Father's Day 2013

How lucky my boys are to have Jordan as their father!  I think of how many years I've known him and all along I've just KNOWN he would be the greatest dad one day.  These boys adore their father!  He's always ready for another round of hide and go seek with them at night and there's always a little boy wanting another book or piggy back ride from him.

I am so thankful for Jordan and all of the things that he does for our family!

I'm still playing catch up with all of our pictures from summer.  June was full of fun for our family! We played outside a lot and enjoyed a slower pace than we had known in months.  It was great!

John Michael went to gymnastics camp at the place where he takes lessons.  He went last year and wanted to go again this year.  It's just a few hours for 3 days in a row.  He loved going!  One morning after we dropped him off, I took the other 2 boys to a family fun Chick-Fil-A morning. They had fun crafts for the kids to do and we played and made art while we ate breakfast.

Noah got a haircut...

and we started going to our fun, new aquatic center that had just opened!

It is such an awesome place!  Our boys are so very lucky that they get to grow up with this in their town.

We swam at our neighborhood pool and this summer I was finally able to comfortably take all 3 of them and manage by myself!  A lot of mornings we would take our lunch and eat there and then come home for nap.  Summer really is the best, isn't it?!

We started our "homeschool Wednesdays" by doing a sight words DVD and flash cards and usually a craft activity.  Every week the boys wanted to learn about animals in the ocean!

We did some fun art and made an octopus and they made an ocean scene with sand and goldfish!  They also made starfish with corn kernels!

John Michael and I had a special date night out at the pool!  It was kind of nice to have some quiet time to just talk with my new 5 year old!

There was definitely more fun to come in our summer!

We Clean Up Nicely!

We clean up quite nicely!  We get our family picture made every fall by our fabulous photographer friend but frankly, we've never had a family picture in a studio.  Our church had directory pictures made this winter and I was so skeptical that we could get everyone to sit still and look and smile at the camera.  The boys surprised us by laughing hysterically at the funny things the photographer did!  I was so happy to see that we got a great family "posed" photograph!

This picture is a few months old, but never late than never, right?!

Finishing Up May

For Memorial Day we packed up and headed to a little public beach at a local lake.  We packed a picnic and had a lot of fun just playing around until the crowds really began to show up after lunchtime!

Oh my gosh, it was so hot!  We drove around while the kids napped and looked at so many places around the lake that we had never been to before.  It was neat to explore new corners of our town.

Our neighborhood pool opened, so we started trying to go in the evenings a little bit!

James Spann would be so proud of our tornado preparedness!  We kicked back and took cover in the laundry room late one night and the boys baked us a "cake" in the mixer while we waited for our tornado warning to pass.  Even though I often sleep through tornado warnings (umm woops!), I don't play around and I get my kiddos in helmets if it's starting to look pretty rough.

Just a fun shot of a random, lazy summer morning.  We were so happy to not really have to be anywhere except gymnastics and PT/OT all summer long!  I baked yummy breakfasts a lot of mornings, we worked on our Bible devotionals over breakfast, and I just literally enjoyed not really having to rush them to do much of anything.  It felt so good!  I felt like I had a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders.

I wanted to make sure I enjoyed every second of my summer with them .  I wanted to really cherish our last little bit of time together before kindergarten started up in the fall.

We set to work doing fun things like puzzles, painting the house with water, and playing Memory!

Matthew loves to play Memory lately!

Preschool Graduation

Better late than never with blogging, right?!  I am so far behind so I thought I would pick up where we left off in May!  We were so excited that Meme and Papa drove up to come to John Michael's preschool graduation.  It was a fun, sweet time and a really cute ceremony,  I am constantly surprised at how fast our mother's day out then preschool years went by. It's definitely bittersweet to think of these crazy, tiring, baby-filled days slowly growing into having kids start school and grow and learn.

Here's John Michael with his sweet pal.  I had to get a picture with the two of them!

John Michael loved his teacher this year, Mrs. Beth!  He learned so, so much.  She was such a good combination of firm but gentle leading. I was so happy to drop him off with her, knowing she was showing Jesus' love when I wasn't there with him.   I was so surprised at how much he memorized throughout the year.  Kids really are like a sponge.

You know what's next....Kindergarten!!

After the graduation ceremony their class went to the park for a fun party!  All the kids played together one last time and they released their butterfly that they had been taking care of in class.

Now, it's officially summer!!!!