books in the morning

he loves his books-especially "la la" (moo baa lalala) and the collection of tractor books we are accumulating because of his intense happiness at the sight or sound of a tractor :)

1st day of school

school started today-summer is officially done. we had a good run and i think everyone was ready for a change. they decided they wanted to ride the bus-we had a whirlwind morning and off they ran. luckily i made it out to get a picture before the bus arrived. 

sometimes a flurry of activity is a great distraction from feeling the weight of the fact that you have a 4th grader a 2nd grader and a kindergartner...

can't wait to hear how they day went-

 the water slide made a comeback-this time reinforced with a roll of carpet. they have been having a ball slipping, rolling, sliding and crashing.

 walks in the morning with ben

 i need to edit more of the pics we took on our impromptu excursion to st. louis. my great friend amanda graciously said yes when i texted to ask if i could bring all the kids to stay. now that is a good friend!
we took all the kids to the zoo-but rain threatened so we headed to the magic house. it was amazing. the kids and i stayed there all day-this was the outdoor water feature we did at the end.

painting on the new deck. bobby did a tremendous job-sanding and staining this wonderful new place to play and gather.

more of summer

summer has been stretched from all sides. we are holding onto the end of it and it-bobby went back to work today and grant started baseball practice for 'fall ball' but we are still enjoying the long days and relatively nice temperatures. the contrast from last summer's drought is evident in the bugs and the green. 

 the garden keeps growing and the weeds do too-i picked my very first big red ripe tomato this evening!

 the kids and i spent a week in OK and had fun playing with cousins...

 unfortunately ben has a rough go after his 15 month vaccines-he developed a very high fever while we were there-nana always makes it better...
 we celebrated ryan's birthday the first night we were there-it was fun to include a 2 others with july birthdays!

 bobby finished the deck while we were away-and we got to try it out to celebrate sharon's birthday and a belated congrats to perry and asa!
 these are misplaced-emily had a soccer tournament in june-and i never posted the pics...it was a sweltering day and she played 4 straight games-yikes.