The Kies Family: Neighborhood Block Party

Afternoon snacks on our new picnic table from Grammy

'What are you having?'

Brotherly sisterly love

This kid climbs anything he can get a knee up onto, just like his cousin Carter!!

So this past Sunday was our annual neighborhood block party. It is super fun and we are lucky to have some great moms who do all of the planning and organizing. Thanks Kim!! There is usually a jump house, sprinklers, games for the kids and tons of food!! This year they brought in a snow cone truck. We shut down one street in our neighborhood so it is basically a free for all and all the kids run barefooted without a lot of chaperoning. It is great. I managed to get a few good pictures of Kennon and Charlie. Remember Charlie is our neighbor up the road that is moving away. He and Maddox share the same birthday, September 16th, but he isn't even 1 yet....big boy eh? He isn't crawling yet either so he's easier to photograph. He is incredibly photogenic which works out well because his mom is a fabulous photographer and keeps up a great blog for her family as well. I wasn't able to get both boys to look at the camera and smile at the same time bummer!! Maddox is playing water balloon toss with Maddie. Maddie is just about a month older than Maddox and in our Wednesday playgroup. I love her curly hair. She turns 5 before Maddox so they will always be a grade apart in school, bummer. Maddox and Maddie did pretty well in the balloon toss but then again they didn't really play by the rules and remained about 1 foot from each other the whole time rather than spreading apart like the older kids. The night ended with me manning the jump house and allowing Maddox to get bopped in the head ( oops) which caused a big crying fit. She was SUPER tired by then so that didn't help. I had to strap her into the stroller so we could head home black footed and with a dusty teared face. It was a good time had by all. Grammy brought us a really nice Little Tikes picnic table a couple of weeks ago. Maddox absolutely loves sitting at it to eat her snacks and meals and Kennon is starting to follow suit. I had Maddox's hair CHOPPED today. I'm not totally thrilled with it. It looks great from the front but not so much from the back. Luckily it will grow fast. I'll post some pictures of her new do soon. Tomorrow is Beach Party Day in Maddox's classroom. Not sure what that entails but she is sure liking the special summer activities at school. Last Thursday was bring your favorite book to school. Maddox decided to bring Little Blue Truck from her cousin Carter. She knows the entire thing by heart and quite often prances around the house reciting it from memory without even looking at the book. I managed to get a bit of video of her doing this. Unfortunately as soon as she saw me with the camera she got stage fright and quit saying it. So I've just started trying to transition Maddox to a ONE nap day. She is my sleeper and has really still been taking 2 naps. So today was our first day. We kept ourselves busy this AM ( post office, park, haircut etc). She was pretty unhappy through lunch and then literally fell asleep on her bed unsolicited while I was putting Kennon down. She ( and kennon slept for 3 hours). When she woke up I said to her 'Oh boy you had a great nap. I think we are going to start only taking one nap per day.' She immediately replied 'I'm not so sure 'bout that' . LOL. She sure is my sleeper. POTTY UPDATE ......we've had no accidents in weeks night or day.... !! And that's all I have to say about that. Way to go big girl.