All the Grandkids!

This is all my parents grandkids! Well, Baby Kinsley didnt' want to participate, but she's only a week old so we let her sit on the side. From top to bottom and youngest to oldest - Lucas, Camden, Gabriella, Ashlyn, Austin, Cayley, Colin. How cute is that?!? Minus the part where Lucas is pulling Camden's eyeball out (sorry about that!). Love that pic -
Hope you are having the time of your life!
ST
ps - can you believe my parents actually agreed to have all the grandkids come spend a week at their house together next summer?! HA! Just kidding - they would totally lose some of them...and they would have to build a bigger house.

conversations from the backseat

A little background info:
We were heading out to my brothers for the weekend to see their new baby Kinsley a few weeks ago. Austin and Ashlyn sit in the back of the van and Lucas and Gabriella sit in the middle row. Lucas still faces backwards in his carseat so he faces both Ashlyn and Austin. We left super early in the morning and I just packed some cereal in a bag for the kids to munch on until we stopped for breakfast (cheerios and kix). Everyone seemed pretty quiet although there were some giggles from the kids here and there so I turned around to check on everyone. (shawn is driving at this point)

Me: What are you guys doing?
Austin: Lucas is hungry so we are sharing our cheerios with him.
Me: How are you sharing with him?
Austin: We just throw them at him.
Me: You are just throwing cheerios at his head??
Austin: He's hungry, mom
At this point I look at shawn dumbfounded at the fact that we have no idea how long poor little Lucas had cheerios chucked at his head. Then I turn around again and notice something else.
Me: Why is there cereal all over the floor???
Austin: Sometimes we miss, mom.

Nice. I love my kids.
Hope you are having the time of your life!
ST

A Chimp?!

Look at me!! I held a real baby chimp this morning!! How often can your husband come home from work and say, "So, honey, what did you and the kids do today?" And you respond with, "Oh, you know, we held a baby chimp and a baby kangaroo. Got to feed some deer. Nothin' much." It was so cool. We went to this exotic animal zoo thing about 30 minutes from here and it was so fun! Got to see really cool animals up close and personal (obviously). Loved every second of it - even though it was a bit toasty out there.
Austin and Gab having some quality time.
Here's my BFF, Kim - she's the one who takes amazing shots of my kids. LOVE her (and so does that chimp! ha!).
Austin holding the baby chimp. He's wearing a diaper! (not Austin, the chimp)
And here's Austin holding the baby kangaroo - wow!!
Over the last 2 and a half months I have learned that I LOVE summer. I suppose I have always known this fact, but we have just had so much fun this year. Maybe because it was a "real summer" this year since Austin started school last year. Before that, summer was just another day...no different than winter, fall, spring...but now it's an actual break from routine where we just see what the day brings. I love it. I love my kids. I love taking care of them every single day. I love listening to their conversations as we eat breakfast in the morning (and let me tell you - there are some interesting ones!). I love having all their little friends (and moms) over to play in the backyard. And, of course, I also love when I get to go shopping all day by myself on a Saturday - ha! So, here is more of a peek at what we have been up to this summer. Enjoy!
On to some other summer fun...Lucas LOVES crackers. Not much gets in his mouth though.
Here's lunch time at the Turner backyard - The Marks came in town so we had to throw a bash.
And here's Baby Taylor - born two weeks after Lucas. Aren't they adorable?! They are totally getting married someday. I just hope the rule "the bride pays for the wedding" still applies.
My baby Lucas - So happy. And LOVES his daddy.
Austin's garden has gone crazy in our backyard. Here he is eating a potato straight from the garden!! He was so proud!
Lucas also LOVES his Papa. I don't know what Papa Settle does, but Lucas just gets giddy when he sees him.
Hmmmm....don't have anything to say about this one...
All the kids LOVE the tire swing Shawn put up!
Here's all the boys going for a ride. About 10 minutes after this, Austin puked. Neat. Little too much spinning I guess.
How in the world do those two girls fit in there???
Here's Austin with a bunch of his buddies - they are playing Bakugan...hadn't seen it before but he loved it (birthday present idea!!)
Shawn received some free tickets to a Royals game so we took all the kids. Even Lucas! We had such a great time. Weather was perfect - we had awesome seats and the kids had a blast.

