E, J & AJ

In no particular order - some highlights from our summer so far...

Slip N Slide!

The beach is one of my favorite places to be. Sadly we have had a cooler summer and Lake Michigan is still 50 degrees, so we have not been there as often as I like. But we have finally had a couple of beach days the past couple of weeks:

Beach fun with their cousin:

Annual tradition: Cutlerville Parade:

We went camping last week for a couple of nights to Sandy Pines. We stayed in a cabin, but went more rustic this year and had no bathroom or kitchen in our cabin. It was a fun place to camp, but the place is a small city. It is so spread out that everyone has a golf cart to get around. The boys had fun just playing in the dirt by our cabin and riding their bikes around. We also went to the pool/splash pad, played miniature golf, went to the beach, playgrounds, golfing, ropes course, fishing, etc.

Brodie and I hung out at the playground with Alex and Eric went golfing.

SMORES!

When we got back from camping we headed to the local Caledonia truck pull. It was....an...experience.

Lunch outside after slip n slide. Another favorite activity is putting the sprinkler under the trampoline and jumping on the "splash pad" trampoline.

Kid's tractor pull at the Farmer's Market Kid Day:

I took Alex to see the Jungle Book play at the Circle Theatre.

The boys love to imitate what they see Eric do - fixing cars:

"Touch a Truck" Event at the Library:

We have definitely had our fair share of ice cream this summer, making rounds to all the local shops. On this particular night a very persistent solicitor was at our door and she WOULD NOT leave, I was trying to not be rude and kept saying I was not interested and needed to go. Finally I said, we are heading out the door and we need to leave now and I shut the door. As soon as I shut it Alex asked, "mommy where do we have to go". Since, "thou shall not lie", I said we have to go get ice cream - let's go!".

Some fun new exhibits at the Children's Museum:

A few other things we have done this summer that I do not have pictures of:

1. Mega Kid's Camp. This is our church's version of VBS. It was amazing! Alex got to take a bus to the local highschool sportsplex and he played flag football, basketball, baseball and soccer. The singing was amazing - for the last song they gave everyone (400 kids) glow sticks and turned off all the lights. So much fun!

2. We are doing the Lowes Summer Kids Build It Workshops - building all the different Avengers.

3. Alex took swim lessons.

4. We did our first family run - a 1 mile run. Brodie and I walked most of it. Alex basically sprinted the whole thing - Eric could barely keep up :).

5. We are doing a lot of the events at the library: puppet shows, magic show, etc.

Looking forward to lots more summer fun!

Here is a random phone dump from the past few months.

Alex was in basketball this past winter. It was fun to watch this age. His team did improve a lot but finished the season 0-8. Alex was quite the ball hog and would dribble all the way down the court and just dribble around until he had a shot - even if that shot was from waaayyy far away ;). He did well and could make it in the basket and scored every game, which was a pretty big feat for this age group!

I took Alex skiing over Christmas Break. We had planned on snowboarding, but they didn't have any more to rent, so skiing it was. It was a lot harder than Alex expected, he didn't love not feeling in control and not being able to do it well right away. I was sweating even though it was 10 degrees trying to assist him. I told him if we rented skis he had to go at least 10 times... so 10 times it was ;).