The 4th and a bit more

The first part of July flew by in a flash  and I don't even have pics of many of our fun activities! Such as Brittany and her boys spending the night and pool days with friends. 

A highlight of our summer is always spending the 4th of July at the lake with COUSIN TIME!!! This year did not disappoint! More Popsicles were consumed than I could count......but it's like this with both sides of the family! Love it!

The kids are so blessed to have cousins so close in age on each side of the family. They are so much fun and we look forward to welcoming a new baby boy cousin in the next month! 

Being silly!

Stella and Grace with Grandpa as he makes his "World Famous Chocolate Malts" one night. 

Took the kids for ice cream one morning......yes, morning! 

See a pattern of craziness?!

The Annual 4th of July foot parade on Sunset Beach. 

With Grandma and Grandpa on the golf cart. 

Double Trouble. P and Bubba G. 

Another Double Trouble. Ha! Grace is so good with Stella. She's such an amazing role model!

The fireworks were fabulous! Love taking the boat out and watching them on the lake. 

Stella taking Selfies with her and kitty. He seems to be really excited. Haha!

They were sad to leave their Davidson cousins, but happy to spend time with their Watson cousins!l Mom took us all to Adventureland one day! So much fun! 

Thank you, Nana! The kids had a blast and Sara, Anna and I even rode the NEW scary roller coaster, The Monster! It was so fun and so glad we did it! Hannah, Haydn and Stella rode it, too! 

June!

June was super fun!

Started off meeting up with friends at a strawberry patch to pick strawberries. So yummy! We made homemade strawberry ice cream with the left over berries we didn't inhale. It was delicious!

P ended his first season playing soccer. He really enjoyed it, and was on a team with some great boys. He's signed up to play again in the fall. 

After his last game. 

That same morning, Mike and I ran the Dam to Dam Half Marathon, so we were a bit late to P's 10:30 soccer game. We had a great race and great weather. Even ran into some friends at the finish line to have a beer with. That evening we attended a '90's party, so say we were beat at bedtime would be an understatement!

We hosted P's bday party a few weeks late. May is such a hard time to have a party. Everyone is so busy. He had 13 boys over and my goodness they are LOUD and have TONS of energy! The theme was Yard Wars, they played a bunch of outdoor games. Here they are learning the route for the Obstacle Course. 

Ice cream cake for the win. Porter wanted a smiley face on his cake, in Hawkeyes colors. LOL

A big highlight was having the Arizona Warins around for a week for a family wedding. We loved spending as much time with them as we could. 

Stella and Berlin were dropped off at a local pool by the,selves for the first time!!! Crazy! Their backs are to you in the pic, taking in the slides. They went there during P's bday party. I uploaded the pics out of order. 

Stella LOOOOOOVED attending the Drake Girls Basksetball Camp! loved it! The head coach is one of Porters best friends aunt (you follow that!), so P has been to games with Hank before. The coach is amazing and did such a great job with the girls. 

We went roller skating with friends one afternoon. Porter doing the Limbo!

Evening out at the ICubs game. Nicole, Berlin and Stella with Cubbie. 

A Watson Fam pic at Katelyn's wedding. Sorry about all the raccoon eyes. 

I turned 39(!!!!!!). I had two dinners out with friends leading up to the big day and the night of, tried out a new restaurant downtown. Stella and I were matching. Haha!

Stella really wanted these fake press on nails at Target. She bought them with her own money....they didn't last 30 minutes before she wanted them off. $5 down the drain.....

Lots of time is spent playing on the hammock. 

Stella and Abby P read for another ball camp. This time at Grandview College. This one wasn't as much "fun", more skill based camp, but they ended up enjoying it. Porter did a soccer camp and I know realize I didn't take any pics. Oops!

The kids wanted to go to our old neighborhood and visit the parks that we used to go to on the daily. These parks were a part of our every day life. It was really fun to visit them again. Stella remembered way more than I thought she would!

A day trip with Sara and girls was so much fun! Traveled to visit the American Gothic house then up the Herbert Hoovers Presidential Library and Museum. Great day for a road trip!

May!

