Summer in Review

bottom last year, top this year

Yeah, I know it's been a while since I last blogged, so let me take a minute to explain myself.  First of all, summer flys by.  Seriously people, I blinked and it was over.  Brady started school today, hence this picture.....  

Second, the boys spilled some ice tea right on my newish computer about a month ago and now it's a bit of a bitch to type b/c the keys stick.  I've already tried flipping the keys off and wiping it down and it doesn't seem to work.  Dude, I have the worst luck with computers.

Third, as you can see from the below pictures (i.e. they are pretty tan) my kids prefer to spend all day outside. We are outside from about 10 am until 9pm.  So I don't do a lot of housework and we bbq'd a lot.  It's pretty awesome. Aaron golfs a lot so I can kinda get away with the house being a disaster cause he's not really home to see it.

So I kinda took a break on our normal routine.  I still made sure that the kids ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but I was  pretty cool about them having popsicles at 10 in the morning too.

Random neighborhood talent show in the garage is always fun.

Pool time with Papa Doug and the cousins.

 We spent a lot of time at my Mom and Dad's new place in July and the kids had a great time swimming.   I put both boys in swim lessons in the beginning of July and between that and swimming at my Mom and Dads Brady can swim without a life jacket now and Ryker is no longer afraid to jump in the water and he will even venture out into the deep end with a life jacket.  Jilly loves the pool and jumping in the water but only as long as you hold on to her hands.  She doesn't let me get too far away from her in the pool, which is pretty ironic since everyone in the neighborhood calls her the crazy monkey girl b/c she will take her bike or plasma rider up to the top of the small hill up our street and haul ass down it, laughing the whole way and looking at everyones totally shocked faces as she flys by us instead of watching where she's going.

Absolutely

No

Fear

The boys got into Star Wars this summer.  I mean really got into Star Wars this summer.  Ryker threw all his chips in on this one, he is totally obsessed.  Brady still has an inner struggle of which he likes more, Star Wars or Transformers.  It's tough being 7, so many important decisions to make.  Thankfully we have a lot of little boys in our neighborhood that also love Star Wars so they spent a lot of time doing this.....

May the Force Be with You.

 We got to have a nice long visit with Hannah and Hailey in August.  We celebrated their July birthday's since we didn't get to earlier.  We also got to have my cousin Chad's kids there and it was great to have all the cousins together.

Hailey, Brady, Hannah, Clara, Ian, and Ryker.  Jilly and Nora were just out of the picture.

Skipping back a little, we also got a chance to go to Whidbey Island in July and spend some time at my Aunt Martha's with my other cousin Johnny's family.  Their boys are about the same age as Brady and Ryker so they got along great and we had awesome weather.

The boys from left Mickey, Rowan, Brady, and Ryker.

Ryker loved this little canoe.

My Mom, Jilly, and my Aunt Martha.

Lot's of fun things to find when the tide goes out.

"Look what I found Mommy!"

I told the boys to build a raft so they started to collect drift wood.  I'm sure they really thought they could do it too.

Jilly was pretty content to just play in the sand.

Throwing rocks is always fun too.

 Then later in August we all met up at Twin Lakes and finally had some great weather and no major storms!  We had a great time and can't wait for next year.

My dear husband will never let me take a picture of him.

Martha, Tommy, and my Mom

Jilly survived on cheese balls and candy the whole week.

Ryker and Rowan

A tall pine tree had fallen on a couple of cabins two weeks before we were there.  The boys (and Jilly of course) were in heaven.

Uncle Johnny took Hailey, Mickey, and Brady out on the Hoby Cat.

Jilly and Auntie Lou Lou did a lot of coloring.

Mickey and Hailey did a lot of tubing.

Moose did a lot of swimming.  He was in Heaven.

The kids did a lot of this.

And Moose joined them.

I love this boys sweet face.

These too aren't bad either.

Jilly was this dirty every evening.

And on the last day the kids shot off rocket balloons.

Well, that seems to be the jist of it.  We had a pretty awesome summer, good weather, good friends, great trips.  I can't wait til next summer