Water filled weekend...

Well there is alot going on here at the Hess', and I will fill you in, but this week I am going to play catch up with some fun pictures. Thought I would share some pictures from our Indoor Waterpark adventure two weekends ago. The kids and I headed up to Northern Indiana with my the rest of my family and had a wonderful water filled adventure.

Lucas and Lilly pretty much stayed in the toddler area without getting too adventurous with the bigger slides, but they had a great time. Loved turning the water on and off, splashing, swimming (in 8" of water), going down the smaller slides, the lazy river with mommy and would every now and again venture over to "the BIG bucket". Don't get me wrong, the toddler area was cool...but the water was always warmer there for some reason...hmmm.
It was great hanging out with my sisters, brothers-in-law and of course all my nieces and one nephew. The kids loved playing together too...and chasing eachother down the hallways and riding on the "train" (aka: luggage cart).

Lucas was obsessed with my water camera and carried it all around for me. He really used it more like a boat and not neccesarily a camera though. Not even sure where it is now, but if we find it we will actually develop it and see if anything turned out. (I got these pics from my parents).

Hannah won these glasses with her arcade tickets. Too cute.

And the family shot by the horse (of course!)
Thought this pic of my parents was halarious..and this is what I meant by the "BIG bucket". There was a giant bucket that would fill up and then spill over when it got full...and if you weren't paying attention it could kinda freak you out and definitely get you wet. Needless to say there was alot of screaming when the bucket dropped (at least by Lucas).

Thanks for the great trip mom and dad!!

What happened...last weekend

Last weekend we headed up North to Decatur to go to Tim's uncles wedding reception. It was fun and Lucas and Lilly seemed to take over the dance floor for about the first half of the party! I was out there for awhile, which can be a little embarassing when you are trying to dance with a 2 and 4 year old and everyone is watching because they are so adorable...and I am sure I just looked like an oaf, and only about every 3rd song was really "danceable" if you know what I mean...but you do what you do to entertain (and show off) your children.Here is the happy couple. Congrats!

And here is Lilly with some dance moves. She would grab the edge of her dress and spin around and around. It was oh too cute...and good thing it had a built-in underskirt!
And thought this pic turned out cute although I look way cheezy.
We forgot our camera so I thought I would throw a shout out to Tamara for sharing the pics! Hope we get to see everyone again soon...hopefully before Easter!

My new nephew has arrived!

James Steven Hess arrived on Saturday at 2:22am. We drove up to FW tonight and got to check out the big boy! 8lbs 12oz, way to go mommy Amanda! Everyone is doing well.

Proud daddy.

Lilly was captivated, it was too adorable.

And big brother Noah is pretty excited about getting a new wrestling buddy! Can't wait to see him again soon!

Christmas Catch up

Why is it that I always seem to start off the new year already behind? This is the last Christmas post and then maybe I will move onto things like...New Year resolutions...oh wait I am already a week late for that too! I guess I better make put tardiness on my resolution list. Wait, I think that was on there last year. Hmmmm.

christmas with the bishops = 7 reindeer on a couch,

and two snuggly cousins all cuddled up!

and catching up with long lost cousins who we don't see often enough!
christmas at the hess' = us getting everyone else sick and only a few pictures since the photographer was not feeling well...

We had a good and merry time (minus the flu). It was nice to see everyone even though our plans didn't work out exactly as scheduled. Can't wait to start the new year...oh wait it started without me!

Gorgeous...

Well, we went to the wedding of the year on Saturday (that is the only wedding we had this year). The day was gorgeous, the bride was gorgeous and of course my family looked great as well!

Here is the gorgeous bride and her gorgeous sister.
Adorable as can be.

Mr. GQ

Handsome daddy with his beautiful little girl.

Four cousins happy to be out of mass...

And then after the wedding, we ate and danced...and wow did Lucas and Lilly not show any bit of shyness on the dancefloor. I tried to upload some videos which are halarious, I will work on that and hopefully post later this week.

Olivia is teaching Lucas the waltz...or something like that.

Put your hands in the air if yous a true dancer!And twisting with the bride...what can be better than that?

(No good pics of me. I did wear dress "A")

Catch-up!

I hope everyone had a good long weekend. Ours was great, but thought before I shared some pics I should catch up from the weekend before! Last weekend my sister and her family came to visit. It was a short but sweet visit and all we had were good times.

First we suprised Hannah with some homemade cupcakes for her birthday that was earlier in the month! Happy 4th Hannah!

Then we headed to a waterpark in Plainfield for the morning, came back for naps and headed back out to a splash park up in Carmel. The day was full of splashing cousins!

