We Love Summer!

Attention ladies and gentlemen:  In the picture above, we have Eden's VERY FIRST PIGTAILS!  And I'm obsessed.  With her, with pigtails, with this picture.  HOW CUTE IS SHE?!?!  I mean, REALLY!

We are so enjoying our summer!  I'm a little freaked that tomorrow is already July.  SLOW DOWN, SUMMER!

Eden and I made Dustin a lopsided cake for Father's Day.

We love summer because of strawberries fresh from Eden's little garden.  There are new ones every morning, and every morning Eden goes and picks and eats them.

We love summer because we can be outside alllll the time.

Eden is getting the hang of riding her tricycle all by herself!  Anytime she does something all by herself, she motions to herself and says, "Eden did."  Which is what she's doing in the second tricycle picture.

We love summer because of doodle bugs.

Eden loves to look for doodle bugs.  Here she stopped her tricycle to put one in her tricycle's handy dandy doodle bug holder.

We love summer because HEB makes fresh squeezed watermelon juice that I turn into popsicles.  Yummy.

We love summer because we make homemade ice-cream.

And SOMEBODY can't wait until I turn off the ice cream maker before sticking her finger in to get a taste.

And THEN, somebody noticed that I was taking pictures and decided that she needed to take pictures of the ice cream too.

Like mother like daughter.  Observe...

We love summer because SWIMMING.  Duh.

Last weekend, a friend and I took our girls rollerskating for the first time.

It was pretty dang adorable.

So, Eden has two cows.  Every year Dustin's dad picks the best calf born to his herd and gives it to Eden.  He physically keeps it and takes care of it, but it's technically Eden's.  He's starting a little herd for her.  Yesterday we took Eden to see her two cows.  (Heifers actually, but we haven't taught her that yet.)  She was so dang proud.  She knows SHE has two cows, and after we had been out there a while, she was able to point to which ones were HERS.

Here's Eden standing in front of the one from last year.

And here's her calf from this year:

Here she is pointing to HERS:

So yeah...

WE LOVE SUMMER!

Matagorda

Dustin, Eden and I got home on Sunday from spending ten days down in Matagorda.  Back in April we started talking about going down there for a few days (it's Dustin's favorite place), and I was thinking like... a long weekend.  So when Dustin told me he had rented a house for TEN DAYS, I was pretty much like, "What in the world are we going to do there for TEN DAYS?!?!?!".  I love Matagorda as much as the next guy, but come on.  It's a teeny-tiny coastal fishing town, I had never stayed there longer than two days, and I couldn't think what we were possibly going to do for ten.  But those ten days FLEW by.  We had SO MUCH FUN, and on Sunday, I wasn't ready to leave.

We took the three labs with us, and we spent our days playing on the beach, taking boat rides up and down the river, fishing, eating yummy food and just plain relaxing.  We went everywhere by boat - to the beach, out to eat, to a friend's house, etc.  Eden got to do all kinds of crazy things that she rarely gets to do like eat hot dogs and store-bought popsicles and stay up way past her bedtime, and Dustin and I got to do all kinds of crazy things that we never get to do like take a nap every afternoon.  Dustin went out fishing with friends (he seems to know everyone down there) a couple of times, but mostly the three of us were together.  Which I loved.  I loved that Dustin and Eden were able to spend so much time together since this past spring he was gone so many weekends for work.  I loved that Dustin and I got to spend so much time together, and we celebrated our 6th anniversary while we were there.

Some pictures from our trip:

 huntin' shells

helping Daddy fish 

For Dustin, Matagorda is Heaven on Earth and The Gulf of Mexico is the best damn body of water that the world has to offer.  On our second day there, we cruised down the river and went out into the gulf.  It was Eden's very first time to be out in The Gulf of Mexico on a boat.  This was a big deal to Dustin, and I LOVE these next pictures because Dustin actually asked for them.  To Dustin, having his picture taken is a form of torture, and this is the only time that I can EVER remember EVER that he actually ASKED for a picture to be taken of him.

she is ready for the beach!

 Daisy wasn't as crazy about the boat, beach, and water as Max and Drake were.

One morning, Eden and I went "fishing" with Dustin in the bay.  While Dustin fished, Eden was more than happy to just reel in her fishing line over and over after one of us cast it for her.  I don't think she was even aware that the point was to catch a fish.  But at the end, Dustin baited her hook with a shrimp, and when she reeled it in, Dustin told her she had caught a shrimp.  She was very excited!  She even told some friends of Dustin's that stopped by to visit that night that she had caught a shrimp.

 the only proof I have of actually being on this trip too

Another morning we headed outside with the sole purpose being to have Eden catch a fish.  And she did!  She caught her very first fish!  Reeled it in all by herself.  And then she caught a bunch more after that!

 I love how she's just beaming at her daddy.

I kid you not, I saved this fish to have mounted.  Dustin has given me the hardest time about it and thinks I am ridiculous, but IT'S HER FIRST FISH!  It'll be adorable.

Some friends came down and stayed with us for two days, and Eden was thrilled because the kids did super fun stuff with her like dig holes for her and bury her in the sand.

I tried narrowing this post down to just my favorite pictures.  Obviously I have a lot of favorites.

Also... I discovered that when Eden gets sun on her face, she gets freckles across the bridge of her nose!  If possible, it makes her even more adorable.  It makes me happy because she gets that from me.

Also also... I guess Eden has been thinking about the whole baby thing for a few weeks now, and she has come to the conclusion that the only way for there to be a baby in my tummy is because I ate it.

The End