Hi everyone! Here are some cute pictures from the last month. Kate had her 4th birthday on May 25th (a princess birthday of course). School got out on May 30th and the kids have been having one heck of a summer! (I'm exhausted already). We took a family "field trip" to the zoo last Friday. I braved it alone (without Jeff to help) and it went surprisingly well until the last five minutes when as we were leaving the kids begged to walk through the gift shop and against my better judgement I let them. Needless to say we left 10 minutes later with a SCREAMING Kate-sie loaded on to the top of the shade of our single stroller (she refused to walk and I am very BIG with child so I couldn't carry her). She screamed "I WANT A TOY!" for a solid 10 minutes with crowds of people staring at our little group and me trying not to totally loose it. It's sad when the last 10 minutes can ruin a great 3 hours. For the record, I did not buy her a toy and I do still love her even though in her words I was the meanest mommy ever! And after she fell asleep crying in the car 2 minutes after we were on the road, I could laugh about it. . . sort of.

This week the kids and I have worked on scrubbing, painting and retro-fitting our old rabbit stand into the Aloha Ice Cream Shop for Kira's summer project. She made 40 flyers and passed them out for her "Grand Opening." When she opened that first day at 11:30 she already had a line of about 15 kids (of course 3 of those were her siblings). She made $23 the first day. We had a near meltdown when I reminded her that she had to pay back the "loan" she had taken out from Mom & Dad to buy the ice cream. But eventually she did. She opened again for her 2nd time today (Saturday) and her Allen cousins were over to help. They had a great time and quite a steady stream of customers. They made $14 today. Kira is already adding up how many times she'll need to be open to earn enough money to buy a battery powered scooter. We'll see how long the enthusiasm lasts (although $37 in two days is pretty good money for an 8 year old).