A beach and camping weekend

It was the week that would never end, or so it seemed to the Muffins. Everything exciting was happening on Friday: a beach outing with a friend, followed by camping with Dad. Miraculously, every Muffin survived the wait, and so Mom was able to take some pictures of them enjoying the beach. Most of the Muffins took no time at all getting into the beach spirit.

Clarissa, however, took a little longer. She did eventually make it past hiding behind a chair to join the fun.

Mom and the Muffins got home from the beach just a little after Dad got home from work. "Take pictures!" Mom called as Dad and the elder three Muffins left . . . and Dad did! Mom got a temporarily quieter house and blog material. :)

Fourth of July 2014

We've been in New England not once but twice on the 4th of July now. Although the creation below was not actually constructed by the Muffins until after the 4th, it was nevertheless planned in honor of the occasion. (The white stuff is greek yogurt; not quite the same as the original cake and cool whip plan, but still works.)

Last year we decided to go to the beach for the 4th, which is another story. We learned from the experience, though, and did our beach run on the 3rd this time. It worked out much better. Not only was there plenty of parking, we also beat the rains that fell on the actual 4th. A few pictures from the outing:

On the actual 4th, we had a nice, quiet family day, out of the rain.

The kid's never thought it would come, but at last it did: the time to eat hot dogs and watermelon!

Now all we need to add for next year are some fireworks. :)

Happy Mothers' Day 2014 from Amanda

I love Mom so much

because she is very kind.

Oh, how I love Mom.

Easter 2014

There are those who would say that it was because of the bunny . . .

Mom, however, knows better. First there were the eggs. Normally, the big event is egg coloring. Mom missed the event completely, since Dad took care of it while Mom was off having a girls' day out. Not only that, he also set up Easter baskets for the kids and had an Easter morning devotional with them. All this while he let Mom rest up after her epic girls' day out. Here are the eggs and baskets:

Grammarians in the audience may have noticed the carefully placed apostrophe in "girls' day out," AFTER the "s," clearly indicating the presence of another female besides Mom. It was Mom's cousin and former roommate, Martha, who is shown here with Clarissa.

One of the many fun things about having Martha around was having someone on hand to take a family photo.

And then we took a few more pictures.

Since a certain Studio C sketch, embedded below for your convenience, Jared has been fascinated by photo bombing. Fortunately for the rest of us, he staged his photo bomb after we'd gotten most of the pictures we were after.

Loads of kids

This morning while Jared was at school, Mom took the younger three Muffins out for a little wagon ride. The wagon load of kids just had to be photographed. (Lydia really did like the ride, despite the look here)

 After Jared got home, we had an impromptu trip to a large, unfamiliar store with lots of interesting things for small people to get into trouble with, which meant that we went into the store with a full cart: (Jared asked to be in the cart, by the way)

As Mom was finishing up the store errand, amazingly with all the kids still stationed in the cart, it occurred to her that it's a rare thing to have so many family members able to fit into a shopping cart at the same time. Gotta enjoy it while it lasts. :)