Whimsical Woodland Baby Shower

I am so very thankful to two of the ladies in my Life Group for offering to throw me a baby shower for our little man! And they know me well and avoided cheesy and made it just perfect! Whimsical Woodland was the theme! Here are a few pictures! 

(Do I need to mention that my friend who took most of these pictures is a photographer?? She is amazing!)

There was a diaper raffle

Guests could paint onesies using these adorable stencils

Opening gifts

My baby bump!

Me and the three girls that helped out with this beautiful shower! 

THE LOOT! :)

So very blessed and thankful for the time and money that went into showering us with kindness!

Fourth of July

Fourth of July weekend in Flagstaff is supposed to be one of the best places to celebrate it! Mostly because we have such great weather that we can be outside enjoyably! Grandma and Grandpa Flin came up again this year to celebrate the holiday weekend with us! 

On Friday, we played with Ember's new water table

Then we went to a local duck pond with a sidewalk around it to feed the ducks and for Ember to ride her bike. I had a young kid tell me recently that it isn't good to feed the ducks bread - so we fed them some dry oats and grape halves. They really liked the oats and once they realized what the grapes were, they liked those too! Grapes just sink! 

That night we got some Cultured frozen yogurt as a treat! Yum yum!

Saturday morning, the men headed out to downtown early to hold a spot for the parade! Grandma, Ember, and I picked up breakfast burritos from The Dog Haus and met them downtown for the parade! Such a fun community event to do with family and friends!

That night we headed out to the local fireworks for the first time! We had to deal with some traffic but it was worth it! The fireworks were no Disney World firework show but for Flagstaff they were pretty good - and the show was about 20 minutes! I just love watching fireworks!

Another fun Fourth of July weekend in a beautiful town with friends and family! Can't wait till next year already!

Week 32

The weeks just keep ticking by and we are getting closer and closer to holding our little boy in our arms! Come on August 30th! :) 

And Baby Boy got to join us for his first annual 4th of July Parade!! 

Camp Trip

Ember's FIRST camping trip!!

We recently traded in our little tent and got some store credit and upgraded to a bigger tent and wanted to try it out and take Ember camping for one night with just our family before we went with others in case she didn't enjoy it! We shouldn't have been worried because she LOVED it and wants to go back ASAP! She loved getting to go to the bathroom on the ground like Maci does ;)

And it just so happened to be that we went on Father's Day weekend which was the perfect way for Dustin to spend the day/weekend!! 

We got her her own little camp chair and she loved it!

Setting up the tent

Blowing up our new 22" air mattress! 

Our humble abode!

Ember helped Dustin get pine cones and sticks to start the fire!

A panorama view of our campground area

 Hanging out by the fire, eating shelled peanuts, while dinner is cooking

Being silly!

Me and my love!

And had to document Baby Boy's first in womb camping experience with the beautiful sunlight and surroundings!

It was a short little trip but it was really fun for us 4 to enjoy together! And we have had so much rain this June that there were no fire restrictions so we could have a campfire and it was greener than Dustin ever remembers it being in June. Thankful for a good trip in God's beautiful creation! Hoping to make this a more regular thing! 

28 Weeks!

We have made it! The 3rd trimester has arrived!! HOORAY! 

28 weeks down! 12 more to go! 

Family Picture

And a few Pinterest inspired pics to celebrate being 2/3 of the way there!!

Caps for Sale

Well, this book took us a little longer than anticipated to get through. I blame the gorgeous weather and us just wanting to enjoy the outdoors! :) Whatever the reason, we finished and it was fun! This book really is a good one! Fun to read! 

Read "Caps for Sale" every day

Watched the animated story telling on YouTube

Read some complimentary books from the library

We had some alphabet letter upper and lower case matching letter cards with monkeys on them that we used multiple times to keep working on letter recognition (not her favorite) ... I just didn't take a picture of them

We made a mustache on a stick like the peddler in the book. Ember was a little frightened by this... so I used it :) 

We "stacked our caps" like in the book using a kabob stick in a play dough base. Then ate it of course!

I laminated pictures of items from the book and cut them up to create smaller puzzles for Ember to work on (forgot a picture of this too)

We stacked the caps on the monkeys head in the same order the caps were stacked on the peddler's head in the book.,

We played "Monkey See Monkey Do" (no picture since I was busy playing!!) She really enjoyed this game!

Ember practiced her counting skills by counting out the number of coins written on the back of each hat she wanted to buy from the tree.She did surprisingly well with this! 

We made Chocolate Dipped Bananas for a special treat. YUM! YUM!

The fun times continue with Tot School! I am planning to get in a few more books before Baby Brother makes his appearance!!