The MIM

We took the kids to the Musical Instrument Museum.  We loved it!  It was so cool.  We were there for over 4 hours...it was a lot of fun.

Ryan in Morocco :)

Yep...this is a rattle made out of a bull's scrotum...ha ha ha!

A couple of hours in Preston and Ryan needed a rest.

And, of course, they had a BLAST in the room where they could play all the instruments!

Lizard

For (a short) while, Ryan was DYING for a pet lizard.  He found one in the house one day and caught it.  We made it a little home in the tank, kept it for a couple of hours, then Ryan decided it would be better for the lizard to let it go in the backyard.  Such a smart boy!  :)

It just wouldn't be as funny...

...if she limited herself to boxes she actually FIT in!  Hee hee! :)

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!