Summer Days

After what seemed like hit and miss summer weather in June, I think we can finally say that we are in the midst of our summer days.  Here are a few highlights.

With the help of some friends who came over last week one day, Kate and Ethan now have an independent way of climbing up to the top of the tree stump.  Ethan still needs help getting down, but Kate can use the make-shift ladder to climb both up and down.

The kids and I spent some time coloring together last week.  For Anna's birthday, Kate gifted her a coloring canvas.  Kate also got one for herself so that the girls could color their kitty canvases together.

 Ethan and I are working our way through a "mom and me" coloring book.

Thursday was the last day of the girls' summer school classes.  As part of Kate's Tae Kwon Do class, the students have a "performance" the last day during which each child gets to break a board.

Matt, Ethan, and I were able to attend the performance.  Kate really enjoyed herself with this class.

Here's a video of Kate.  Let's hope it works :)

Saturday morning we finished celebrating Anna's birthday as a family by going to see Cars 3 in the theater.  What a fun morning!

The weather finally warmed up enough this week to make playing in the pool an expected afternoon occurrence ... hooray!  Since Matt had a long weekend off of work due to the holiday, we were able to play in the pool together as a family THREE times in four days.  Tuesday was by far the best since the pool temperature finally was closer to 85 degrees.

The garden has also started producing for us in decent amounts.  We've had a handful of cucumbers and zucchini, but the biggest producers right now are peapods, broccoli, and raspberries.  Yum!  Kate helped out with some of the broccoli again this year.

The other news from our area this past week had to do with the storms that rolled through on Wednesday night.  Our weather radio announced a tornado warning shortly after dinner so we headed to the basement to ride out the storm.  After the power went out, we realized we had water pouring through a window in the basement.  Bummer.  We did what we could to clean things up by the light of some flashlights.

It was only after that excitement ended that we learned of the damage around us; our neighborhood had been particularly hard hit by straight line winds.  Although we only lost a few tree limbs and a bucketful of so of apples, dozens of trees in the neighborhood were uprooted or snapped off, with some of the trees falling on people's homes.  Thursday morning was filled with the sounds of chainsaws and chipper shredders around here.  We are extremely thankful that no one was injured during this storm.

Here's to a few more days of "vacation" schedule before Anna's Advance therapy session starts next week!