Birthday Month

We have lots of family members with birthdays in August...but these two are the biggies! 

Preston turned 11.

He got a new bedspread...and some other stuff.

And Spencer turned 14!  

He got a new bedroom...

And some other stuff too.

I think they both had great birthdays!

P.S.

This is where Hope spent her summer vacation.

(almost all of it...seriously)

Summer

This summer was not an exciting one. They never really are, but this one was especially not. We kicked it off with kittens.These poor little sweeties had a short, sad life. They were strays and were not in good shape when we got them. We had them for only 24 hours...then found out they had panleukopenia (kitty parvo). We were heartbroken to lose them, and now we are on kitty quarantine until November. So, no kittens for us this summer :(
Ryan went to summer school alone this year. He learned about Rome and had a really good time! Here he is at his end of summer school performance (he's in the second row...you can see almost his whole face...at least he's looking at me. :)He'd stripped down out of his costume before we got back to his classroom, so I didn't get a good picture of it. Other things I didn't get pictures of...4th of July and David's birthday. But we had fun both of those days! 4th of July we went swimmming, bbq'd and did fireworks at John and Rebecca's. David's b-day was a small family party...cake, ice cream, presents.
July 15th was the last Harry Potter movie! Amber and Josh were in town. We didn't make it to the midnight movie, so we all went at 12 o'clock the next day.
Next came an unexpected trip to Thatcher to clean my mom's house. That was a long, hot, exhausting week. I drove down Monday night, spent 2 full days cleaning, came home late Wednesday night so we could be home for Preston's Arrow of Light ceremony Thursday night (that gets it's own post). After that I drove back to Thatcher to finish our giant project. The cleaning crew.
The first meal that's been eaten at this table in who knows how many YEARS...And one evening leaving my mom's house...Double rainbow all the way across the sky...what does this mean?? (youtube anyone? :)
And to round out my crazy busy last two weeks of July...my mom turned 60 on August 1st, so the last weekend in July we had a big party for her.Cake and ice cream with the kids, dinner at Brio and Captain America (without kids). It was a fun night.
And that's how we spent our summer vacation :D

Arrow of Light

On July 21st, in the middle of crazy cleaning week, Preston got his Arrow of Light. We are so proud of him! The scouts did a little presentation...
We presented him his Arrow of Light plaque...
Preston said the scout promise all by himself...(he got a little choked up when he did it...so sweet)
and Sis. Stradling (one of his Webelos leaders) did his bridge ceremony.
This is Preston with Sis. Murphy who has been one of his leaders almost all his way through scouts. Preston loves scouts, and he loves her and we couldn't be more grateful for everything she did for him!

Signs

Taking pictures of the hazard/safety signs has always been a vacation tradition. I love these signs...and I swear they get better every time I see a new one. This is the one for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, and this might be my favorite one so far. I would have loved to see someone actually removing their prosthetic limbs!! Ha ha ha!
(are you having any lightning with the pain? :)

Battle Scars

Ryan had a scooter accident while we were in Florida.  He thought it was awesome.

Seriously...he could not have been more proud!

Souvenirs

Even though we are terrible parents, and did not take our kids on our super fun theme park vacation, we did bring them some good souvenirs! I'm actually pretty proud of us, they were (of course) ridiculously expensive but EVERYTHING was a hit!We have Errol, Hedwig and Pigwidgeon...and they brought postcards, postmarked from Hogsmeade!
They had a lot of fun with the jellybeans too...I wouldn't let them see the flavor guide, and would only tell them after they ate one! Ha ha ha!!That was lots of fun for all of us!