While here my mom taught Alia the art of finger weaving. The result: lots of little tails floating about the house.

Here are Aunt Marilyn and Elena taking a stroll about the living room and swinging their tails.

This is Alia, all ready for her baptism. It was a special event.


















During the day we had good rocket weather. Grandpa P. brought this hand-held, air-launched one. Martin got out his water rockets. Tanner and Grandpa M. designed new fins for a bottle and created a great flying water rocket.
















With all the extra bodies around, we've made some room changes...Tanner is currently sleeping on Alia's loft and Aunt Marilyn is his new roommate. Alia and Elena are sharing a room,sleeping in the beds that their great-grandfather made (way back when Grandma P. was 4)...we had them up as bunkbeds, but they are now down as regular twin beds.

Guess who had a birthday?


New books (Little House on the Prairie series)!

















More new books! (there is a new dress in the background...but check it out! Alia let Tanner open one of her presents!)















New skates!!!

Look hard at this picture. Elena is in the foreground playing in the sandbox. She's been swimming--see our new "big" swimming pool? Alia and Tanner have also been swimming. Do you see them? Look really closely at the two towels on the chair in the upper left of the photo. Ah-ha! Those are just towels, those are towels hiding children! I think they were hiding from the bugs.
Happy Summer!

Three little monkeys ready for a show...













And one Great-great Aunt smiling at the pretty picture the kids made!

The evening's work was followed with a rousing game of "Harry Potter" or "Quiddich"--Madsen style.
























The work was giving haircuts to the strawberry beds. We used the loppers and cut off the tall leaves, then went through and dug out 1/4 -1/3 of the plants to leave room for the new runners to grow. Wish us luck--this is the first time we've done this! :)