Whew!  What a week it's been!!  It started Friday evening when Kade had his buddy Porter over for a little bit to play.  Mason joined them for some toad hunting.  There are hundreds of tiny baby toads all over right now.  Here they are building a Toad Shed.

Saturday we spent the day swimming at the Ranch.  I can't believe it's our first time making it out to the pool this summer!

Sunday we spent the day on the river with Jay, Jenna, Violet, Isaac and Eve.  Kade tried tubing for the first time.  He hated it initially, but ended up loving it after trying one more time.  

They aren't actually tubing here, just playing on it by the shore.

Monday evening we had 4 families (there were 23 of us total!) over for our own mini fireworks display.  The kids had fun playing the dad's in baseball, hunting toads, playing with sparklers and watching the fireworks (they came from Wisconsin so they were the good ones!).

As if that wasn't enough 4th of July fun, we had everyone back over on Tuesday afternoon for a picnic!  We thought the kids would want to have water fights but they ended up spending almost the entire day in the woods building a house (it even had a bathroom!  With a toilet!  And they "borrowed" my toilet paper!  I never did see where that roll ended up).  

We capped it all off with another quick trip out to the pool yesterday.  Back to reality today...work and daycare.

However, probably the most exiting thing about the entire time is......Mason is FINALLY going on the potty!!!!!

Oh that little man is stubborn.  He won't do anything he doesn't want to do.  We've been begging and pleading with him for the last 8 months to at least try to sit on the potty.  This weekend he decided he could give it try.  

We put him in underwear and he's done really well!  A couple accidents but for the most part he's telling us when we wants to go!  He's even had a couple successful poops on the potty! 

I've been telling him that if he poops on the potty, dad will buy him a gator (Erik's been looking for quite some time for a ranger/gator type ATV.  Figured I'd light a fire under both of their backsides--Mason finally potty training, Erik finally biting the bullet and buying one!).  So now every time Mason sits on the potty he asks if Daddy is going to buy him a gator---make it happen Erik!!!!

I've been terrible at taking pictures these days.  Mid-year resolution: take more pictures.

My little 'struction men.

Love those little boys!