Kathleen's Ears Pierced

Last Saturday Kathleen got her ears pierced. It is something we have occasionally talked about, but she has never shown interest in. A couple of weeks ago, she finally started to seem interested. So I told her she could do it for her 8th birthday if she wanted to. But I made her dad take her for a little "recon" to go check it out and see if it was something she would really want to do. I gave him strict instructions to have them do it right then if she wanted it done since she really wanted to, but I think she would chicken out if she waited. She decided she wanted it done right then, so they did it.

Here she is before:
During:
After:
She was so brave and takes such good care of her ears. She said it didn't hurt, but that it felt warm. She is so cute. My baby is growing up.
Brandon hit his first home-run a couple weeks ago. A home run at our house is when you hit it from one side of the yard and it goes over the fence into the common area. I can't believe he can hit that far. He was pretty excited.
Ryan had a work party where we played whiffle ball and ate homemade ice cream. It was really fun. Here is the one picture I decided to post from it.
Cody was so cute at dinner the other day wearing his Thomas hat and drinking from his straw from Grandma.

Shakespeare Festival

Ryan and I went to the Shakespeare Festival last night and saw A Midsummer Night's Dream. Sorry the picture is blurry, but we took it with our phone.

4th of July

We went on a fun trip this weekend to visit family for the 4th. We took out the bucket seats in the van and made a bed for the kids. What is really amazing is that we found the campsite we were meeting Ryan's family at (it was about 3 in the morning when we arrived--totally exhausted).The kids were so cute. They all just sat on this bench by the fire, all by themselves.
We took the boat out Friday night to go do fireworks on a beach on the Indian side of the lake.


Fireworks+4 lighters+4 pyros=Lucky that the boat didn't blow up.


We quickly discovered if you threw the flowers up and timed it just right, they would ignite and spin on top of the water and make a really cool noise. It was highly entertaining. We got three at once.


The kids love the wave runner. Especially Kathleen. I didn't think I could possible take her on enough rides. She is a pretty good driver.

I didn't get any pictures of wake surfing (every year there is a new thing to try out; surfing was this year's adventure), but I did get one of tubing.



I don't know how Cody got his mad candy-finding skills, but he had candy in his hand every time we saw him. I am not even entirely sure where he got some of it from. But the best was after he was buried, he broke out and had candy in his hand. I guess you can't beat that.








We went to Lake Coeur d'Alene for a firework show on the 4th. We had a ton of fun.





And of course, when we got home, the lawn needed to be mowed. So Brandon helped.

End of Baseball

Last week we finished up little league for the kids (whew). Emily got these great pictures for me from Cody's end-of-season party. Ryan coached his team.

Kathleen had her end-of-year party too.Her baseball buddy, Kayley. They are so cute together.

We had a TON of strawberries and rhubarb in our garden. So we decided to make some pies and some homemade strawberry ice cream. It was a lot of work. But it created "Heaven in a Bowl".
We went swimming and this is what Kathleen's hair looked like afterward. I told her to go brush it and she said it looked fine like it was. So I told her I was going to put it on the blog.
Cody's last t-ball game of the season.

Cody being held by coach Dad. And yes, this is the middle of the game. Some kids need a little extra help.
Brandon's last ball game. He is so cute. He is really good at baseball. And really fast.

The awards ceremony: