End of June, 2014

I can't believe it's July already!  June just flew by it seemed!  In the middle of the month we went to French Creek again in the morning.  We were going to have a picnic and play, "find it" with Peaches again but it was a hot muggy and buggy day and the kids just didn't seem to be handling it well so we only ended up staying an hour.  They did get a chance to catch some tiny minnows with their tiny net.

And pick some water lilies.

And watch the dog try to swim again.  She's getting there but it's still pretty amusing watching her.

I finally got around to making Chase a ninja mask.  I had been promising him one for quiet a while.  He thought it would be awesome to run around our neighborhood with it on and I quickly informed him that he definitely COULD NOT do that :P

We also wrapped up with baseball at the end of the month.  I wasn't too happy with how long baseball went this year but I guess we all survived anyway :P  They had a playoff game on Monday the 16th and won that one to get into the championship game.

They really went all out with the playoff games and had lines painted, scoreboard, announcers, concessions stand and umpires!

The girls always had so much fun at the games. There were a lot of other little kids there and they all formed a "Club" and would sit around in a circle telling stories and sharing snacks.  Katy's showing off her butterfly necklace that I made for her and Jo...

according to her it also doubles as a headband:

The championship game was on Saturday the 21st (a day after Chase's 8th birthday) and it was a very close, exciting game!

They ended up losing by one run in the last inning but they played really well and I was impressed with how well the whole team improved during the season.

The received trophies for second place too so Chase was happy with that.

Joanna begged and begged to get THIS book from the library the last time we were there.  I finally caved and we ended up doing a few of the projects in the book and had lots of fun with them too.  Nature display cases:

The kids have decided that they are rock hounds.

Ricky found this neat sparkly rock at work and gave it to Joanna for her collection.

The two big rocks are also from Ricky on different occasions.  Sometimes it comes in handy having a daddy who digs in the ground for a living :P

We also planted cress seeds in empty eggshells that we drew on to make egg heads.

On Sunday the 22nd we went to hang out with friends in the evening.  It was a lot of fun! There were a lot of kids in our group:

we had burgers and chips and then watched the kids run around for a while.  They just so happened to have a bundle of kittens at their house right now and we almost had to bring one home, they were so cute and the girls were enthralled!

aww:

Tuesday last week we went to the library for a performance from Family Stages, called Eureka.  They featured 5 different scientist and it was so funny and really great.  All of the kids and parents really enjoyed it :)

Louis Pasteur looking at a germ in milk through his microscope:

The boll weevil and Mr. peanut when they were talking about George Washington Carver:

on Thursday we met some friends at a park nearby. It was a little hot but the kids had a lot of fun splashing in the stream.  We went for a little walk around the park before we left.  The kids wanted their picture taken in the gazebo.

Friday was Joanna's 6TH birthday and the next day Ricky took Chase and Joanna fishing first thing in the morning.

they caught 6 good sized fish and I was able to hang out with Katy, clean the house and then pick up the cakes and finish running errands in preparation for their party that afternoon.

 We ended up only having family at this party but there was still 22 people at the house.  I didn't get any pictures of everyone hanging out but we all had a lot of fun.  We ate around 5 and then had the kids open their presents and then ate delicious cake and ice cream.