Are you ready for some football?

Apparently, we still have some work to do before the boys are ready to cheer on the Pats.  You'll need the volume turned up to hear them.

The Party Don't Stop!

Mairead has been four years old for about two weeks now, but the party just kept going and I still have more birthday pictures to share!  We made our annual summer trip to Grandma and Grandpa's house and our little girl was lucky enough to have a birthday party there with our family from NY.  It was so great to see Dave's cousins and now our kids' cousins.  There were nine children there ranging in age from 15mos to just under 8 years.  It was the first time that all nine cousins have been together, and it was so much fun to see them playing together!

Before the party started, Mairead opened a special gift from Grandma- a high chair and all kinds of accessories for her Bitty Baby doll.  She loved the little toys and blocks.  Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa!

Later, Aunt Ry helped Mairead open the gift from the Heckathorns.  What could be better than about 100 little animals to play with?  Mairead loves animals and she loves anything with a lot of pieces, so this was a perfect gift!

Uncle David helped get the party going by blowing bubbles with the kids.  The boy in the foreground is the kids' cousin, Eli, who is 16 mos old.  He is super cute and could easily have passed for Jack and Ben's triplet.

Noah is Eli's big brother and he will turn three this month.  He and Ben chased each other all over the place.

 This is Jacob, who is 6weeks younger than my guys.  The boys didn't call him Jacob, though, they called him Lightning McQueen because of the shirt he is wearing!  Jack and Ben are completely obesessed with the movie Cars right now (the original).  They each carry around their little Lightning and Mater die cast cars all.the.time.  I am trying to find more cars from the original movie (Sally, Mac, Fred, Chick, etc) but haven't come up with any yet.  If you know where I can find them, please let me know!  The ones I have seen on ebay are crazy expensive.

 The boys (that's four two-year-olds!) kept parading various wheeled items up and down this "road."

Dave is sitting with three of his grandparents.  How cool that our kids were able to spend time with THREE great-grandparents, and to know four?  It was really special to be able to see them enjoy watching our kids play.

How cute are Emily and Rachael helping Jack ride the Big Wheel?

This picture makes me laugh- it looks like I just did 'cut and paste' with one kid!

Grandma made a pretty special cake for the birthday girl!

This child can put away more chocolate ice cream than most grown men.  Seriously- she loves it!  She is definitely a choc-o-holic, and she says, "chock wit" in the cutest way, too!

Nathan and Mairead are about 6 months apart- Nathan's blog is listed to the right if you want to check it out!

Thanks to Jim and Jessica for the beautiful party dress-- can you believe how old she looks here?

The party was fun, but exhausting!  Jack needed to sit with Grandpa for a while just to recover!

Thanks to all of our NY family for taking time out of their very busy schedules to come to visit and have fun with us.  It's not easy to get everyone together and to gather up that many kids, so we truly appreciate it.  The kids had a great time playing together and it was fun to chat with the adults, too.  We hope to see you again, soon!  Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for putting together another great day for us and for the kids!