May was a whirlwind of end of the school year activities, 2 weekends out of town and lots of fun. We are still plugging away updating our landscaping. We worked outside all day yesterday, the kids even helped out quite a bit! Stella finished up track and P finishes up soccer this week. 

Here is our May in a nutshell. 

We had a little family party at the beginning of the month to celebrate Porter turning 9!

Reading the HUGE card that Hannah made him!

Blowing out the candles on his ice cream cake. 

That night we were lucky enough to have dad stay over night with the kids while we went to the Garth Brooks concert with friends. It was amazing!!! He does not disappoint! We were in the nosebleed section, but it didn't matter! We were at Garth!!

The following weekend was filled with sleepover with some of their besties, Ella and Cooper while their parents were out of town. A stop at the ice cream shop in old downtown Waukee was in order. 

Then stopped by a park to burn off some energy. I discovered this cool, new-to-us, park durning my runs while training for the Dam to Dam and had been wanting to try it out. It was a hit!

These two. Love them! They spent hours playing with latex gloves filled with water and balloons filled with flour. Drew faces on them, named them all and made houses for them out of shoe boxes. Ella is actually spending the night again tonight and they are still playing with these!

Being silly! 

Porter turned 9!!! He gets SO excited for his bday. I love it. He up super early that morning. 

These 2 were troopers despite the early hour. 

Opening gifts

The thing he wanted the most was an unsharpened katana (Japanese sword). He was thrilled to open it!!!

Chilling out after school, reading a library book with 9 balloons tied to his foot. Seems normal to me. Ha!

I went to school to have lunch with him and snuck in Chick-Fil-A. Shhhhh......don't tell! We aren't supposed to bring in outside food into the lunch room. That's hands down his fav place to eat. Since already had that for lunch, he chose Red Robin for dinner. P 

Stella at a sleepover at Abby's house.  Grilling hot dogs. 

A couple Monday's ago they didn't have school. We stopped at a park to play before dentist appts!

I chaperoned Stella's field trip. It was really neat. A walking tour of downtown Des Moines architecture. I had never really paid much attention to the details of buildings downtown, thinking "it's just Des Moines", this tour was a total eye opener! Wow! A highlight was stopping in a old bank to check out the vault. 

We made a quick trip to Okoboji. The weather was perfect, but the water was still chilly in the mid 50's. The kids still tubed and managed to dunk themselves in the water. They were very happy to get in grandma and grandpas hot tub after that!!

We were out for lunch on Sat afternoon and ran into one of Stella's friends! Her family has a beautiful condo at the lake so we ended up having Megan spend the night with us. They had a HUGE project over the state of Iowa due and they worked on it that night. I think having a friend to do homework with  made the massive project more pleasant. 

Terrible pic of the kids, they were more into their ice cream than me. It was my last time doing carpool with Ryan, who graduated 8th grade last week and is off to Dowling next year. I took the kids to Rita's to celebrate after school. Some of the kids had out of uniform passes. These kids are so much fun.  So glad we have such an awesome carpool set up!

I always love going to the last school mass of the year. Had to snap a pic of Stella with her 1st grade buddy. When Stella was in 1st grade she LOVED her buddy. They had a great bond throughout the rest of their time at SFA together. I hope the same for her and Alex. 

These girls are headed to Jr. High next year! Crazy!!!!

A group of us had planned to meet up at a park on the last day of school to celebrate the 5th graders moving up to JH next year, but it poured all morning. The kids had an early out at 11:20, so I offered to host at our house. Luckily for P there were plenty of boys in his grade there, too. Here's a group shot of most of the girls. 6 or so are missing, left early/arrived late. 

Silly!

We traveled to MA over the weekend. So much fun seeing so many family and friends. 

It is always fun time to hang at Lefty's with my dad!

Brittany's kids were able to spend the night which thrilled my kids and Sara's kids. I tried to get a pic after they fell asleep. 

And I loaded this out of order. Last day of school pics! The first pic in the collage are from the first day and the second from the last day! What a fabulous year they had. They had amazing teachers, have great friends. Blessed are we!

Off they go!