We even tailgated! The kids were really concerned about eating in the "street". They were afraid they would get hit by a car...I guess that's good, but it was really funny too.

One of our favorite summer time traditions now is to go to Ohio Days in Waverly, KS (where Shawn is from) which is the big fair/carnival/parade. The kids ask about it all year long and absolutely love it. Mostly for the candy, I think...Here's the fam sittin' on the side waiting for the parade to start - quite a clan!!Ahhhh, summer time! Gotta love it!!
Now, enough with summer. Let's get that countdown to school going. 20 more days til first day of school. Not that I'm counting...
Hope you are having the time of your life!
ST

The days are just flying by

It seems time is just flying away these days. Summer is slowly coming to an end and we are getting pretty excited about school starting. Ashlyn and Austin both picked out their backpack of choice - Austin went with "Bumblebee" from Transformers and Ash decided on a turquoise one with lots of flowers on it - super cute. We have had such a fun summer, but I think I'll be ready to get back in the drop off line at school - you know how I like schedules! Although, I am a bit stumped as to how I'm going to have four kids ready to go in the morning by 8 - good thing my kids get up at the crack of dawn. Austin and Ashlyn both finished up 4 weeks of swim lessons last week. They loved the lessons and actually learned a lot too. Austin completed the first two classes and got all his checks marked off - he can even tread water for 15 seconds! Yipee!! He is definitely the water bug in the fam so far. He loves to swim underwater and jump in doing cannonballs. Ashlyn also totally improved, although she still is not fond of putting her head under. The strange part is that she went off the diving board twice! You never know...
Gabriella was a trooper to go to lessons every morning and watch the kids - she actually had a great time on the side with her buddies Will and Sam. As long as she got her fruit snacks she was a happy girl. Several times we would stay after lessons and swim and have a picnic - good times.
Lucas is getting huge and not much of a baby any more. We finally have the asthma under control and he has stopped puking - yeah! He loves to sit up and play on his own. He prefers not to be laying down. He can roll over, but doesn't care too. He would much rather just sit still and play with his bucket that he puts toys in and out of. He can definitely get to where he wants to go, although it's really not a pretty process. He basically lays on his back and does 360's until he gets to where he wants to go - very funny. I can't believe he's 7 months old already -he's eating everything in sight, growing up way too fast. Speaking of growing up fast, Austin will be 5 next month and Ash will be 4!! What?!?!
We got to see our good friends, the Marks, recently which is always a treat. They have 3 boys and a girl - all similar in ages to ours, and her youngest and Lucas are only 2 weeks apart. I got a pic that I will post soon - they are so cute! Of course when we get together we have 8 kids without anyone else coming - holy smokes...
I don't feel like I have much to post today - I've really just been enjoying the kids these days and enjoying my hubby - we've had some fun weekends lately of just doing fun stuff with the kids. I can't say I've done a whole lot else, unless you count, cooking, cleaning, laundry, changing diapers, doctor appointments, etc...ha!
Hope you are havin' the time of your life!
ST

