The beach at dusk: the best part of the day!

The beach after dinner is frequently one of our favorite parts of the day--no need for sun screen, it's not too hot, and there are often tide pools to play in. We had two great evenings on the beach this year.

The entire Ruble clan (will be be larger by the next time we get together!)

Grandma and Grandpa with their nine grandkids

Alice, her sisters Mary Ann and Peggy, and all 3 husbands--the group that started it all!

Love Aidan's face as he runs!

Checking out the surf with daddy

Everyone's enjoying the waves here!

Jakin and Corban watching Dan fish

Mary and Jack

Cathy and Mason

Smiley Rachel!

Beautiful dusk clouds, waves, and beach

The Johnsons (Eli's first beach trip!)

The Millers

The big NC beach trip

 So many pics here...not even going to try to put them in some kind of logical order!

 Alice's birthday always falls during beach week. We always celebrate with cake! (yum!)

 2nd cousin Carmie...about 15 months old. What a cutie!

Corban could have eaten the entire watermelon himself!

 Grandma and a bunch of the grandkids at low country boil night on our porch

 The bite you see Jojo taking was the only bite he actually took after insisting on a piece for himself.

Checking out the ocean from the top of the dunes

 Thomas and his girl cousins and 2nd cousins spent much of their time jumping waves in knee to waist deep water.

A sweet pic of big brother and little sister

Cousins playing in the sand--building castles, moats and more--entertainment for hours!

Ed relaxing in the shallow water

Wave jumping with Jojo

Snuggling with the boys after some swim time

TJ and Jojo chased Jakin and Corban back and forth through the shallow water as they skim boarded. Between that and running around playing soccer, the big boys tired our little boys out pretty much every day!

Naptime for babies under the canopy

Big brother practice

We signed the boys up for a "Suddenly Siblings" class at the hospital, which included a tour of the maternity ward of the hospital, a lesson on holding, swaddling, changing and feeding doll babies, and a book and coloring book to take home. They did great in the class!

Holding babies with special emphasis on supporting the head

Bottle feeding--check out the rapt attention!

Diapering!

Then we got home and they each decided the sample bottle they received was meant to be used by them!

These lessons have all been practiced on Aaron Rodgers, who has been hanging out, diapered and swaddled, in the baby's crib ever since.

Except for during one refresher course, where Thomas reminded Jojo how to hold a baby

4th of July, small town style

We spent the 4th of July in Kalamazoo this year since we were leaving for the beach a week later. This year, Ed joined me and the boys at the Schoolcraft parade. The boys happily wore their flag shirts. We sat near (and the boys played on) railroad tracks during the parade.

Ed had his patriotic shirt on too! The parade was full of candy throwing, fire trucks and tractors--heaven for little boys!

Glad I had a blue shirt in my maternity clothes collection! Maybe we should have brought chairs though...

Later that evening we headed to the Kalamazoo Speedway to tailgate, watch a road race meets crash up derby on the track, and then watch fireworks after. The true all American experience for the 4th of July!

Eating red, white and blue cupcakes we made

Playing bean bags using old bike tubes as rings (told you this was high class!).

Hanging out on top the truck!

The earmuffs (for Jojo at least) were a little big, but very useful!

A little blurry, but one of the smash-em-up cars was painted like Lightning McQueen. The race was incredibly entertaining--the boys loved it, we loved it, and watching fireworks from the back of the truck afterwards was the perfect finale.

Putt putt golfing

 This family putt putt trip was almost a year in the making--we'd originally planned to on on Jojo's 2nd birthday, but he ended up with a concussion, so we didn't. It took until June this year to finally get back.

The boys are actually at a pretty good age for putt putt, which sounds strange to say. But Jojo does his initial hit and then picks up the ball, sets it down directly next to the hole, and knocks it in. TJ hits the ball continuously until he gets it in (usually not even allowing it to stop before the next whack), but he doesn't care about scoring yet, which is helpful. We let them play through the hole and then Ed and I take our turn.

This photo is as close to an action shot as you'll get without video--TJ running down the hole and Jojo swatting at his ball.

Another accurate photo--check out TJ's follow through--a little big for putt putt!

Jojo finishing up a hole

They had fun!

Eli comes to visit

Alli, Micah and Eli came to visit in June as well. The boys loved having their little cousin here and hopefully helped encourage his walking skills. 

I made Eli a flag shirt to go with the boys' shirts, and they all modeled them.

Saturday afternoon we went out on the boat--plenty of boat riding, a little skiing, and some swimming!

Doing some laps behind Lightning.