Fun With the Younger Bunch

My older two kids are gone to Youth Conference and EFY this week and next, followed by a week at camp. So we are enjoying life with only 3 kids and doing all the fun stuff that the teenagers complain about having to do! Thursday we hung out at a local army base and visited a few museums.

Joshua was in his element! He has always wanted to join the army and this was the coolest outing ever! They even had clothes available to dress up in while you tour the museum! How cool is that?!!!

Savannah was all for dressing up long enough to get a picture taken, but then informed me that "these clothes aren't pretty enough....I am getting out of them!"

Here are the boys in the virtual jungle helping out with an ambush!

We stopped off for "Happy Hour" at Sonic on our way to the museum and got 1/2 price slushies. If you haven't tried it, you gotta go! We are definitely Sonic fans in our house!

We even got to watch the soldiers on base do a flag ceremony. It was pretty cool to watch, but very hot! I think it was almost 100 degrees that day! I had a lot of fun taking the kids to look around and I find that I really do enjoy taking the kids places and not hearing anyone complain about how boring it is! What is it about teenagers that makes them have to tell you how totally uncool any family outing is? We hope they are having a great time at youth conference!

Swim Meet Time!

I cannot believe I never did swim team as a kid! My children have so much fun with it during the summer and it has helped them all to be great swimmers. Last night we had our second meet of the season.

Savannah has been working with her coach in private lessons and she is doing so well! She got 7th in Freestyle and 6th in backstroke. We weren't sure if Samuel would be able to compete because he has been sick for 3 days with a stomach/intestinal reaction to a very strong antibiotic he has been on. But he was able to pull it all together in time for the meet, and boy were his coaches glad! He got 1st place in every event he competed in! He even got some new personal best times.Joshua was so excited to do an IM (individual medley--one lap of each stroke) but he ended up getting disqualified. He got 9th place in freestyle and 8th place in breaststroke. He also improved on his best times! Don't you love this picture of the arm?!!!Caleb had one of his best meets ever and was able to improve his personal best time in backstroke by over 10 seconds! He got 8th in breastroke and 5th in backstroke. After being so sick last summer, it is refreshing to have him healthy and enjoying competition again!Shelby had a personal best time in butterfly and ended up 7th in breaststroke, 8th in butterfly, and 10th in freestyle. This is the coolest picture of her doing butterfly!I was so proud of all my kids and how hard they have worked to improve at swimming. You can't beat the exercise and it is fun to have something that everyone enjoys at the same time and place!

Good Stuff!

I've been collecting my pictures and memories for over a month now and just haven't gotten around to blogging them.......so here's what we've been doing!

Joshua participated in a 5K at his elementary school in May. He finished 109th out of 500 racers of all ages! It was his first ever race, so I was just impressed that he even wanted to do it!

The Raingutter Regatta was held in early June and both Joshua and Samuel made boats to race. Joshua's boat seemed to have technical difficulties in the raingutter.....

but Samuel's performed very well! He ended up with 3rd place overall!
I helped out at Field Day at Samuel's school and it was fun watching him compete with the rest of his class! Here they are trying to pass the hula hoop down the line without breaking hands.

The pool finally opened and we participated in the yearly Memorial Day parade down to the pool. Savannah is getting better on her bike and was so excited to decorate it this year! Dad tried and tried to get her riding without training wheels for a whole week before the parade, but in the end, the training wheels went back on....

Grandma and Aunt Frieda came to visit for a day. We wished we could have spent more time with them, but at least we can still look forward to a trip to Grandma and Grandpa's later this year! Aunt Frieda sat still for Savannah to style her hair.....isn't she lovely?!!!

Spring brings with it all kinds of wildlife and we have been excited to have visitors to watch on our deck. One day I got mad at Chris for emptying out the kids backpacks onto the back deck because I was sure all the crumbs would attract bugs. Instead we ended up with a willing squirrel licking up every last crumb!

The geese on our lake had babies, so Savannah and I made a special trip down to the lake to check them out! We got books about geese from our library and sat on the boardwalk and read them. It was a fun day! The babies were so cute!

A cardinal came to visit our deck and ate the cracker we had set out for the squirrel. My favorite thing about living here is the wildlife!