Annual cousin swim weekend

In what is becoming an annual event, we met Brian's brother and family down at his folks' place for 3 days of swimming, eating, swimming, a little rest, and some more swimming. I honestly think these are Katy's 3 favorite days of the year, she anticipates them like Christmas. She loves to swim and she adores her cousins, so what could be better? Leading up to the trip a couple of her friends would mention getting ready to go to the beach, and she said, "Well, I am going to Grammy's house to go swimming with my cousins!" Everyone that we saw for the few days before the trip, she told them, "I won't see you for a few days." Talk about anticipation!

We spent hours and hours and hours in the pool. Both Katy and David improved their swimming skills while we were there. Katy can just barely touch on her tiptoes in the shallow end (3 feet - the girl is short), and she would get very frustrated when she had to wear a flotation device to participate in certain activities (raft jumping, slide, etc). But once she got over it, we all had a good time.

Papa John's school of biscuits. We eat like kings when we go to Kentucky!

She saw this picture and said, "I look like a baby!" She wants to be big so badly!

David jumped off the wall like crazy and propelled himself in this little raft. Luke loved to float in this thing - my others never wanted to stay in there for more than 5 minutes but we only took him out when he had had enough sun.

Kimmy is 11 now! Hard to believe she's off to middle school.

Leah demonstrates a proper landing in the raft game. If she sticks the landing, she gets to the next "level."

Katy - still mastering her form but equally determined to advance.

Kimmy helped me make an Elmo cake for Luke's birthday (oh, and Kelly and I got a mention, too, since our birthdays are all the same week).

Katy heard from the pool that we were decorating the cake and came running in to put the last 4 stars on.

Yay! My baby's 1!

So, red is apparently a very difficult color to achieve. Seriously.

They take a break to eat meals in the gazebo.

Gathering to sing to Lukey.

So you can imagine that if it's difficult to achieve the color on the icing, that the dye sticks quite nicely to skin, teeth, and clothing. (Beth, I will be replacing this outfit of yours.)



The cousins are old enough to read bedtime stories to us! What a treat!

 Somehow I didn't get a good photo of Grammy, which is a shame since she's the one who makes this all happen. Thanks for hosting out little mini-vacay - we had a blast!