Happy 4th of July

Our celebrations were a little bittersweet this year.  Good friends of ours that live up the street are relocating to Chicago, and they left on July 4th.

This motley crew loved to play bikes, guns, football, mudpit (their own creation of tackle in the, you guessed it, mud)!

I couldn't get them to stand together, and all at once they ran up and threw their arms around one another.  Just as Keller's dad said that he had just seen Stand by Me, cue the tears!

 Believe it or not this is only about half of the cul-de-sac kids, we love our street

 Then we turned our celebration to cookouts & fireworks, many thanks to the Stambaughs for hosting us

Poor Matt hates loud noises, so thankfully Megan had a pair of headphones we could borrow for the occasion.  You can see the joy that the sparklers brings to his face.

Happy 60th Birthday Grandma Caren!!

We knew we all wanted to do something special for my Mom's 60th birthday, and we decided to all meet up in Huntsville to surprise her.  Marvin did a great job keeping the secret, and we all had a great visit!  It was kind of hard to plan a vacation around someone without asking what they might want to do!

We got scared by the dinosaurs 

 dug for fossils

 got faces painted (couldn't talk Grandma into that one!)

Nick cooked us an amazing Mexican dinner, and we finished the night with cake

She blew out the candles before we could snap a picture

One final group picture before we got on the road

Summer Fun

The first half of our summer has been full of fun & sun!  We spent most of June at the pool for swim team, and alternated mornings between practice, camp, and VBS.

 Getting free donuts on National Donut Day!!

 Somehow we were all able to get together to wish Dad a Happy Father's Day

 Swimming at our first Ragin' Rays swim meet

 There may have been a 2 hour rain delay that kept us at the pool until almost 10, still fun to swim when it's dark!

 Getting an allergy recheck, still highly allergic to peanuts

Waiting on bloodwork to see if he's tested out of eggs & treenuts (fingers crossed)

 first visit to Fernbank with friends

We've spent a few evenings at Town Brookhaven catching the outdoor movie