Wendorff Gathering!

Sorry it's been a while but we've been a busy bunch.  Our busy-ness started on May 8th when Holly, Olivia, and Elizabeth flew in for a visit!!  We were all so excited to see them and meet Elizabeth.  Here are the middle four taking a bath together. 

One of the reasons for Holly and Joel coming back was for a Wendorff cousin's wedding.  It was at the beautiful Semple Mansion in Minneapolis and kids were not invited.  While this posed a hardship for all of us at first in lining up child care, we all agreed that it was so worth it in the end to have a fun evening free of kiddos.  While we contemplated hiring two sitters to watch all seven kids, we decided to split the families up instead.  Our four were at home with our sitter, Isabella went to her other grandparents, and Olivia and Elizabeth were watched by a girl who has watched Olivia on past visits when we have events.  It was a very fun night and we all enjoyed ourselves!

The next day was Mother's Day and we went over for a Mother's Day lunch.  Here is the dynamic doubles team in a few years.  We know these two will dominate the Lake Conference in tennis.  We just need Olivia to become a resident of the state first!

The older four

Me and my babes

Amanda and her babe, Isabella

Holly and her babes, Olivia and Elizabeth

Debora with her babes, Amanda, Jacob, and Holly

The original Wendorff clan

During all the Mother's Day festivities, Hannah got thirsty.  Since she couldn't find a cup to drink from, she settled for the dog's water dish!

We were all sad to see the Zimmermann clan leave, but none as sad as little Hannah.  For some reason, she loved to be around Elizabeth.  While she has always been interested in Isabella, she had a weird fascination with Beth.  I think it was the hair.  Here is a series of photos to illustrate just how much she loved little Bethie!

She just couldn't kiss, touch, or climb on her enough!  We're trying to convince Holly and Joel to move to MN so we can see them all the time. 

On a side note, I'm a little bummed because as I went through all my photos from the week together, I realized I never got a photo of all the 2011 babies together or all seven grandkids.  Next time...

Dancing in the Rain

Last Friday night was the start of a big storm system coming over Minnesota.  While Saturday poured and pounded rain, Friday night was just a nice rain in warmer weather.  I went to drop Ellie at a friend's house for a sleepover and came home to find the other three outside playing in the rain while Daddy supervised from the cover of the garage.  It was too cute to not capture their fun in the rain!

Pooling rainwater, yum!

Standing under an overflowing gutter to get even more soaked.

Saturday was a nasty stormy day so we stayed snug in the comfort of the house.  In honor of the cruddy weather, we had grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.  As Hannah would say, "Num num!"

Outside Fun

Forgive the disorganized feel to this post.  Blogger has changed it's blogging templates and I'm having a heck of a time figuring it all out.  So my pictures are out of order and the blog has a very disheveled appearance to it - much like I feel our life does!

We have been playing outside like it is our sole purpose for living.  Some nights we go to the park (Ellie's old school playground at Crystal Lake Elementary) and other nights, we just hang out in the driveway.   

As you can tell, Hannah loves going down the slide!

Finally free of facial scrapes, I cornered Hannah when we were at the school one night and took her 1 year photo for the wall against the brick background.  So she's really 14 months old when I took it, no biggie! (at least that's what my OCD, must always be perfect mind keeps telling myself)

The Easter Bunny brought Hannah a bubble machine and she loves it!  I'm not sure the bank account will love it since it has already killed one set of batteries though....

Carter got a shiny new bike!  He loves his new ride and it was assembled perfectly by his handy mama (Daddy had a choice and decided he'd rather put the baby down for a nap instead of put together the bike.)

 I had to include this photo because it was so funny at the time.  (Disregard the kitchen disarray.  That just goes to prove my comment regarding our disheveled and disorganized life at the moment.  Too much to do and never enough time to do it all.  Thus, housework goes to the wayside.)  Anyway, Jake seems to like always having his shorts hang much lower than the rest of the residents of our house would like.  I just walk past him and hike his shorts up for him.  One night, Hannah was tooling around post-bath in just her diaper and I noticed that her crack was hanging out too!  I had to snap a photo of the two of them because it was too funny.  Of course, getting a 14 month old to stand still in the position you want her so you can get the photo is near impossible so this is the best I got.  But the older trio and I had a good laugh that night!

Otherwise, there's not much exciting to report around here.  Handy Mama did completely dissect the half-bath toilet and replace all the tank pieces and a new supply line to the toilet.  (I know far more about toilets than I ever care to now.  One week, three trips to Fleet Farm, and borrowing some tools from a friend at work and I finally got the job done.  Thank goodness we have two more toilets upstairs!  All I wanted was for the toilet to stop running.  Didn't think it would require such an education in tools and toilets!)

I promise to post again soon!  I have to because writing this whole post was painful as I try to figure out Blogger's new "easier" format.  Sure didn't seem easy to me!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all! We started our celebration with a week off from school and work for both Ellie and I! It was a wonderful week to play with the kids, meet my grandparents for lunch, workout whenever I wanted, and to do some scrubbing of the house.

Despite my reservations, we decorated eggs on Saturday. Since only Ellie and Carter like hard-boiled eggs, we only boiled up 10 eggs for the kids to dye. One did not survive the boiling process so I did not decorate an egg for Hannah since we split the remaining eggs between the 3 older kiddos.

They had lots of fun dyeing the eggs!

The finished beauties!Where was Hannah since she didn't get to decorate this year? Eating Kix in the living room. She couldn't figure out why her bowl was empty!Today, Easter Sunday, we went to Mass in the morning and over to Papa and Mama's for lunch.The kiddos got to love on Isabella and we hung out with family, napped, and headed home for an early bedtime. A great day celebrating the ultimate sacrifice made for us! He is risen!

Now to bed since my spring break is over and I have to go back to work tomorrow. Blah!

The Madness of March

March kept us very busy. Due to some super nice and unseasonably warm temperatures, most of our free time has been spent outdoors. Since I already have a bunch of April photos in queue on my camera, here's a quick glimpse of how we spent our March.

Sweet baby toes in sandals and playing "So Big" with her shadow!

Num, num, num. Hannah loves to eat the chalk. While she grimaces nearly every time she eats it, the allure of the chalk has not dissipated and she continues to sample it daily!

Ava's great fashion sense still continues....

Busy girl outside with her chalk again, taking a ride on toy from a neighbor's house, and trying to figure out bubbles.

Ah yes, I had a birthday in March too. My catch phrase for the year is "A piece of heaven at twenty-seven"! It gets better the next two years, I promise. Not much rhymes with 27. For my birthday present, I finally got to get my DSLR camera! Jake caved after two years of begging and pleading. It has been oodles of fun to play with it and take gobs of pictures. More on my camera in posts to come....

The beautiful March weather meant a trip to the park was in order.

The troops do love being outside to play.

The multiples group had its spring sale the end of March. I managed to snag a ride-on toy for Hannah so we don't have to "borrow" from the neighbors anymore. She loves it! Ironically, Ava had this same car that I purchased new for her (and a red one for Carter). Sometimes it doesn't always pay to be in such a hurry to sell things off since I had to buy the car again. (Same goes for the baby monitor I received new after Ellie was born. Still haven't figured out what possessed me to sell it after the twins no longer needed it but we were planning a finito. We may never know how my mind works.....)

March kept us on our toes. Hopefully things will slow down in April! It sure would be nice to have some time to actually catch up on things around here! I need to hire a full-time assistant to help me get all my tasks and projects accomplished.