Hannah loved trying to catch the water in her mouth.

And Lucas was showing off his dance moves...

obviously he doesn't get these from me! ha!

These two cuties LOVE the tire swings.
And Miss Allie swung with her mommy after splashing around. It was a great visit hanging out with cousins having fun! Wish we could hang out more often!! Miss you guys!

Back in the blog world...

Well, my phone line had been down since last wednesday and was finally fixed Sunday. So since live in the boonies and have dial-up I have been off line. It is amazing how much you can accomplish though when you don't have the internet to occupy your time! They actually said they weren't going to be able to fix it until Tuesday, but Tim called and complained to like 4 different people he got passed around to Saturday morning and I guess they listened! Thanks Babe!

The ladies headed out to a wedding shower for Tim's cousin Saturday afternoon. The bride to be is in the middle with her newly engaged sister on the right and beautiful mom on the left whom I just started a diet pact with! (More about that later)
Lilly and Olivia serenaded us during the shower.

It was cute to watch them...and scary too b/c it was essentially like watching what Lilly was going to look like in 5 years. They grow so fast!

And here is Noah, the future football star.

And this is the future track star. Tim has told him that he isn't going to be tall...so he needs to be fast. He is pretty fast!

And Sunday morning we went for a walk and Wrigley got to hang out with his dog cousins. It was a short but nice weekend overall. Can't wait to party at the wedding! Now I just need to catch up on everyone else's blogs!

The rest of the story...

So I should probably sum up the rest of my vaca week before I get too far behind here. Let's see, Monday night Lilly started puking and was sick most of the night and next morning. So Tuesday was pretty much a day of sleep and taking care of her. (Thanks to Tiff for helping clean up (I will spare you the details), and pre-occupying Lucas. Wednesday she was feeling a little better and we got to play outside and enjoy the pool and weather again. We also did a photo shoot of the girls, but I will post that later. Wednesday evening we headed over to Tim's parents house to start our "lake" part of the vacation. We could see the lake from the house but that is about as far as we got. Lucas started running a high fever that night which didn't go away until Saturday. Lilly got sick again on Thursday morning so basically I spent Thursday watching like 6 kids movies and vedging out on the couch with two sleepy sick children sipping pedalite. I do have to say though that having nothing to do but take care of sick children instead of trying to accomplish 6 other things is way less stressful.

Anyway, Tim showed up Thursday evening and by Friday everyone was a little more up for some beach adventures. The Hess tradition at the lake is always great...

good food. (my first twinkie cake...yummm!)and great family. (5 of the 7 brothers and kids/grandkids)
Lucas had a good time with cousin Andy steering down the hill.

Uncle Ben and his favorite niece.

And then Friday night Lucas was still awake when it was time to leave for fireworks (you have to boat to the other lake), so we decided to take him along. He lasted about 1/2 way through. It was cute though not hearing oohs and ahhs but "A Green one...A Rainbow one!"

All in all (even with the lazy sick days) we had a great week. I think it took the kids 1/2 of this week just to catch up. Hope everyone else enjoyed their holiday as well as we did.

Wow what a week...

Well, last week was a week of fun, sun, relaxing and a bit of the flu...but I will get to that explination later. We were heading up north for my niece's birthday party on June 28th and then would be heading back up to the same area for the 4th so the kids and I decided to just stay up north all week and save $100 in gasoline. It will probably take me all week to catch up with blogging to share all the great pics, but better to keep you in suspense, right?

The week started with a Big Bash for a Little Lady.

What a cute little birthday girl.
and here she is in the pool...which she shared with her cousins and big sister...and even this sinkerface.

And here is me on my little vacation with an armful of cuties. Who says you can't still pick up two little hotties when you are 30? ha!

Back up and Running!

Well, I am not sure if you have missed me, but I have missed blogging and reading blogs. My computer crashed on me Monday, but now I am up and running thanks to my brother-in-law the computer guru. Thanks Matt!

In the midst of the computer world stopping for the Hess household this week, we did not of course. Tim's brother and his family were in town and we met up with them at the Children's Museum on Tuesday and had a blast watching the kids run around all crazy.

Three monkeys sitting on a bench.
The only good fuzzy shot I got of cousin Noah...half smiling.

Lilly and Noah playing tic-tac-toe.

And Lucas and Noah making funny faces.

It was nice to get together with family and for cousins to play. Now I am up North with our other cousins so more pics to follow soon! Hope all is well in everyone else's computer worlds and otherwise. We missed staying in touch.