Even with a playroom full of toys, Zane always seems to gravitate to toward the cars. He is such a boy!
Zane has been watching his older siblings use crayons and often crawls into the playroom, pulls out crayons and paper and starts drawing!
Zane loves playing with his "kitchen toys" while I am cooking. He even pretends to stir and eat his "food"!
Dressed and ready for the first day of school. Aren't they just the cutest?
Backpacks on and ready to go inside. Monique is in the 2 year old class, Colter is in the 3 year old class, Sabrina is in the 4 year old class and Wyatt is the kindergarten helper in the 4 year old class.
Celebrating the end of a fun day with our pencil brownie cake!
I know that many of you have been anxiously awaiting pictures from Danny's backpacking trip with the kids this weekend. Here are just a few of my favorites, but be sure to check Danny's blog for more pictures and stories later this week. You can see the highlight of their trip in the picture below...
Yes, a black bear followed them on the trail for part of their hike. They had just finished eating lunch by the creek (which is never a neat and tidy event!) and Danny is pretty sure the bear just wanted to see if any more food was going to be falling on the trail! They kept a nice, clean camp and didn't see any more of the bear.
So you've probably heard the stories of rural doctors getting paid in chickens. Well Danny got paid in corn today! One of his patients (who actually did pay his bill, this was just an added thank you to Danny!) came over with a truck load of sweet corn for us. Danny put it in two big bins and he and the kids started shucking. We ended up with over 100 ears of corn! We are going to eat as much as we can over the next few days (which is quite a bit with a family of seven) and then freeze whatever is left. 
We have continued to have lots of wonderful and much needed rain this weekend. We took advantage of a little break in the storms to let the kids go ride their bikes in the ditch in front of our house. They had great fun and I'm sure they will beg to do it again before all of the water is gone.
Zane is still not very interested in walking on his own, but we did notice the other day that he is practicing standing up. He crawls over to the fireplace, sits down on the edge...
pushes himself up...
and stands for a few seconds before plopping back down and doing it all again!
The last time we got rain in town was while we were on vacation in Colorado (almost one month ago!). So we were very happy to have this rain last night and even happier when it rained again tonight. We're supposed to get even more this weekend, so as long as it doesn't flood we'll take everything we can get!
Here is Zane's newest trick - maybe he learned it from all the gymnastics we've been watching the past couple of days!
Wyatt: "Mom, Mom! I need a bug jar! There's thousands of rolly pollies out here!"
Mom: "Wow, that's a lot of rolly pollies. What are you going to do with all of those?"
Megan, Nathan, Cathryn and Jerod all came up on Sunday afternoon for my party. Mom and Dad also came for the party, but the best part was that they were able to spend the night. It was nice to have them here for my birthday.
Danny had taken the kids shopping on Friday, so they each had presents for me to open. They were so excited!
Danny fixed hamburgers Monday night for my birthday dinner before Mom and Dad headed back to Lubbock. It was a fun birthday weekend!
Our neighbors just finished their swimming pool a couple of weeks ago and we finally made it over to try it out. We really weren't sure how everyone would react to the "big" pool, but we didn't need to worry. All the kids loved it! There is a great shallow end where they can sit and splash and a deeper end where Daddy can catch them when they want to jump. Now we have the perfect spot for Daddy to teach swimming lessons!
We rode our bikes to Sonic for supper tonight. It was about 4 1/2 miles round trip and the kids loved every minute of it. I loved that I didn't have to clean the kitchen after we got home!
We ate dinner tonight with the Wilhites, our friends who are going to be adopting the girls' biological brothers. The highlight of the evening was our hayride to pick some corn and then feed the horses. Here's a picture of all seven kiddos: Sabrina, Monique, Kristian, Wyatt, Zane, Colter and Jordan.
Wyatt was playing outside this morning when he came running in and asked for his scissors. When I asked him why, he said, "I need to cut the grass. It's hard work and I want to help Daddy." I gave him his scissors and he went outside to start trimming the grass that he felt was too long. Colter soon joined him and I made sure to tell Danny about their hard work so that he could thank them when he got home from work. : )
Here's the birthday girl with her favorite bow from one of her presents!
The strawberry cake and ice cream were really yummy!
Somehow I managed to get a couple of pictures of our two birthday kids. It was much easier to take their picture one year ago when they weren't quite so wiggly!
We had a great time on our quick overnight visit to see Dedaddy and DeJoyce in Abilene. The two highlights of the trip were...
playing on the slip 'n slide in the backyard...
and feeding the giraffes at the zoo.
Here's our sweet birthday boy with our traditional first birthday banana cake. What a cutie!
He really wasn't sure what to do with all of the presents...
but he had no problem figuring out the cake!
We started our week of camping with a two-night backpacking trip. I carried Zane in the backpack carrier (and a few clothes), so Danny had everything else in his pack, which as you can tell is pretty large!
Why did I even bother to bring toys for him?
After our backpacking trip we took a quick side trip to Colorado Springs to see Danny's parents for a night (they are moving to Denver soon) and then drove back to the mountains to camp for another three nights. Noni and Papa drove up from Lubbock and camped with us.
Smores every night - yummy!
We drove over to Great Sand Dunes National Park and spent a day playing in the sand and water. The kids had a blast, but we're still getting sand out of their hair!
We had a wonderful vacation and there are so many more stories to tell - like the bear everyone saw while they were fishing at the lake, Danny almost rolling the truck on the four-wheel drive road, the bruises up and down my leg from my first mountain bike ride and the boys sleeping in a tent by themselves for the first time!
Zane and I were outside today watching the kids ride their bikes when I realized that Zane was probably big enough for out little riding toy. I found it in the garage, dusted it off and put him on the seat. He immediately grabbed the handle bars and started trying to ride. This kid knows a bike when he sees one! His legs are still a little short to push it around much, but he was content sitting on his bike and watching everyone else ride around him. Such a cutie!
The kids are loving our new picnic table! It's a great place for snacks and meals, especially with the beautiful summer days we've been having lately. 
This picture just makes me laugh! Those long legs on that little tricycle. The curly hair sticky out from the bike helmet. Those pink sunglasses. The little pout. So silly...so Monique!
Our little garden has had a rough time this year. It has been really windy and dry (even more so than usual!) and we've already lost several plants. It looks like we should get some squash, tomatoes and peppers in a few weeks, but for right now the only plant that is producing anything is Wyatt's broccoli. We haven't fixed any for a meal because the kids eat it all when they are outside! They other day I asked Wyatt if he wanted a snack and he said, "I'm not hungry, Mom. I just had a little snack of broccoli." : ) 
Since Sabrina got her new bike we have taken the kids on several bike rides around the neighborhood. Our favorite one was our ride to church today. We played on the playground and ate a picnic lunch. Danny even rode from the clinic to join us for lunch (he rides his bike to work most days). The bonus for me was that the kids were nice and tired by the time we got home for naps!
Zane's favorite food right now is bananas. He eats bananas and Cheerios for breakfast every morning. I think he would eat a banana at all of the other meals too, if I would let him! I was dutifully cutting his banana into bit-size pieces until about a week ago when he just reached out and grabbed the freshly peeled banana from Danny's hand. Since he took bites and didn't try to shove the whole thing in his mouth, he now gets a peeled, not cut, banana at breakfast. He has always wanted to be in control of his food!
