Toothless

My sweet boy lost both top teeth in 24 hours. I'm living the toothless grin but he looks so old!

Vacation Bible School

VBS was a great week!

Every year we have a change war for missions.  The girls lost for the 5th or 6th year in a row...I can't keep track. So, I got a pie in my face!  It was worth it for the $600 the boys and girls brought for North Carolina Baptist Children's Homes.

ICECREAM!

We certainly LOVED our icecream trips!

What have the rest of us been up to?

We had an amazing summer!  Brian and I kicked off the summer at a few concerts!  

Addison finished gymnastics for this year!  We enjoyed our summers with no "lessons" but look forward to getting back this fall!

It rained...a lot!  We built forts to combat the rainy days!

The kids went to Monkey Joe's a few times!

 Caden slept like a teenager!  Seriously, he slept until 10 am a lot of mornings and past 9 everyday I let him!

Brian is working VERY hard on his dissertation.  We are so very proud of him but it means he's away a good bit.  It's just a season and while it's not fun we are making the best of it.  I miss having him around and so do the kids but I'd rather be "wasting" the days away at the pool than sitting in an office writing and doing research!  Sitting at the pool is a tough job.  ;)  Collins and Addison have been little fish this summer!  They float around in their puddle jumper floaties and Collins even jumps off the diving board alone.  She won't even let me get close.  It makes me nervous but she's fine every time!  As soon as we get there Caden finds buddies to go play with and really we don't "hear" from him again until he's hungry...although I can see him the entire time!

I LOVE watching our deer friends come each day.  In the spring and early summer 90% of the time I look out back I see some friends.  The past several weeks I see them on occasion but not often.

In June we headed to Washington, DC and stayed downtown for the first time!  My family lives there so we always stay with them. This was such a quick trip we decided to stay in the middle of it all and stayed close to Crystal City.  We went for a Vietnam Veteran's Ceremony. Brian's Dad was honored for his service in the war.  It was for men and women that have died since the war but because of the war in some way. Brian's dad had effects of agent orange as well as PTSD.  It was a great day and he would've been so humbled by the ceremony.

About a block from our hotel was a COSTCO of course we had to go!  We couldn't buy anything because we were walking everywhere but we had fun looking around.

Here are the kids behind his Dad's picture.

Brian called his Dad's name out and what branch of the service he was in as well as his awards.

This little girl did great.

Even napping in the stroller.

Many of you know or have heard us talk about our sweet friends Josh and Lauren and their little boy Mason that was born at about 23 weeks.  We spent an afternoon out at Lauren's mom's farm celebrating Mason and Corbin's birthday!  These two rode around in the Jeep all day!  Josh always puts special batteries in the Jeep to make it go faster....this girl loved it!

We spent some more time at the pool with friends.

Brian and Caden went to Father/Son camp together and had a great time with each other. They had a lot of fun activities but also a great time worshipping together in a different context.

We enjoyed a few Grasshopper games and hope to hit a few more before the season is over!

I'll post pictures soon of our beach adventures!  

Caden's First Grade Pictures

Before second grade gets started (how did that even happen?)  I should post Caden's first and last day of school pictures from the first grade!  

Caden is doing well and is certainly ready to start the 2nd grade.  He even told me that he'd just ride the bus to school on the first day...um...I don't think so sweet boy!  He's lost several teeth this summer and several more are juuuust about ready. It grosses Brian and I out so he heads to grandmas to get them pulled when they're ready!