Fillin' the little love tanks

Happy 4th of July!

This is one of my very favorite hoildays!

It was a little dark and windy but that didn't dampen anyone's enthusiasm for the pool:

Makin' mud pies.

Yum.

Four little boys that just turned two!

The one time of year he gets to play with fire. And he takes full advantage of it!

The fireworks!

Jemma took a little nap before we loaded her up to head to the big fireworks--she started out a little sleepy with her dolly but she got very excited on the way over and kicked her little feet.

Jack got to try on the "fire-fire" gear!

And he shared his hat.

Jemma settled in with a bag of honeycomb. She's at the age where every loud noise freaks her out (even the kids yelling across the house!) but she only cried for a second when they started and then she was too mesmerized to make a peep.

Staking out our spot.

Cousin secrets.

Dancing to the Kingpins!

This was a great year of fireworks--I don't know how people skip out on these!

Well, lookey here!

Jack's been talking about riding his bike without the training wheels and he finally talked Ed into letting him try on Saturday. I was busy doing something in the house but neither or Ed or I thought he would really be able to do it so I let them head out front without me. But about 10 seconds later, Ed ran in the house and said I better get out there! And sure he enough he was all set to cruise, training wheel-free!

On Ava's old bike because we didn't want to take his wheels off unless he could actually do it.

Starting out.

Woo-hoo!

Totally got it!

He looked super confident and I'm happy our doubts didn't rub off on him at all!

It wasn't a totally successful day though. Ava crashed into the back of me while I was taking his picture and she totally bit it, with a nice big scab under her nose to show for it. And poor Jem was running around and tripped and got some road rash up her arm. Jack somehow was the only one to make it crash-free!

3-day weekend!!

Ed got home on Friday at 4:30 in the afternoon (a very happy miracle) and I jetted out for a quick wedding meeting and then on my way home I was practically giddy with the anticipation of a 3-day weekend and, even more important, an entire Saturday with absolutely nothing we had to do (the first in maybe 3 months!). I came home to house-full of wild, happy kids (Ed included). But within 10 minutes of finishing dinner, I walked in and found this:

and then about a 1/2 hour later, this:
and then later still, this:

(movie-time cuddles in bed, which is why the kids' eyes are all funny from the flash).

I could not stop cracking up because Ed exists on less than 5 or 6 hours of sleep every night and I generally get another 2 or 3 after he gets up. I cannot fathom how he does it without ever really needing to make up the sleep at some point (and he can't fathom how I could possibly need that much sleep!). But after weeks of walking fields in the heat and big important meetings, he finally could not keep his eyes open!

However, he was somehow up at 5:00am the next morning, raring to go (while I slept till at least 8:00) so the joke didn't last long!

Today...

We're thankful for dinner at the pool:

Where we were pretty much the only people there:
And all we were missing was a magazine for me!

Whoops.

I wanted to get a shot of Ava on the big slide so Ed could see but the one time I had my camera she had quite the whoops. She was turned around, upside down, whacked her head on the slide and came up bottoms first. But she just hopped on over to the stairs and the lifeguard even said, "you are a really brave girl!"

Shootin' birds

Even more.

My parents had been out of town for a long time and when they finally got home, they saved us from complete boredom by having us out for spaghetti and ice cream on the deck. And after dinner, I took a walk all.by.myself (no stroller or 15 million questions from a certain someone named Jack).

Flying a kite with grandpa.

While Ava did crafts with a cup of hot chocolate:

Jack was also busy stacking wood--he loves doing chores!

July.

So it's July. And we are about 7 weeks into Ed's busy season with the three longest weeks stretching out ahead of us. It is right about now (or really several days ago) that we all start to lose a bit of our sparkle. Ed rolls in long after the kids are in bed and rolls out long before they get up. Ava is pretty much always a trooper and Jack can cope as long as someone wrestles him every once in awhile and throws him some balls every night. Jemma, however, copes like me which means she has been pretty whiney and miserable lately. Ava found this cute card the other day and we hung it on the fridge and so, for the next three weeks, we're going to try to post something we're thankful for every day (or when I remember!):

So...today I'm thankful for a pizza picnic in the park:

and a boy named Jack, who makes friends everywhere he goes:

He let his new friend (the kid in the bike helmet there) play and play with his boat in the fountain without even blinking an eye about all the "sharing" going on.

A pool update.

Ava went down the huge slide at the pool today. It is long and fast and dark and just scary enough to keep me (a grown-up) liking it, so definitely scary for her. It appears that this is the summer she is really growing up. When will it end??

So proud.

Ava is a safety girl. Which has always been nice--even when she was a toddler I rarely had to watch her at the park or the pool, she knows her limits and sticks to them. There has been a lot of discussion lately about her riding a bike but the problem with summers at this house is that they are generally the busiest seasons for both Ed and I so we rarely have hours to practice something no one really wants to do anyway. But we are having a baby which makes more kids than we care to push or pull when we go for walks so we buckled down last night and headed out.

New big bike.

Ed showing her how it's done.

Starting out.

Ed trying to keep up.

She did it!
Seriously made me teary (which I'm going to blame on the pregnancy...I don't what's Ed's excuse!). We were so so proud of her. This was a serious accomplishment for our safety girl! And I think she was surprised to find that is was actually fun and we don't do these things just to torture her.

Jack hollered lots of, "Look at me...I'm great too!"

And Jem kept yelling, "Cheese. Cheese."

It's nice to know my kids have no self-esteem issues.

Hoop Fest.

I'm not really a basketball fan (at all) but I am an Ed fan so we headed to hoop fest this year after a seven-year absence.

Basketball is not Ed's favorite sport--but he's strong and fast and he's generally the scrapper on the team and that's always fun to watch. Plus we got seats in the shade so I was happy to sit there all day and then we finished the night with dinner at Red Robin so I'd say it was a success!

The team after their first game--a win!

The pool!

The temperature hit the high 70s so we finally hit the pool.

My sun boy spent a long time arranging everything just right.

Jemma borrowed a pair of nifty goggles with no lenses.

VBS

By the end of the week, the kids had roasted hot dogs, made smores, had their first ever franks and beans, made tepees and soap canoes, beaded these scarfs, did a lot of dancing, and had an all-around good time!

And I had five quiet mornings, long walks with Jemma (I so love pushing just a single jogger instead of the double with big ol' Jack in it), and ran all my errands with just one kid.

A big fat win-win.