Auntie Julia's Visit!

This post has been a long time coming... Apparently time moves into warp speed once you have your fourth child. :) Anyway, at the beginning of September we were excited to welcome Auntie Julia who flew in from San Diego to meet Norah and Beckett as well as to be present for the birth of Jayne's baby girl, Violet (born Sept. 14th). We had a wonderful visit and hope to have her out again soon!

I drove Jules down to SC the day before Jayne's scheduled induction and, despite feeling exceptionally UN-photogenic (being only a few weeks post-partum), I agreed to a few 'sister' pics :). It was the first time we'd all been together since Jayne's wedding! Too long!

Since it was extremely HOT - we decided to cool the kids off with some sprinkler fun :).

Kids + sprinkler = hours of entertainment!

Cousins. :) (Beckett spent the afternoon snoozing in the air conditioned house :).

Eddie at our picnic in a park near Aunt Jayne's house.

The quickie picnic classic: Lunchables!

Norah and Ollie

My happy baby girl! :) Can I even adequately express my love of her pigtails?! :)

Beautiful blues :).

Jayne and Julie have an inside joke about a 'turkey leg'... So Jayne surprised Julie with this custom made turkey leg cake. It was amazing!! Lol! She carved the shape out of layered cakes with homemade buttercream filling and then made and hand-painted the fondant. And yes - that is real parsley as garnish, lol! It was awesome!

While at our house Julie introduced us to and made us grilled pizza. Oh My Gosh. It's awesome! It is now a family fave and we've made it several times... Yum! Our fave is the tomato/basil/artichoke pizza.

While Jules was making pizza, Justin was outside teaching Norah some balance. She does pretty well for short distances on her own (with Just running beside her) and I think it's SO adorable that she always remembers to grab the helmet, lol! (It doesn't really fit her too well since it's Jack's, but she loves to wear it anyway!)

I had planned to make a pumpkin pie from scratch, but Auntie Julia was eager for a task so I handed her the pumpkin and the recipe and let her have at it! :) Jack was a great helper and the pie turned out amazing!

Here's Auntie Julia getting some love from Beckett. She's a natural! :)

If there was one thing that Auntie Julia was determined to do during her visit it was to work! She was constantly looking for something she could do to help out and this included taping off and spackling our guest room for us! Of course, she had a little help ;). Norah followed her around during her whole visit and just LOVED meeting and getting to know her Auntie.

Thanks, Jules! You were a tremendous help and the boys loved that you jumped on the trampoline with them! If anyone has enough energy to keep up with them for at least a full day, it's you! Lol!