Outdoor Movie Night

Having an outdoor movie is something we've been wanting to do for a while now and we finally made it happen! I wanted to be able to watch the movie while sitting in my wonderful swing and that's what caused the trouble. It doesn't face the side of the house which would be the most logical place to hang a screen.

Good thing my hubby likes a challenge! He came up with this:

 With some pvc pipe, he came up with a frame that is sturdy enough to hold our screen! And when/if we take it down we can just slide some cute, bamboo torches down in the holes he drilled in the deck railing. Perfect!

Everyone had fun! We're going to have to figure out a better plan for mosquitoes next time since apparently some of us are sweeter than others ;)

Looking forward to cool evenings spent watching our Friday Night movies outside :)

Swimming on a Friday

While Brandon was off doing his camp thing, I took Megan and Nicholas swimming! We look forward to swimming at my uncle's house every year. It always makes our "Summer List"!

We had a really good time! It was stinking hot outside that day (100 degrees!!) so being in the water was the only way to be outside! Even I got in the water for a while! Funny thing is, when I got out to work on school stuff (and take pictures!) I still felt cool and comfortable. Perfect water!

 Nick wanted me to take pictures of him jumping into the water:

 That's his favorite thing to do! That and getting dunked by me ;)

Megan worked on putting her face in the water. At first she would just barely touch her nose to the surface but this is what she looked like by the end of the afternoon:

 She had some help from a wonderful, big brother:

 Freckle alert! Oh how I love freckles :)

 It was the perfect way to spend the afternoon!

Boy Scout Camp

The beginning of July, Brandon headed to boy scout camp! This is his second year and he absolutely loves it! Here he is all packed and ready to head for camp!

Overnight camps completely stress me out but since he wouldn't miss it for the world, we move Heaven and Earth to make it work for him. What you don't see packed here in this picture is the food we sent! Not kidding! Since we have serious food allergies, I sent along a cooler of food to be used along with some of the food that the camp provides.

It was another great week of fun for him! He earned his Archery and Fingerprinting merit badges and nearly completed Swimming and Weather. Even though the temperatures soared to over 100 degrees on his last day (and was in the 90's all week!) the boys handled it well and spent more time swimming ;) I don't know how you sleep in a tent made of CANVAS in that heat but it all worked out ok.

I'm very happy he had so much fun and very happy he's home!

10

June is a big birthday month for us as we celebrate TWO sweet blessings...Kristen's is close to the middle while Nick's comes at the end. And this year, they both happen to be BIG birthdays! Twenty-one for Kristen and the big 1-0 for Nick...that's right, double digits!

On June 29th he said good-bye to his last day of being nine and single digits and very early on the 30th (he woke us up before 6am!), he woke to being 10! It was so cute how excited he was for his birthday!

We told him he could open the gifts from us in the morning. I wasn't thinking that would be 6:00! But, never-the-less, there we were :)

 Unfortunately, these are a bit blurry. I don't care, I'm just happy to have caught these precious moments!

 The after-math:

Some things about Nick:
1. He can be shy.
2. He's a wonderful big brother to Megan.
3. He's a very good friend to his friends.
4. He's a very creative person; building or drawing things all the time!
5. He's very sweet, loving, and cuddly.
6. His favorite food is pizza :)
7. He's growing so fast I can hardly keep him in clothes!
8. He is just. like. his. dad ;)

The grandparents came to celebrate with him but because of the possible storms, they came at different times. No problem! He got to do this twice;)

He was NOT complaining ;) He was blessed to share his birthday celebration with his grandparents! Thank you all for coming!  Our sweet ten year old had a wonderful day!