Okay, at long last…a little round-up from the last few weeks around here while the Newman clan visited.

And as I’m sorting through nearly 800 photos, (and those are just of when the cousins were here!) I’ve decided that there will not be any photo editing or nice bordering going on here. There are just TOO many photos. So, what you see is what you get. And I’ll try to edit myself so that this doesn’t go on for days. Already, it might, ok, MOST definitely will need to be a two-part mini-series.

But, to all the naysayers and people who called us crazy – we did six kids for the week, and we did just fine! Everyone was bathed (for the most part), well-fed, and no ER visits. I can’t recall for sure, but I believe we didn’t even have a band-aid incident, which all adds up to a successful week in my book. Of course, I had Lexer, who is quite the mother’s helper, J. made sure to come home early-ish almost every night, and I conned our sweet 14-year old friend to come help me when we went to the pool so I had an extra set of hands.

We managed a zoo trip…
(See the cute monkeys?)

Although, the “best baby in the world” probably doesn’t remember much of it…
(See the little joey in his kangaroo pouch?)

We had a lot of popsicles…

Tried out the Easy Bake Oven…

And swam…

A lot…

Just a little more…

We hula-hooped…

We were sassy…
(Ha! Actually she was great all week, but this photo! But that is my SasserElla!)

Some were just stinkin’ cute…

And before we knew it, Meesh and DJ were back from Hawaii. Feeling the love…
(DJ hates cats, but Tiger LOVES him!)

So we did the requisite tour of Hollywood…
(Squint through the haze you can see the Hollywood sign up there!)

Visited with some friends…

And some stars…

Showed Lexer where she will sing when she makes the next American Idol…

And made sure she got to go have the Miley Cyrus milkshake…
(Although she was led to believe that all the pop stars hang out here, and we didn’t see one!)

Mmmm…milkshakes…

Then we took a trip to the beach…
(In the middle of the chilly June gloom that has extended into July. It IS JULY now, gloom go away.)

After being buried in the sand, took a dip to wash off…
(Freezing, I tell you. I won’t get in the Pacific until at least mid-August, but it didn’t stop the crazy girls.)

Although some of us chose to play in the sand where it was warmer…
(Was she eating the sand?)

And since we needed some more enough excitement, we took the kids to Disney for Madey’s birthday.

The inseparable Cheshire cats…
(Can we all say “joined at the hip” for the entire trip?)

Took a spin on the teacups…

Or got spun on the teacups?
(I was in this cup, blech. Spinning is not my forte.)

Even Mav took his first Disney rides…
(I think he liked it!)

All the kids were champs. ALL day. You see quite a lot of “melting down” going on at Disney – tired, over-excited and stimulated kids, but our crew was great and we got to do quite a bit of the park. And then it was time to go home – literally. DJ and the girls pulled out of our driveway to start the trek home maybe 45 minutes after we pulled in from Disney. Some of the girls were a little pouty on the way to our house, and I think Meesh might have been pinching Ella in this last shot to get her to smile…

All in all, it was a lot of chaos, but OH so much fun. We should do it again…oh, wait we are! Next week!

To be continued…