu and buys all of the food. It is a special thing to do & I hope that they can keep this up. In a few years all of the boys will be old enough to go camping with Adam. I plan to stand at the end of the driveway and wave them off (!)

When we were all younger, the daring ones in our family would climb up the pergola at my parents house and jump into the pool. This hasn't been done for a long time because we are getting older & wiser. This must of bothered Erik so he took on a dare & made a big splash.