Our July In a Flash...

We hopped over to Missouri to celebrate the long holiday weekend with Cousin Dresden and crew. But instead of going straight to Centralia we opted to spend the night in St. Louis and take the kids to the zoo the next morning. Aunt Chelle, Dresi, MawMaw and PawPaw met us there for some fun with the animals.

Even though this isn't the best picture [read: no one wanted to stop and take a picture], I love this picture of the grandparents with all three grandkids. Touching and feeding the stingrays....After cramming as much into one day before naptime as we could, we headed back to Centralia. And the next day had a family putt-putt competetion. Three pretty cute future golfers below: And of course, what fourth of July celebration would be complete without fireworks??? Here Michael created his own way to safely light Chinese lanterns: on a fishing pole.
And, in keeping with their tradition, this is exactly how every single 4th of July picture of Ben and Drew looks. Every single year this is how they watch them. It just cracks me up. And to wrap up the weekend, we went to cheer Dresi on in at her swim meet. Getting ready at the blocks:Ready for the backstroke:
Her cheering section watches intently... What a great time we had spending with our family there. And once we headed home we decided that we needed some low-key days. So we spent the next several mornings and afternoons playing in our backyard.


Two tired little water-babies:

We have such a great time while we're gone. And we do enjoy being busy. But I must say I am very aware that some of our best memories come from the times we are home together as a family, doing the little things of life.

Thats our July in a nutshell....

Our June In a Flash....

Once we got back from Disney we thought we'd be having a relaxed, low-key summer....right??? Wrong!! While we did cram LOTS of fun into our summer, it was anything but low-key. It was packed with trips (I think we were gone as much as we were here!) and fun adventures nonstop.

The days and weekends we were at home, we settled into a pretty fun routine, comprised mostly of swimming and playing every single sport outside. That's another exciting thing that happened this summer! The boys both learned to swim fully by themselves, with NO floaties!!! We've had them in lessons since they were itty bitty, but fully having the confidence to get out and keep yourself afloat with no grownup to hang onto, and no life vest or floatie to keep you up is a whole other thing entirely. Especially for a 4 year old. So, I'm a little bummed that I don't really have any pictures of them swimming in the big pool by themselves. But, you'll just have to trust me. Or you can ask either of them yourself.....they are extremely proud, and will happily tell you all about it. But onto the things we could document with pictures.....

This is how Daddy found us almost every night as he came home: outside playing some sort of sport, and still usually in our swimmies since you never know when you just might get too hot and need to take a timeout to play in the sprinkler.

The two cutest little sluggers maybe ever!! I mean, come on, could you just melt over these faces???And then we hopped on down to visit MiMi and Pop for a weekend. Being that my mama is the Children's Minister of my home church, she has LOTS of fun stuff that she's always carrying around in her car (her office is even more fun than her car, and is one of the twins most favorite places!). This weekend, she happened to have a HUGE inflatable water slide/climbing wall/pool that she uses for water days at church. (She actually had two this size and wanted to put them both up for the boys. But we had to draw a line somewhere...And we wonder why they are a little spoiled! ;) kidding, Mom.) So Daddy and Pop put it together in the backyard and we were all entertained. Even all of us grownups went down it! I'm pretty sure Pop played on it as much as the twins did. While we were there Ben decided he wanted to take his training wheels off and try to ride like a big boy. So Michael happily took them off and began the process of trying to teach him how to do it. And on the very first time he tried to take off by himself he actually stayed up!!! .....and then he started thinking about it too much, and got a little freaked out, and promptly decided that he in fact did NOT want to take his training wheels off yet. And this is where you need a manual as a parent to tell you when to push your child to stick with it and keep trying and when to allow them to do it on their own time without fear and WITH their own confidence. Hard to know when to do those things. So we encouraged him to keep going, did all the things we could to help him get it, and he still decided he wasn't ready afterall. So we supported him in it and will help him get it when he's ready. But I still wanted it on here for him to see one day that he tried it when he was four, and we're really proud that he did!Over the summer, I tried really hard to keep working with them on their letters, writing and fine motor skills. One day I had them write out their patterns that they each wanted to use, and then follow that pattern to make a colored necklace out of colored straws I had cut into little pieces to thread on yarn. This one is Drew's:And here is Ben's:

And here is the silly hooligans showing off the finished product. What crazy monkeys I have.

That about sums up our busy June! On to the month of July!!