Our Summer So Far

Summer is not my favorite time of year, but we’re making it! Summer is not too different in the life of a pre-schooler and toddler, except that it’s too hot to play outside, we have one less day of MDO, no Ladies Bible Class, and a lot of people are in and out of town at church. It’s good to miss those things, though, and appreciate them all the more when they’re back! The best parts of this summer have been the little bit that Matthew, Thomas, and Mary Beth have been out of school and not out of town. We had them over almost every day the first couple of weeks of summer. The other great part is all of the time we’ve gotten to spend in the water. I get tired of it at some point, usually in July, but we’ve had lots of fun in the water. James has really enjoyed all of our water activities so far this summer. Jack, for the most part, loves getting wet, too. He usually has a look like, “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I like this!” We’ve walked to the splashpark, run over and over down our slip-n-slide, played in the backyard pool, gone swimming, run through our sprinklers, and just simply played with the water hose. We’ve been thankful for the milder than usual summer we’ve had here! This has been the best year that I can remember for weather here. We’ve had lots of cozy, rainy days, where I’ve opened the back door to listen to the pouring rain or held James in the rocking chair on the back porch while watching the rain.

Josh and I had a wonderful 8th anniversary on June 29th. I took the day off from MDO, and dropped the kids off so Josh and I could go on a date! Celebrating our anniversary is always such a nice treat. I love to reminisce together about our wedding day, honeymoon, past anniversaries, and our favorite moments together since we’ve been married. I am baffled by how quickly these 8 years have gone by. This year, I picked Josh up from work, and we went to Cafe Cappuccino for a delicious lunch. Then we headed home to watch our DVD and look at wedding pictures. After that, we spent about 15 minutes at Starbucks, before I took Josh back up to work. At that point, it was time to pick the kids back up!

We had a fun 4th of July weekend. Saturday night, we had my parents over for a laid-back evening together. We had a delicious feast, mostly prepared by my mom, and then we all sat around in the living room laughing at the kids and seeing who had the best shot into the basketball goal (I think it was me:)). Sunday night, we had a cookout with our life group and one other. Monday night, we had my parents and the Barnhills over for another fun night with delicious leftovers. Their family had just gotten back from a week on Cape Cod and had been gone the week before that as well, so we were all happy to see each other. The kids ran around with tons of energy from the excitement of seeing each other.

Another memorable thing about this summer is that Josh has been studying like crazy for his CFP test that coming up next week!!!! He’s been studying for over a year, and as each month has approached, he’s had to bump up his studying time. We miss him like crazy, and we’re all so ready for this to be behind us. It has a high fail rate, so we’re praying and praying for him to pass and not have to think about this anymore!

That about sums up our summer so far!