Our big summer project: hardwood floors in the kitchen, living room, and hallway! We bought the flooring and padding and had to let it "acclimate" for two weeks. Thus, our dining room table got bumped to the sunroom.
Playing "bad guy" with the napkins at Texas Roadhouse:
4th of July in Rock Hill... Caleb entered an ice cream eating contest.
We thought he would be a shoe-in because he's such a messy eater anyway. We didn't take into account the fact that he would only eat the chocolate ice cream. He doesn't like vanilla. :)
One of Caleb's MANY paper creations. He creates new costumes daily. His clothes hanging in his closet end up on the floor so he can hang up his paper creations. This one, believe it or not, has nothing to do with the KKK. :) It's his Iron Man costume.
All my kids LOVE babies. :) This is our little friend, Kel, at a 4th of July party.
Our friends, the Thompsons, had their sister and brother-in-law come to visit. The brother-in-law puts on incredible fireworks shows, so he brought an entire trailer full of fireworks. There were about 6 pallets full like this, all wired together, and the end result was about 15 minutes of one of the best fireworks displays I've ever seen.... and all for our little group of friends! (Though, as they started, people started pulling off the road and coming out of their houses around the park to watch.)
Since Lindsey had Isaac, I will usually invite Maddox and Zuri to go swimming with us at the Y anytime we go. My kids love having friends to play with there.
Caleb took a swimming test part way through the summer and got a "yellow" band which means he can go down two of the slides. By the end of the summer, he tested for the "green band" which lets him go down the BIG slides. He's a machine... he just goes down the slides over and over! I'm still not sure when he really learned to swim considering that he was barely doing anything but moving BACKWARD at the end of last summer.
Working on school in our crammed sunroom.
Weekend project #1: tearing out all the carpet!
Pulling out staples:
Ben took the boys to see the new Star Wars movie ("Rogue One") one Sunday afternoon so Abby and I had a "date" to try out Freddy's, the new frozen custard place near us.
Abby approved!
Still reading...
We went to Chic Fila on the day when you get a free meal if you dress like a cow. (ok, actually we went for lunch and then again for dinner!) ;) We just put on black and white clothes, added construction paper spots, and held up cow masks while we ordered. All went well until the cow mascot came out. Abby is TERRIFIED of big mascot costumes. She was under the table is about 2 seconds.
And then someone started handing out balloons, which is Caleb's weird nemesis!
This was my first summer as a director at CC, so a LOT of it was spent thinking things through and preparing for the year. One night, Ben took the kids over to hang out with the Ziebers and I spread out all my supplies to put together my tutor supply bins.
The kids spent one week going to a Science Camp at a local church. It was all about the human body which tied in perfectly with what we were going to start learning at CC... and it was great for me to have mornings to shop for CC supplies and get some work done! Here they are waiting for Aunt Carrie to pick them up in the morning. (Her girls went to the camp too, and since they went right past our house, she just picked up my kids.)
Next weekend project: tear out the linoleum and luan (the wood under the linoleum) in the kitchen:
Maddox and Isaac:
Swimming party with some CC friends...
I babysat my friend Kimberley's kids one day. When she stopped by, she told me about how her stomach muscles had separated with her pregnancies, and she was showing me how to test mine to see if mine was separated anywhere... and her baby Lulu crawled on her belly and Micah grabbed my phone to take a picture. :) It's fun to have good friends who do goofy stuff.
Abby was in heaven having these three girls to play with.
And Caleb's buddy, Tzedik.
We had planned to hire Karl Bucher to put down the bamboo flooring, but he got really backed up on work, so here is Ben on a Thursday evening googling "how to put bamboo flooring under trim."
We laid out a few boards just to see how they looked. Then I texted a picture to Karl and said, "Look what a good job we're doing so far!" I may have given him a heart attack. :) (Notice the not-staggered boards and covering part of the vent.)
3 days later... finished product!! We LOVE IT!
We went to several "performances" at the library during their summer reading program... "magic shows", theater performances, etc.
My kids liked this lady who made the toilet paper fly with a leaf blower.
Micah playing summer basketball at the Y...
Playing with Caedmon. My kids love having him at our house.
We heard Bill Johnson (pastor of Bethel church in Redding) speak one evening at a local church.
Since watching the Batman Lego movie, Caleb always puts on his robe when he wears his Batman mask. (He is a true Bruce Wayne.) :)
