5 Williamson cousins born within 13 months

A couple of years ago, Sarah, my oldest brother's wife said, "You guys all better start having kids so my two boys can have cousins!"

Well, I guess we all listened to her. She and James had a third child (Alanna) in July 08...Then Kraig and I joined the kids club and had Mikayla in August 08. Here's a picture of the two cuties about a year later....I think Alanna is kindly feeding Mikayla some grass.





Then Chris and Lynsey had their little Kaia in September 08....




Then Steven and Kathy had a cute little chunk - Kyle Steven, born in April 09....



Now Dan and Janell are completing this round of grandbabies (I think) with a little girl due to be born at the end of August.


My mom is in heaven, and we are so glad to have so many Williamson cousins. I am especially excited about all the girls! Go girl power! (We need to balance out all the testosterone of the 7 Williamson boys).

Hey Cuz...

A couple of weeks ago Klaron, Amy, and Teagan Cramer came to visit. They were driving all the way from Ohio to San Jose to relocate and we were one of their stops along the way. It was fun to see them and their cute little guy. He's 4 months younger than Mikayla but weighs more! (see the big cute belly)

However, Mikayla can still hold her own against him....

I suppose she did have the advantage of being mobile whereas he just had to lay there while she attacked! They really had fun playing ball together too.

We wish all of our Cramer cousins and relatives lived closer! I guess it's a good reason to travel to California and Texas though.

A few highlights of my day....

My attempt to get creative with Mikayla's hair.

Enthrawled with her one and only show, Baby Einstein. This only lasted for a few minutes, then she started in on her latest trick, switching the T.V. on and off. I soon fixed that...





Necessity is the mother of invention. Genius, I know (it's a bottle cap).

Summer is going way too fast!

We are really enjoying these warm summer evenings and the chance to get outside a lot. Kraig has been going mountain biking with friends every week, and Mikayla and I go on lots of walks and some jogs. We've been working on our flower and vegetable gardens (more like Kraig has, and I congratulate him on his hard work). I've got a history of killing even the hardiest plants, but with a little help from my garden savvy husband I am getting better. I even went and bought myself a beautiful hanging pot of flowers, and I kept it alive for 2 months. Just yesterday Kraig asked me, "What did you do to your hanging plant?" and I realized I hadn't watered it in 4 days. (Does anyone else have this problem?) My excuse is that Mikayla has been sick, so I've been totally focused on helping her get better. What's the deal with kids getting sick in the summertime, anyway? I thought we were all supposed to be healthy this time of year since we already dealt with wintertime and allergy season. I've decided the worst part about having a sick baby is the various forms of torture devices we have for helping them but really they look at us with a sense of betrayal and misery! So sad.....like the snot sucker...Mikayla HATES it and it's such a battle. Anyway...
We also just got back from a couple of camping trips - the first one was with our neighborhood and we went to Palisades state park. It had a beautiful lake for fishing and swimming. Kraig caught a rainbow trout and we ate it for dinner - it was tasty.


We really enjoyed the lake there. Mikayla got her first dip in open water and liked hanging out in her pack and play by the shore.



We took her out in a canoe in her little body building life vest suit, but it was her nap time and we only stayed out with her for about 5 minutes! Later we went out in the canoe for a while because our friend took care of Mikayla for us. That's the only real thing we got to do together since we had the litty bitty and couldn't exactly strap her on to the back of our mountain bikes. We decided that we completely understand why people don't go camping often with babies - too much work, too little play.
A week or so after that trip we went to our family reunion camping trip. The first day there we had a great time - Kraig and I went mountain biking through beautiful meadows, but the trail was really overgrown and it was my first time out there since getting preggo with Mikayla so it was a bit rough. I have the scrapes and bruises to prove it. But it was absolutely beautiful and very refreshing. We also went on a hike with my parents and 5 younger brothers and their families to a waterfall where we cooled off. My dad was so funny - he's usually not very loud but boy, when he got under that waterfall let's just say he YELLED and made us all laugh. After that we went to a lake and paddled around. Even though it was a fun day, Mikayla was lethargic and feverish and grouchy all day long so we were concerned that she'd gotten too much sun. We ended up going home that night to get her in a comfortable place. Turns out she had caught a virus - Hand, foot, mouth disease! Yuck. We are keeping her at home to recover...we'll probably wait a while before we go camping again......