Cayden Walking!

Just like all of the other milestones throughout the past year, Cayden took his time learning how to walk. He wasn't all that interested in pushing walking toys. (Although he does love riding his scooter...) He was pretty content crawling and doing his own thing. I'm hoping this laid back attitude will stick with him when he's older:)

In January -the month he turned 18 months- he finally started walking and now he's running around trying to keep up with his sister. Here's a couple short videos of him being bribed with a remote to walk the first time. (Yes, I was using our actual video camera to record it while J recorded with his phone.)

A Weekend at a Lake House - Part 2

Our weekend at the lake consisted of pjs, lounge wear, puzzles, coloring, TV and relaxing. One evening, we had a spur of the moment dance party. The kids had so much fun! Ok, the adults did too:) I hope the memories we made will stay with our kids for a long time.

       

We helped kids do puzzles, struggled (and never finished) a crazy hard puzzle for the adults and lounged. Oh, and the kids loved on each other. Seriously I don't remember any of them ever fighting over toys or hurt feelings. They were all friends and so sweet together. Here are some random pictures from the weekend.

 The basement had a table perfect for working a puzzle! There was also a pool table but any time the guys tried to play it the kids would try to "help" so that never really worked very well. 

 It was funny how the boys were dressed so much alike (accidentally.)

 The guys were gathered around the TV watching football.

 Zzzzz...

Of course we had to get some "triplet" pictures just as we have done every 6 months. Now that they are older and more mobile it was a bit harder to get them to all sit and smile.

In birth order: Cayden, Finn & Grey

The first time they met:

 The older kids were getting cozy while we were taking their brothers' pictures. They may have been a bit distracting:)

 We were trying to show their height difference but you can't tell much in this pic. Finn is the tallest and then Cayden and then Grey. I love that they all have about the same amount of hair but each boy has a different color. They each have such a different skin coloring and body shape. It's so fun to compare them:)

 You can see their height a bit better in this pic. These boys are so much fun.

 Of course they aren't looking at the camera, but they sure are sweet.

 ...and they're done.

 We wanted to get a picture of all of the kids. Please note my son in the next two pictures. We had a total and complete melt down.

 And a picture of all of the kids in age order. Some smiling, some not, but at least there aren't any crying!

 Pause. 

We need to take a trip down memory lane:

4 months old

11 months old

17 months old

 It is amazing how fast these boys have grown. I'm thankful that we've been able to get them together about every 6 months. I want them to grow up as friends!

 It is absolutely amazing that our group of 6 friends not so long ago has grown this big!

 After the kids went to bed we made s'mores in the fireplace. I had to include this picture of me mid-bite because it shows what we actually did all weekend:)

 A little cartoons on the last morning. I think their expressions say it all. They were exhausted but not ready to leave each other.

We had an absolutely wonderful weekend! We stayed in an amazing (and free!) house. We had lots of laughs, played lots of games, and talked non-stop (the girls. Not the guys. As if I needed to state the obvious.) It was so hard to leave our friends. I was not ready to go back to reality. But knowing that somehow we have managed to get together about every 6 months made me know that it won't be long until we do it all over again!

A Weekend at a Lake House - Part 1

In the fall/winter of 2012 we took a little getaway to Tennessee with the Taylor family and the Owens family. It worked out so well that we decided we would try to do a getaway together at least once a year.  The following summer the Taylor's came to town and the Owens' also came to Lexington and we were able to spend a day together. The sad part was that both times we got to spend time together we wanted way more time together! This past fall we weren't able to all figure out a weekend that would work for us to travel to Gatlinburg and we were really bummed.

There is a family at our church who also happens to be the in-laws of one of my co-workers and they open their lake house to anyone who would like to use it (as long as they aren't going to be there obvs). So I sent an email to see if there was any way we could use it for a weekend in the first quarter of this year. After I got back to work from my Christmas break, I had an email saying that we could have the house two weekends later. Gasp! That's not much planning time.  I talked with Lindsy and Janine and their families were able to make last minute arrangements for a weekend at Lake Herrington.

Lindsy went into planning/organizing mode which makes things so easy on the rest of us. We were going to be there from Thursday night until Monday morning. We each took responsibility for cooking two meals and it worked out so well. It was actually fun to cook in the gourmet kitchen that had TWO sinks and TWO ovens. Living the high life:) Oh and there was a second kitchen in the basement but we only used it for the fridge. No biggie.

Brace yourself. Between the three of us taking pictures I have over 600 pictures from the weekend to sort through for these posts!

The house is absolutely beautiful (like seriously out of a magazine.) I'm in awe that the owners of this house just trust people that they don't even directly know to stay here! The view of the lake is breath-taking. This is the view of the back of the house from the water:

The Owens family couldn't get to the house until Friday night so Team Taylor kept us company on Friday. Lindsy encouraged me (strongly) to go running with her. It was hard to change out of lounging pants in a nice warm house into running gear in 22* weather with snow (my fleece was covered white when I got back) and crazy hills. But we did it! I hadn't run since November and although I was sucking air, I was able to get 2 miles in.

Tim and Lindsy took the bigger two girls down to the water. Jonathan put our big lens on the camera and took pics from the upstairs porch.

And of course Lindsy had her camera clicking on the way down to the water.

The rest of the day (and weekend too) we just stayed inside lounging, watching the kids play together and enjoying memories being made. We all commented that it's amazing that 7 kids in one house were calm and played together so well. We didn't have any melt downs. Everyone just got along. It was just so sweet to watch. Adalyn was in girl-heaven with friends to dress up every day all day!

The girls did lots of fun girl-playing. Coloring in dress-up clothes:

Doing each other's hair:

And watching Tinkerbell:

Saturday morning we had 7 kids gathered around the breakfast table! (Look at that amazing view out the windows!)

 We even had to put the extra leaf around the outside of the table to make it as big as possible. The kitchen chairs have white cushions so we covered them with towels and also grabbed basement chairs for the booster seat children. Thankfully we were able to make it through the weekend without any spills on furniture!

We decided to bundle up the kids and all take a walk down to the river. It was frigid and even colder by the water. The big kids didn't seem to mind the cold because they were all about throwing rocks into the water. Who are we kidding? The adult boys were into throwing rocks into the water too. And the wives and baby boys were trying not to fall off the rocks while taking pictures of our families.

 I love this picture of Avery. She looks just like the girl with the hat on Despicable Me:)

 They were having the time of their lives!

 He wasn't crying. It was just so cold that his little eyes kept watering.

 3 friends and 3 boys.

 Aunt Lindsy took Cayden down by the water so he could throw a rock. He didn't want any part of touching the rock but he loved watching her throw them in the water.

 Adalyn was proud of her giant rock!

Family photo shoots. Because why not.

 Ok, I don't even think I'm halfway through the weekend so I'm going to have to make this weekend into two posts! There are just too many pictures and too much fun to cram it into one post:)