Lots to catch up on here. You will get a load of pics this post! I finally got the computer to work so I could get to my pics. I'll start from back in June. Here's one of my sweet Gabs. Just doing a little reading.And here's my munchkins just being silly.I am lovin' little Lucas right now. I love his age. 6 months is so much fun. He is just cute as a button. And happy as a clam.
This is from our family trip to St. Louis. We went to Grants Farm which is owned by the Bush family (the beer not the ex-president). Anyway, the kids are all feeding the goats bottles. Notice in the pic below the goat that is eating Ashlyn's bow right out of her hair!! Hilarious.
Shawn and I took a break to have a beer - yum.
And here are the owners of Hotel Huster. Yes, they actually let all 6 of us Turners stay at their house for the weekend. Can you believe that? We probably need to pay for some therapy for them after that...ha! Actually we all had so much fun. The kids were all awesome. We had 7 kids 4 and under, under one roof. And can you believe we had them all asleep around 8 both nights? They were sooo exhausted it really didn't take much work on our part, but I still think we should win some kind of award. The Husters were awesome hosts and the kids have already been asking to go back about a million times.
I love you boys!
Here's Gabriella at the arch - the kids loved going up in the arch...I, however, was a bit queezy about the whole thing.
Our attempt at getting a pic of the kids (yes, shawn is holding lucas up)
2nd Annual Settle Campout - 4th of July under the stars....
This was the second year in a row we camped out with the fam (my parents, sister and hubs, brother and kids). Below is a pic of my girls and their cousin Cayley hanging out on the rocks.
I just think this is a cute cute pic of my cute cute hubs - love you hon!
And my happy little fisherman...Austin would have fished all day if we didn't get tired of untangling his line all the time.
That should catch you up on pics a bit. We have been out of town the last 3 weekends so we are looking forward to being home this weekend. It's been really crazy around here. Shawn did take a week off awhile back and put in our new countertop and sink!! I LOVE my sink. It is huge and amazing and black. Very cool. I smile every time I use it. The two days with no sink were not cool though. I will get some pics of it and show you the progress soon. We have also had swim lessons the last two weeks and signed up for 2 more weeks today. Austin is natural water bug and even went off the diving board today! Very cool - pics to come of that too.
I am off to bed - summer is making me oh so tired.
Hope you are having the time of your life!
ST

Need to slow down...

We have been going and going here at the Turner house. I have no pics for you tonight, although I have about a million to get up on the computer (which isn't working). We have managed to go on a big family trip to St. Louis, do tons of work on the kitchen (new HUGE sink that I LOVE), go on a long camping trip with the whole Settle fam and in 3 more days Shawn and I will be off to canoe for the weekend (NO KIDS!!!!!!!!!!!!). So, that's why blogging has been on the back burner. My kids are a bit crazy, with all this madness going on they think they should be entertained all the time now and are having a bit of trouble adjusting to not "vacationing". Last week Shawn took the whole week off to work on our kitchen renovation. He managed to get a new counter top on, the back splash is gone, electric is done and my new sink is in. Shawn and his dad worked many many hours last week and it looks awesome. I love it! I smile while doing the dishes in my way cool sink. Thanks for all the hard work guys! All week I was going from place to place with all the kids trying to keep them out of the house, so the kids were dragged all over creation all week and then we loaded up Friday and headed out for camping. Had a blast camping, although it was a bit windy at night for me. Kids all slept like champs though. Austin particularly loved the fishing, Ash just enjoyed wandering around the campsite, and Gab enjoyed the "snack all day" attitude we had. So, I would say it was a success. We have now started swim lessons which the kids are loving (Austin and Ashlyn) so that's good. Lucas had to get 5 shots yesterday in order to try and catch up on all the shots we missed at his 4 month check so he was hurtin' today. Lots of crying over here. But, I'm sure tomorrow will go better!
I will get some pics up as soon as possible.
Hope you are havin' the time of your life!!
ST

Summer time has arrived!

It is HOT. That's about all there is to say about it. Just plain HOT. We have been enjoying a lot of time at the pool, since that's about the only place we want to be when it's 100 degrees out. The kids are lovin' every second of it too. We are getting all geared up for our first family trip this weekend! Kids are counting down, as are Shawn and I. Lots to do and we still have to sit down and figure out how we are going to fit all our junk into the van. Probably going to have to borrow the topper, dad...
I can't download pics right now since our computer won't even turn on...not sure what's wrong, but as soon as it's up and running I have some great pics to share.
An old college friend is on her way over to play so that's all I got for now -
Hope you are havin' the time of your life!
ST
ps - I caught Gabriella attempting to "go potty like big brother Austin". Why wouldn't she give it a go? If he can stand to pee shouldn't she be able to too?? hmmmm...yes, I had to clean the floor after the attempt.