July Phone Picture Dump

Here are some random pictures from my phone from this month....

I took the girls shopping one afternoon.  We had such a fun outing, and those girls can shop!  I think we stayed at the mal for five hours!  The highlight for the girls were the food court snacks!

Jane and Sydney struck a sassy pose for me in the dressing room.  They look so much alike to me in this picture.

This guy isn't much for shopping, but he's on a first name basis with the tooth fairy!  I think he's lost four this summer.

As seen above, my girls are big fans of Starbuck's.  They had a friend sleepover, and they decided to try their hands at homemade unicorn frappacinos.  They were quite pleased with their re-creations!

After all that working, they needed to relax!!!

In 6th grade, you have to choose between band, orchestra and choir.  Clare chose band, and she selected flute.  We picked it up yesterday, and next week she will go to a few band practices to get started.

Summer is a great time to practice fort building skills.  I was pretty impressed with Jane, Sydney and Graham's fort.  They even slept in it one night!

We celebrated Casey's birthday with a dinner at Hutchin's!  (Syd had some attitude about posing for a picture.)

Summer definitely means more time at home, which often means more arguing.  I was so pleased one morning last week.  I was in my room getting ready, and it took me longer than usual.  I came out into the dining room and all four kids were sitting there coloring together.  It was such a pleasant reminder of that they are nice to each other a lot of the time.  Made this mama proud!

That's it for July!  Can't believe August is right around the corner!

Missoula Children's Theater

This summer all four kids were able to participate in this summer tradition!  The kids spent a week auditioning and rehearsing for the Saturday performances of Gulliver's Travels...in Space!

Graham's debut role was as a blue alien!  He loved it.  He smiled the whole time he was on stage!

Sydney was a princess!

 Jane was cast as a robot. She didn't love her costume, but I thought it was pretty cute!

Clare was one of the yahoos....a group of kids who weren't the smartest!

They all did such a great job, and they had fun week together!

Summer Fun!

We've had so much fun this summer since our New Braunfels trip!  I think we've had a good balance of organized activities combined with plenty of lazy days at home.

Last week the girls did Pine Cove in the City!  It is always such a fun week for them.

Jane pulled this together for safari day...she had to borrow Graham's shirt! Pretty cute safari hunter, if I do say so myself.

 This was Clare's last year to be able to do this camp because she's getting too old. 

While the girls were at camp, Graham and I had some big fun of our own.  We went to the movies, went bowling, took a friend to the ninja place, swam and played games.  We called it Graham Camp, and it was a good time!

After all the camps were over, we headed to Deedee and Papaw's lake for a night! We packed in tons of fun activities while we were there. 

We fished from the boat house and from the boat, and the kids did awesome! They caught a ton!

 

We rode on the boat!

We swam in the lake!

We solved the world's problems! 😉

And thanks to Papaw's skills, we had one heck of a firework show.  Graham thoroughly enjoyed setting off his own fireworks!

We've had a ton of fun this summer!  Can't wait to see what the rest of the summer has in store!

New Braunfels!

In the early part of this summer, we took a trip to New Braunfels, TX with all of Casey's family!

We had a great time swimming,

water ballooning,

feeding the goats,

and just looking cute!

Casey, Bryan, Nick, and Papaw ventured an hour and a half away to Snow's BBQ....ranked the number one barbeque spot in Texas! 

We floated two different rivers.  On Saturday, we floated the Comal and then on Sunday, the San Marcos River.  The whole crew before our float on Saturday.

On Monday, our family of six and Morgan went to Schlitterbahn.  We opened and closed the park!

 Casey is a water park superstar!  He will ride rides as long as the kids will!

I think Graham may follow in his footsteps.  He was riding the rides, screaming "YOLO"  (you only live once!)

We had a great time visiting a new spot.  All of the activities were fun, and the company was even better!

End of School Festivities

The last week of school is a busy one!!  This year, it was also a short one!  We had a three day week, which started with a picnic.  It was a hot day, but it was fun to join the kids for lunch.

Graham with his awesome teacher, Ms. Hanlon, and his buddy Chase.

The kindergarteners had a program during the last week of school.  They had to wear nice clothes, and they sang their little hearts out. 

Every time Graham saw us in the crowd, he smiled the biggest smile. 

Proud sister!

Finally, it was time for the last day!

It is a tradition around here to have signs up for the kids when they get home on their last day.  This year I had to include Payton, since she came home with Clare!

We headed to swim party to officially kick of summer!!

Mother's Day Dinner Al Fresco

Just a few pics from our Mother's Day Dinner this year....

We had a great evening together, and I hope these grandmother's know how much they are appreciated!