A belated birthday celebration

 Will wasn't so sure what to think when Mimi arrived. He was super shy at first.

 But Mimi knows the way to a little boys heart is through his cars. He was thrilled to play cars with her.

 

Abby & Nate both had birthdays in October, so it was time to celebrate!

 There's Grandmom with half her grandkids!

 We even got Will in the picture for half a second.

 Abby...working on one of her presents.

 Don't even get me started on how grown up these two are.

 A nine year old and a seven year old!

 Abby is in the third grade this year.

She's in the orchestra and is an awesome soccer player.

Much to McKenna's great delight...she still likes playing with toys (I hope she doesn't read this).

 Christian always gets so embarrassed when Emma hugs on him.

I love it that she still wants to hug on him and I know Christian secretly loves it too.

 Nathan's hair is longer these days and it makes him look so much older.

He's into Hexbugs and joined the Boy Scouts this fall!

 It was a beautiful day outside, so the boys and Abby hauled a bunch of boards to the back of the yard to build a fort.  ((sigh)) bringing back memories from my own childhood.

 Nate just loves his time with Christian.

 They had boards every which way up in that tree. Here's Abby testing it out.

 I'm so glad Em is still into this sort of thing.

 Tada!

 And here's my favorite part..... ((Amy & Anna do you see this??))

 There they go taking all those boards back to the shed when they were done.

 I can remember being so ticked at my mom when I was little and she would make us clean up our forts. They were masterpieces that we had worked on all day....why on earth would we want to clean them up?

Well, I made my kids clean up most of their fort :)

 Sad goodbyes.

 When they left, McKenna went upstairs and crawled in her bed and I could hear her sobbing all the way downstairs. That's the first time she has ever cried like that just because she was sad. I'll be honest...it made her mommy cry too.

 

 A tackle hug for Christian.

 More tackling.

 See, he loves it.