The Long Story Made Somewhat Short

In attempt to update my blog and catch it up to where we are now... I'm going to highlight each month (or try too)!

Here we go....

The last real post I did was in June when Nate had his first hair cut.
Mimi came at the end of June and we went to a fair, strawberry picking, and did lots of playing!

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July was a packed out month!

We went to the cabin for the 4th (annual Gehman family tradition)


The whole Clan

All the grandkids


Will going down the slip-n-slide

Abby and Will together. (this gives you somewhat of an idea of how long and high the slip-n-slide was) It was crazy.

Nate excited about everything! Josh put him down the first time when I went back to the cabin for a minute.... I never would have let him down. But he loved it!

If you click on this picture and see it larger, its Josh fishing on a tube and holding Nate at the same time. Only Josh!


From there we went down to Mimi and Poppi's for a couple of weeks. (all but Josh did)



Abby was able to attend one of Lilly's dance classes and loved being a ballerina, although she was very shy.



Will was able to go to one of the Charlotte Ealges soccer camps for a whole week! He learned so much and enjoyed every minute of it even in the hot weather.


Most days we ended up here at the Monroe water park. It goes in gradually so its fun for the kids to be able to touch the bottom but also swim. Will learned to swim on his own and underwater here.


Abby got more confident in swimming as well and putting her head under for a while.

They both went down all the water slides there which they were scared of last year.


Will found a salamander (i think) and a tiny turtle. The salamander was in the same spot almost every afternoon sunbathing.

Yes, thats Will's hand holding the turtle... TINY.


Then, Josh met us and we all drove to the mountains of NC for a family vacation at a Lake.

We spent most of our days in the water and were so thankful for nice weather. There was lots of tubing, swimming, and diving going on.


All the cousins. Here is Will about to jump off the two story dock. I didn't even have to coax him. I just asked if he wanted to do it and he said "Yes" with a huge smile on his face. Usually he isn't this daring!

And he did great and went over and over again.

The whole fam!

Roasting marshmallows and making smores. What fun memories!





Then we drove home and a day later my sister Jen and her family came to stay for a week! :)


We went blueberry picking and it was such a beautiful place on top of a mountain. Not to mention, they were the best blueberries I've ever had!



We played lots of games (Bag-o, board games...)

Looked for FROGS!

Had campfires!

Went to a BMX dirt track for the boys to ride their bikes.
We went on many picnics, went to the lake, swam in the creek, and the boys did lots of fishing with their dad and uncle Shaun.
Thanks for visiting us, we had a blast!
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Here's August....

It was nice & hot, so we did lots of swimming in our pool and the creek. Nate is just as much a fish as the other two and not scared of the water one bit.

The wildflowers behind our house were beautiful this year! I love the purple and white combo!

Got a different lens for my camera and this is the first picture I took with it. Love my boys and of course my new lens that I'm still learning how to use.

Abby got a short hair cut. One day when she woke up from her nap, a huge chunk of hair came out on one side of her head and part of the back... so I chopped it off!

I think it fits her! :)

And we went to Sesame Place with our friends.


The men and the kids enjoying the lazy river while the moms were with the two little ones sleeping in their strollers.

Elmo's flying fish ride.

Will going down the water slide.


Meeting Elmo. It was one of Nate's first few words...."thats Elmo"

Meeting Big Bird.



Abby's favorite show watching Abby Cadabby sing and dance.

This was Count Dracula's water park. Every couple minutes they would count down in his voice and the bucket that filled up with water would pour out on everyone.

Elmo's World!

This was the HIGHLIGHT! This is Abby Cadabby (one of Sesame Street's newer characters). My Abby just loves her obviously because they have the same name and because she's a fairy! This was all Abby talked about and still talks about.
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And finally, September.
This turned out to be A LOT longer than I thought.... and I left out a lot of pictures too :).
Not a whole lot going on in Sept. We started finishing our basement and hung around and did things at home.
One of the fun things we did was go to our church's fall festival.

My cowboys!



The kids loved sitting in the fire trucks and trying on all their gear.


Abby and Will both climbed part way up their ladder with one of the firemen. We didn't get a picture of Will doing it because right when he went up, Nate got into a big clump of grease on the bottom of the fire truck that I was trying to get off of him and me.... gross!


Face painting was a hit as well.

Don't know why Will had to get his pumpkin smack in the middle of his forehead!


Abby started riding a larger trycicle (Will's old one) and Will is getting better and better at his new larger bike. He got a new (used) bike for agreeing to stop sucking his thumb. He hasn't done it since - we were surprised at how easy & willingly he gave it up!


And Nate started eating cereal all by himself :), without many spills!

We played with friends...

and played with cousins!

YAY, caught up to October... will work on that one tomorrow. I promise I won't let it go this long again... it was too crazy to get this all done at once. Such procrastination!