Friday: reward

Isaac earned a reward earlier this summer and he chose mini-golfing and Captain Sundae.  He's been very patient in waiting for it.

It ended up being a beautiful day for it, but that hasn't really been very difficult this summer.  The boys wanted a zillion pictures taken during mini-golf; here are some of the best.  (Joshua really did want his picture taken, even if he doesn't have an excited smile.  He was often the one suggesting it.)

We didn't keep score, as normal.  It was controlled chaos.  I was thinking it was more like mini-wrangling (in which the boys wrangled a ball into a hole) rather than golf.  That being said, I got a hole in one and they each got a hole in two.

By the end Joshua had worked out this tactic to wrangle the ball in the hole.

Then ice cream!  Joshua has gotten into the slightly annoying habit of letting Isaac decide what [Isaac] wants and then just copying him.  While this can be nice upon occasion, sometimes I wish he would choose what he wants.  Needless to say, they both ended up with Minion ice cream because that's what Isaac chose.

Thursday: kids

Let's see, today we went blueberry picking.  The kids weren't very excited about it, but went along with it anyway.  It rained last night and it was on the cold side and all the berries were wet.  At home I tried drying them by putting them on a cookie sheet.  But I had to cover with a towel because of fruit flies.  But then the cats stepped on the blueberries.  Not much, but still smushed some blueberries.

Isaac took Dad and Pat and Joshua out to IHop for lunch with a gift card he got last Christmas.  We talked about how to grab the bill before Grandpa, how to tip, etc.  He had a great time and would be happy to do it again, but said he would need another gift card.

Joshua finished his Lego set.  He worked on it so hard yesterday and today and was so excited about it.  He told me (and told Ben to tell me) that I couldn't take it apart before it was done.  As he was building it, he also told me I could play with the pieces but not the stickers and if he needed a piece he'd take it.

Wednesday: easy day

Today was a pretty easy day.  We played one of Joshua's new birthday games.  The boys played with Legos.  I got several things crossed off of my to-do list.

We stopped by the nearby park before swimming lessons.  It was a beautiful day for it.  Actually, all of August has been beautiful so far.  Sometimes a tad hot in the afternoons, but the mornings have been good.

Horizon also found a new perch.  Hmm...maybe it's time to clean off the fridge a bit.

Vacation Thursday: Happy 4th of July!

Happy Fourth of July!  (I know, I'm a bit late with this blog post and can only remember the items with pictures.  It at least gives a long recap though.  There are only two more days to go!)

The kids made star biscuits for breakfast.  It held Isaac's interest until they were out of ingredients.

Joshua mainly enjoyed eating them.

From a small picture, it looks like Katy is holding a big bag of water.  Luckily, it was just aluminum foil...

...for bacon!  I'll admit, this was some of the best bacon I've had.  Just the right of crunchy without being too crunchy.

There were lots of 4th of July celebration items!

Everyone had brought patriotic clothes to wear.  Except us.  I have two boys and just let them wear whatever they want and they don't care about matching clothes to a certain day.  However, we were able to find some good options.  Two shirts with flags, one shirt with red/white/blue and my dress with blue and white and almost red.

Everyone also took family pictures outside.  I would say that the pictures below show such good behavior...they are trying so hard to get a good picture.  But it just didn't work and instead turned out hilarious.

We finally put sunglasses on them.  That's just how we roll.

Here's the group picture.

We were waiting for a few kids to get one last picture.  We made funny faces in the meantime.

This is also the first day Isaac played Dominion.  (We've played so many games since...)

And water balloons!  These were the new fangled kind that you can fill up 30 (or so) in a minute.  It was rather awesome.  The down side is that they aren't completely sealed, so you need to use them up "quickly."  Not a problem.  For the second batch we made them run back and forth between the stash and the throwing area to make it take more time.  (Joshua did a little bit with throwing and then played with some off by himself.)

 Such hard work required ice pops!

The kids (and Heather) made some more star food for our 4th of July feast.

Ryan had some more ice pops.  This was number five, but I feel like he got up to 11 by the end of the day.

After dinner we went to the designated place for setting off fireworks.  We had only gotten the small kind, but it was still fun.  On the way everyone had another ice pop.

Pop rocks.  We don't get anything when we're by ourselves for the 4th, so everything was cool.  Joshua (not pictured because we had too many fireworks pictures and I got sick of looking at them) took his own sweet time and enjoyed every single one.

I have no idea what Isaac is trying to show here, but we had some nice rainbow glasses to watch with.

Sparklers!

This is one of my favorite from the night.

Ben got his hands on a lot of sparklers.

There were also glow sticks!  Oh, my kids loved these too.  They were still loved when they stopped glowing.