Busy weekend/week

We spent the weekend celebrating my grandparents' 60th anniversary! Wow. What a testiment that is to their commitment--to the Lord and to each other! We had a lot of fun. A surprise gift for them was a hot air balloon ride (nice work Warene!). They loved it! We got to watch them set up the balloons and a couple of my uncles even got to help.
Then the kids & I went back to Iowa with Mom & Dad for a few days. The weather was gorgeous up there and, as always, the kids had fun. Anna just told me today, "Mom, I had so much bun (fun) at Papa's house.......it's Binga's house too!!" (when Mom was in the hospital for so long, in her mind it became just Papa's house--Binga lived in the hospital. So now that Binga is home, it's her house now too!) Papa just becomes another kid when the kids visit and they play as much as they can :) She even rode the mower again, after MUCH convincing and wearing her headphones from the van (I didn't get a picture this time, but it was very cute). She really dislikes very loud noises, and his mower is very loud. But she always has so much fun riding and steering. And after she gets off, she says "Dat wasn't so bad Mom". What a kid. She is VERY excited about the upcoming princess party. This morning she wanted to know if she could have her party today. Let's just say she wasn't happy when I told her she had to wait another day!

And Jacob is all over the place now. He's finally realized that he can crawl from room to room. Luckily for me, I can hear it when he decides to go somewhere b/c he really pounds his hands on the floor as he goes! ha And sometimes he just screams. Ugh! That is so annoying and I'm not having very much luck breaking that nasty habit :( My dad tells him to use his man voice, which I think is hilarious, but it seems to work sometimes. Anna has taken to telling him that too. Which is even more hilarious!

I finally caught the scrunchy nose grin!!

Happy 60th Grandpa & Grandma!!! :)

Rough life, isn't it?


The balloon van got stuck, so all the guys helped get it out. What a family! :)

It was really cool to watch how they got the balloon ready to go. To air it up, they used a big fan and basically blew it up while some volunteers (my unlces) held the ropes up so the air could get in. It was HUGE, too.

Off they go!

A garage sale find of Papa's...Anna loves playing with it. Actually, aside from playing with the kitchen a little bit, this is pretty much all she played with this visit! And Jacob decided to crawl over and take a look...whoops. Actually, I think he was just going for his book, which happened to be in the middle of it.

"Noooooooooooo Jacob! "

She is devastated (such drama!)

Papa takes care of things...