Quinn caught the cutest, tiniest lizard ever!!

You can see it in comparison to a regular-sized one in her other hand....Beck came into the house shouting, "tiny cute lizard alert" and made us come out to see what she had...and he was correct!

Grammie's Birthday Party

Swimming party with friends

Our June has been so very full...but a sweet full, with lots of time doing good things with people we love.  One such event was a little pool party with some of our favorite friends.  Mike was Matt's high school buddy and also college roommate for a time and one of my first Houston friends.  We don't get to see him and his family too often since he moved out of town, so it was great spending a day with him and several other friends/family members that all hung out together in Matt's high school days.  There is an extra joy in watching our kids and long-time friends' kiddos delight in one another's company and play together and to see my kids soak in our grown up friends, as well!  It was the perfect day for a swim--HOT, and we spent the whole afternoon and into the evening (until 8 pm....seriously...) in the pool.  I was exhausted the next day from floating around the pool so long!!  The kids swam like crazy.  

 She's very proud of her "dead jump" where she pretends to be dead.

 Martin throwing her across the pool.  Impressive, huh!

 Having a cannonball contest with Rob.  Like I said, it is pure joy when your friends love on your kiddos and play with them!  Quinn loved having jumping contests with the guys.  :)

 Kai has mad skills--he is flipping off his dad's shoulders!!

Impact Reading Camp

The kids and I are at reading camp the next two weeks.  I am teaching a 5th grade class and both of the kiddos are going to their respective classes.

Can you spot Beck below?

And Q?

The theme is the armor or God, so they decorated everything like a castle.  It looks awesome!  Volunteer youth groups from around the US come in to lead the weeks, and we have 50 interns this year that are also helping with summer programs.  I love being around Impact in the summers because there are so many people giving freely of themselves in so many ways!  Such great examples for my kiddos to see.

My class meets in the library.  Only at Impact do the library shelves have giant rat traps on them.  And I kinda dig that about Impact. :)

The kids made "Belts of Truth" in their classes today.  

My first day with my group went great.  We read a really inspiring picture book (for big kids!) together and had a book talk that went reallllly well.  Hoping our future days go as smoothly.  Cause talking about books is just about one of my favorite things ever!

I am also sharing some of my favorite poems with my students!  Super fun to introduce them to some silly faves!

I really like my kids being part of this inner-city camp that is different than Q's usual school experience.  At her school most of the kids eat organic....vegan....gluten free....etc, etc....and at Impact many of the kids are glad to just EAT.  The meals there are provided by the Houston Food Bank, and there isn't an opportunity for choosiness, so this is a good lesson for my two.  My kids are definitely the minority ethnicity-wise and I just really love them getting to experience many things from a different perspective.  They had so much fun today and learned many things!  Beck was excited to tell me about a science experiment they did--Oranges that have their "armor" on will float, but if you take off the armor (peel), they sink.  And Quinn, our extravert, loved everything about the day and thrived on the loud chaos that is Impact Reading Camp!!

The drive downtown is not my favorite part, but a good audiobook makes it bearable.  :)

Q's last day of school

Quinn's real last day of school in early June ended up getting cancelled due to bad weather and flooding, which did not please her one bit.  They had a program and several other things planned that she was super bummed to miss.  So this picture is from what turned out to be her very last day of first grade!

Happy Summer!

We welcomed the first day of summer (and the looooong daylight evening) with a long walk for the grownups and popsicles all around afterward!

At the turtle bridge:

Around Here

The day we got home the kids HAD to get to the library to sign up for the summer reading program.  They were working on one of the ipads while I signed them up and the daycare invasion came in.  At one point there were kids in their chairs with them, climbing over the backs of their chairs....yikes!

 One morning last week Quinn came and greeted me in my bed with the fact that she was going to put on a lizard show and it was on the table, but not to worry, she'd clean the table off.  So I came downstairs to see her two "trained" lizards.  We saw quite a few animal shows at Reptile Gardens in South Dakota on our trip, and she had their lecture style down pat.  It was hilarious and rather impressive!

Her lizards could "play dead."

Their names were Dull and Spot (due to each's appearance) and she stuck two stickers on the table and told each one to stay on their sticker.  Amazingly they did, until she touched them and told them to run. Then they did.  Of course she had a trusty assistant.

 Early the morning after we got back (at 9 pm the night before) we all had dentist appointments.  That was a better idea in advance than in reality.  :)

 Our furbabies missed us!

 We spent a couple days trying to get back into a schedule and caught up on rest.  My kids love to have writing workshop, so that was part of our plans during our home time.  At this point they both draw a picture and then dictate their story to me to write for them.

 Trying out 3D chalk that Aunt Mandy gave them in a fun kit of summer surprises!!

 Working on birthday and Father's Day projects:

Sweet Daddy cleaned the house and stocked up on produce for us before we got home!

And painted the whole back of the house!!

Wyoming! Starting with Natural Bridge.

The kids and I just got back from 10 days in Wyoming at the beginning of June.  We flew into Denver, rented a car and drove to Laramie, spent a couple of days with my cousin Mitch and his wife, Julie, then drove to Casper, to stay with my Grandaddy and Lil.  From there we drove up to Gillette, to my parents and spent the majority of our trip, with some side trips to the Black Hills in South Dakota.  My pictures are on 2 cameras and my phone and are totally out of order, so I've decided instead of waiting until I have time to get them all sorted out, I'll just post as I get to them.  I took Matt's point and shoot and my little waterproof point and shoot and no DSLR.  I always end up taking like 3 pictures on it when I take my DSLR, so I've adopted a new policy of no trips with it, because it feels so nice not to worry about it getting dropped or jostled, etc.  

So.  This is mid-trip.  On the way from Laramie to Casper, we drove right by a park I grew up camping at with my Grandmommy and Grandaddy and I couldn't resist taking the kids to show them.  I have such great memories of camping here in my grandparents' little pop up camper.  They kept our wading sandals in the camper, as well as our current-sized walking stick (found in the woods and smoothed out by my Grandaddy, of course) and our camp chairs.  We always made s'mores with crunchy peanut butter on the grahams and washed our hands and faces in the orange plastic dish tub.  Sweet times, those were!

Natural Bridge is a big huge piece of rock that bridges over the river that flows beneath.  You can wade under the bridge and you can climb up and over the bridge, so of course we did both!  The water was high and flowing pretty quickly, so we didn't venture out too far....plus it was COLD!!  But the kids did enjoy wading around a bit to cool off.  Their mama, too.  :)

 Then we headed up for the little hike/climb to the top of the bridge.

 Can you spot Quinn out on the bridge?  Such beautiful scenery!

 This is his "mad face" because he didn't like that he couldn't throw rocks.  That kid is rock-throwing crazy.

 The view from above--to where we were standing in the first picture.  Ignore my thumb in the corner.  I do that way too often with the little waterproof camera.

 The walk down was STEEEEEP so they took to their booties to slide down.

 We had fun sitting in the middle of all the rocks and looking through them.  We each found a "tooth" to take a picture with.  :)

 She wrote me notes on the rocks.  This one says, "I love you."  She has been learning about the hardness scale, so we had some good talks and practical application of that!

 We later found out these flowers are called "Dame's Rocket."

 A fun little stopover for them and walk down memory lane for me!