SUMMER 2015 - Lakes-Berries-Caves-Snakes-Baseball-Dyslexia-Robot Zoo-Bugs

What a BUSY summer!

We made a bucket list for summer and did ALMOST all of it.

Our annual Honeycomb Beach excursion was quite fun.....and infinitely easier than last year.

Our trip to Jack's lake was awesome, and the fact that I finally (after 3 years) made it through a Jack's Lake day without letting the boys get sunburnt was just the icing on top!

We hit 24.75 hours of reading over our 6 week break and the boys were thrilled to turn in their reading logs to our beloved Miss Maggie at the library at the final summer reading party....which just happened to include snakes, lizards and frogs.

Creek trips always top the summer (and who am I kidding...spring and fall) to do lists for the boys.

We made a trip to Cathedral Caverns with Nana and Gramps.  No trip to the caverns is complete without a berry picking excursion.  Thankfully Nana is an adept berry picker, even when the little boys lose focus in the adjacent peach orchard.

I participated in an INTENSIVE dyslexia training at our local Dyslexia school to beef up my skills in teaching Matthew.  Nana & Gramps came and kept the boys....as a result these boys got a little spoiled and Kimber thinks all toast now "needs" CHEESE on it.

The baseball bug has hit Matthew HARD.  He has always loved baseball but I would bet we have played catch 5 out of 7 days for the past 3 months, since baseball season ended.  He also attended a 3-day baseball camp at the local high school that he thoroughly enjoyed.

The local Space and Rocket Museum has a Robot Zoo exhibit that is phenomenal.  We spent a fun day exploring it and enjoying the lack of crowds as the local schools have started.

Our new school year starts next Monday!  We are shifting from American History and Geography to a study of the ancients this year.  Add this to math, reading, cursive, biology, geology and Latin.  We will be dissecting owl pellets (poop) and crayfish in a few weeks and the boys cannot wait. 

Our beach house....9 months ago

So, funny story, I lost the memory card that contained all the pictures from our adventure, and after moving our bed during a little spring cleaning I found it...so the post may go on...9 months later.  

So, a few weeks months ago we rented a house in Seagrove Beach, Florida with two other families and spent some much needed time together.  By the end of our visit Matthew told me repeatedly that he just wants to live at our "other" house.  I wish son, I wish.

The weather was gorgeous, the sand was...well EVERYWHERE and the kids loved digging in it, the water was still a bit churned up from Isaac but that didn't keep us out of it.  Kimber was a little fearless with the waves, Matthew got to snorkel with Willie and thought that was AWESOME.  We had this big giant table we ate most of our meals and there is something dream come true-ish about gathering 10+ people around a big table.

There was a lot of cheeseball consumption.

and a lot of sunscreen applying, though not so many pictures

and a lot of digging

and a wedding

that we may have crashed...well technically they crashed our vacation as we 

claimed our shady spot a good 8 hours prior to their ceremony???

 

and some wrestling

 

and some bucket duty

 

and some pirating of ships

and some eating

and a little resting

 

some hand holding

We were glad to get home and feel ever so blessed by our Alabama family. 

Annual Strawberry Picking

We finally made it out for our annual excursion to the strawberry patch.  This just might be one of my favorite traditions, and I have visions of teenage boys rolling their eyes at me in ten years as I make them fill their own buckets.  For now, they mostly love it and certainly eat as much, if not more, than they pick.

The patch was especially muddy this year, miraculously my two stayed pretty clean.

The second best part to picking them, the JAMAPALOOZA that follows.  We had a new team member this year, between the three of us we canned (53) half-pint jars of strawberry deliciousness.

Jack's Lake

So we have a little friend named Jack.

He has a lake.

And a boat.

And an awesome lake house.

And quite possibly more toy tractors than we do.

(Unbeknownst to my little boy, Jack's parents are some of the hardest working people I know that sacrifice every single day so that Jack can have all of these awesome boats, houses and lakes)


I think Matthew has a little man crush on Jack..and his lake..and the boat is just fuel to the proverbial fire.

Some snaps of our trips to Jack's lake...and please, I know Kimber is terribly sunburnt, we learned our lesson about reapplying under the eyes.

British Soccer Camp

We just finished our second summer of British Soccer Camp and this year Kimber got to play...even though he did not choose to do so very much.

Our coach was certainly not as amazing as our coach last year but the kids still had a lot of fun, well, as much fun as you can have running around in 95 degree weather..in Alabama..in June!

Water, lots of water

It's summertime in Alabama which equates to lots of time spent in the water.  

We started the summer with two weeks of swim lessons and

 have been swimming almost daily ever since.

Some snaps from lessons....

and from one of many creek outings.....

We have been to two water parks and the local pools a few times too, 

we have had several 100+ degree days so I anticipate many more 

towel washings this season.