summer busy-ness

I've fallen out of the habit of keeping up with blogging. I'd love to say that I'm going to get better at it, but reality is I probably won't. I've tried for years to stay in contact with friends and family, but I don't do a good job at all.

Anyway -- we've been busy with summer activities: parks, playing outside, watching movies, playing video games :-)

Joel is now finished with kids' church because he's going into the sixth grade. He can be a helper, but he can't participate as a "kid." On his last chance to win the big "jackpot" of candy, HE WON :-) Normally the winner gets a giant bag of M&M's, but Uncle Richard got Joel Skittles because they don't have milk in them :-)


Joel was even nice enough to share with his brothers and sister (I was amazed!):


Seth is still going to his private therapists throughout the summer. His speech therapist let him keep this yellow truck that they were playing with in one session. He played with it for hours at the park.


My big 11-year-old is pretty much too big to enjoy playing at the park unless he has a friend to do "big kid" stuff. He had a friend and another kid's dad to have fun on this day:


On Memorial Day, the second hand store had a big 50% off sale. Joel and I went at 7 a.m., and then I took Makenzie and Luke a little later. Luke picked out this Hawaiian print shirt because he really likes it:


And here's our summer-time dinner set-up:


Almost no clean-up required! We've been loving the sunny days so far!