Our neighbor Lydia has a great retro Schwin banana seat bike that can ride two kids!  It's the coolest!

Alexandria had her first dental visit last week, and she did far better than I'd imagined with just a few tears during her cleaning.

Ice cream was her treat of choice for doing such a great job!

Yep, that's how we roll here at the House of Harvs.

Pizza, popcorn and a movie before bedtime in the tent.

They did a pretty great job of falling asleep and staying asleep all night in the tent.  I did have to shove Blake back onto his queen sized air mattress once, because the full sized one was going to be pretty crowded with three of us.

And Alexandria loved playing on the air mattresses after all the sleeping was over.

Blake was at preschool camp or else he would have been right in the middle of this jump-a-thon.

Last week I started the packing/piling process for the campout, and as quickly as I could put things in a pile, the kids would pull them out and start to play with them.

I had to supervise the Monopoly Jr. game once they got that out.  Blake has big plans to play this with his friends at Eminence.  I'm not sure they'll be inside playing board games that much, but we'll throw it on the pile of games anyway.

Sometimes (regularly) I forget about uploading pics from my emergency camera, the one I keep in my purse for the times when I have forgotten my big camera.  Here's what I have from the last month or so from that camera.

I believe these are from Memorial Day weekend, Sunday night after services.  The 4-6 grade class put on a skit that I believe Verity directed.

And then sometime within the past week or so....

Going down the slide together.

And then these from just last night...

We ate at Roma's with the Owens and Cooper clans last night after church and happened to see that they were also having fireworks in Bethalto at 9:20, so we stuck around for that.

Last weekend we were in Iowa for a short, but fun-filled weekend.  The real reason for the visit was to see John and Anna married, but we tried to cram in as much family time as we could too.

We got to spend some quality time with these two cute little red haired boys.

Maddy's sweet new loft bunk bed was a big hit with our kids.

We got in late, so we all slept in our clothes.

Blake's shirt was missing in action for much of the morning.

They were all so excited to see each other that it was hard for them to hold still at all!

On Saturday afternoon we witnessed the nuptials of John and Anna and wish them the very best!

Blake took a few close-ups of unsuspecting folks during the wedding.

Just sitting back and enjoying the show with his snack.

Matt took a few pictures with his iPhone too.

Alexandria was thrilled with the "castle" church where they were married.

Posing by this great red door!

So tired and not in the mood for pictures.

Poor Alexandria was pretty tired for most of the weekend, so we saw a whole lot of her crabby face.  After the wedding we headed back to the Hermons so the kids could nap and gear up for the reception later that evening.  We had a nice visit with Dane and the Hermons in between the wedding and reception.

The reception was at Toad Valley and was really nice.  We had a delicious plated meal brought to us (a real score for those of us with kids)!  They even had a special meal for the kids with a chocolate chip cookie on the plate.  Alexandria didn't even hesitate before grabbing the cookie and chowing down on it.

Blake liked all the clinking of silverware on the glasses during the reception, which signaled the bride and groom to kiss.

Allison was calm, cool and congenial, as always!

We shared a table with Dane, Dawn, Lynette, Marvin and Melda--great table mates!

Best man speech.

Anna's sister, Kat making us cry.

The great thing about the reception at Toad Valley is that when the kids get restless, we can go right outside and play putt-putt golf.

Papa Bruce--guardian of the purses. 

Back at the Hermon ranch...

Maddy set up a nice little movie night with these three.

Gabriel had to go to bed before the big kids, but he got in on a little of the fun.

SUNDAY MORNING

Everyone spying on the deer.

If I could clone Maddy I would and keep her at my house.  She is sooo good with the kids!

Grandma Ingle gave Blake this hat for his dress-up stash.

And she gave A some jewelry, a purse, shoes and a shirt for her stash. 

On the day we were to leave for a quick weekend trip to Iowa we had a nice thunderstorm roll through.  For whatever reason, Blake and Alexandria were sure that the rain would postpone our trip.  It didn't, but they watch with very concerned looks for quite some time.

Once the rain got inside the garage, Blake found it necessary to get the cones out.

So the new thing for the kids is to run at full speed down the hill in the back yard and then plop onto the swings belly first.  They have a decent success rate....so far.

This trick didn't really pan out.

Definitely in princess mode here.

Blake's friend, Hudson invited all the preschool pals over for a pool party last week, and we all had a great time.

It wasn't cold; she's just silly!

Last week Blake went to spend two days and one night with Papa and Ma, so Alexandria and I soaked up all the girl time that we could.  We went shopping, had lunch at 54th Street, got pedicures, played with the neighbors (who are mostly all girls), watched The Princess and the Frog (I may have fallen asleep during part of the movie), and we even put fancy braids in Alexandria's hair.  We had a really great time with just us, but we missed Blake too and were glad to have him home with us.