Summer is Relaxing

The two weeks before school started were spent at Garden City Beach. We had to take a lot of stuff for two weeks!!

We spent the first week on the inlet, kayaking, fishing and crabbing.

Then a week oceanfront, which we spent boogie boarding, finding shark's teeth and playing in the sand. And of course visiting the arcade / amusement park a couple dozen times!

More Summer Fun

One of our favorite summer activities is water play in our own backyard. Water guns, slip 'n slide, sprinklers...This particular time we even had water balloons!

This is the closing event at the first of three Bible Schools the boys are attending this summer.

Tad has recently taken an interest in painting, so we've been doing some of that.

And no summer would be complete (for us) without a 4th of July trip to Blacksburg!

Photo Shoot

Start of Summer

Gotta love summer! Picking strawberries...

And blueberry picking is next month! YUM!!!

We went on our first family camping trip a couple of weeks ago. Ed built us a campfire...

And Andy entertained us with some dancing...

We've gotten in a lot of time at the pool already. Matthias is starting to swim some very short distances, so we don't have kids hanging on us at the pool now! We've been hitting some indoor spots to escape the heat. The boys love the Children's Museum. We'll be spending lots of time there this summer thanks to season passes provided by Grandmama and Granddaddy!

Matthias's birthday party

SNOW!!!!

We FINALLY got a long-awaited big snow last night! We have been waiting for years for a snow like this to enjoy with the kids. We couldn't have asked for a better one. We ended up with about nine inches of very packable snow. It was beautiful coming down and came on Sunday night so we could continue our weekend for a few extra days! We went out Sunday evening and had a snowball fight under the floodlights with the next door neighbor kids. Then today we spent most of the day outside.

Tad's first order of business was to build a fort for protection in the many upcoming snowball battles.

Andy was ready to go sledding.

Tad found that trays are not only good for sledding but also as shields.

Matthias loved snow cream, but he was perfectly happy to just eat the plain snow, too.

And here's my littlest snow angel making his very first one ever.

It was such a fun day, and we are all completely exhausted from it. Andy showed us a good way to cool off by rubbing a snowball on your head.