Father's Day

MY DAD!

The reason for celebrating the day!
I definitely dropped the ball in planning ahead for this day. When I asked my Mom if she had anything planned for the day, she said "He's not my dad." Fair enough. That's true! So, we planned, in very short notice, a picnic at the park. (Thanks to my Mom!) For some reason, my Dad reminds me of Pa Grape in this hat. (Have to watch Veggie Tales to understand!)




Alliyah was ready to play! She's wearing an outfit that my Grandma Corbett made for me when I was little!



Monkey Annie! She can climb!



Elli swinging! And learning how to keep herself going!



Liah cuddling with Grandma ♥



Me trying to get a picture of Justus while holding him!

Annie and Kaity...best cousins!

Sam and Elli...best cousins too! Trying to convince them they can't get married when they're older is difficult!

Jeffrey and Justus...waiting to eat!

After the meal, came the part I think the kids loved the best! We all walked to the pond and the kids tried to feed the fish and the geese. These are very well fed fish and geese...I'm not sure the kids even saw any fish and the geese were totally uninterested!

Still trying to feed the fish!

More studying the water for fish!

Zach posing with the fountain in the background.

Nathaniel and Austin found shells, stinky snail shells. (Some of the other kids found them too!) We tried to convince them to leave the shells there or the snails would be homeless...I think we actually succeeded! But not without them trying! (again and again!)

Sam and Nathaniel throwing rocks in the pond.

Papa and Caeden
(I think Caeden was voted 'most likely to fall in the water'...he just loved being close to it! Thank goodness he didn't fall in though!)

Liah posing...a future dancer?

We ended the evening taking a few pictures of the Dad's and their kids (or grandkids!)

Here's Jeff with his brood.
Annie, Austin, Samuel, Caeden and Justus

And Frank with his...
Kaitlyn, Zachariah, Nathaniel, Elliana, and Alliyah

And Papa with all but one of his grandchildren!
(Miss you Asher!)

Happy Father's Day!
Thanks for being such a great Dad!♥

We Can-Can Dance!

Dotty McGill Dance Studio had their recital on June 20th this year (once again falling on the wedding day of one of my cousins!). Kaity and Elli along with my niece, Annie, all were in it.

This was rehearsal for the finale, "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog." You can see Ann on the far left of the picture giving the girls instruction.

Elli, Annie and Kaity all ready for their first dances!

Kaitlyn with her stage makeup and tap outfit on!

Elli "getting all made up"

Elli with her stage makeup on. She did a ballet dance this year.

My camera does not zoom nearly well enough! Elli is the 4th one in from the left with her toe pointed in front of her. She danced to "My Magic Tutu."

Mandy's camera zooms MUCH better (thank you Mandy!). Here's Kaity during her tap number. (Gotta work on that smile!) Her dance was to "Pink Cadillac."

Alliyah got a backstage trip the day of the recital! This is Kaity in her ballet costume. She danced to "Yellow Bird."

Here's Kaity stretching out before acro...to do her back walkover. (That's something I never could do with any consistancy! So glad she can!)



Kaity and Annie...stretching and posing! : )
(The one dance they got to be in together! )
"Do You Believe in Magic?" was their song for acro.

The beautiful dancers after the recital with all the flowers they got! (Thanks Grandma and Papa and Uncle Jeff and Aunt Mandy!) (Also, notice Austin in the background scowling because he got caught making faces while we were trying to get "nice" pictures of the girls! LOL!)

Posing with Grandma and Papa Corbett

~Elliana~

~Annie~



~Kaitlyn~



Frank with Liah...this was actually her SECOND dance recital! What a culturally enriched girl! : )

Our attempt at a family shot...Nathaniel hurt his eye and would not look up!

The girls outside Pew Fine Arts building at GCC.
The recital was good! Wish you all could have been there!

Basketball Camp and VBS: East Main style

The boys kicked-off what I'm calling "camp season" this week by attending a basketball camp offered by GCHS coach Don Fee. Zach has gone the last two years, but this was the first year Nathaniel was able to attend too! They both had a great time improving their skills and got these cool shirts and basketballs the last day.

Here's Mr. Z with his new b-ball!

And Thaniel with his, which he thinks is cool that it's a size 6, cause he's six (at least for another couple of weeks)

BROTHERS!
(If only they got along like this always!)

I didn't get and pictures from VBS, but the Kaity and Elli went while Zach and Than were at b-ball camp and had a great time! Crocodile Dock was the theme. Kaity especially enjoyed the special "top secret" things the older kids got to do each day...like clean up at the park and go to the nursing homes and play games with the residents. Although their plans got changed for Friday because of the weather (was supposed to be swimming) they still had fun playing games at the church and eating pizza. Zach and Nathaniel went for the last day to have some fun too!

We LOVE Strawberry Days!

Attending Strawberry Days has become a tradition in our family. After Elli's dance class that Saturday, the kids and I went to see what was on display this year.

Elli spotted the wood carver. He had lots of items on display. This horse bench was just one of the beautiful things we saw.

We spotted these miniature horses and carriage. Of course Elli was excited. As they passed us, the driver said "Rides are free!" MUSIC to my ears! The oldest four kids all had rides.

Elli was in her glory when she got to pet them! She was so sad when she had to stop so they could give a ride to her brothers!

Zach and Thaniel enjoying their ride!

Another *FREE* thing we found was face painting! Elli, of course, got a horse! She picked the colors..

Nathaniel chose a lizard!

Here's Liah sporting pig tails!

Elli looked around at everything there was and just HAD to have this unicorn! We stuffed it together and picked out the outfit.


We ate lunch there (pizza!) and ran into some friends. The kids went back later and did a few things with Daddy. The one thing Zach REALLY wanted to do was gem mining. The boys had done it the day before when they'd gone with Grandma and Papa Chuck. I thought the price was pretty high for what you got in return, but Zach really wanted to do that and nothing else. So, when Frank took them back, he let Zach gem mine. Turned out, one of the photographers from the Allied News was there and took a picture of Kaity, Zach and Thaniel while Zach was gem mining...so now they think they're famous!