Oh what a Summer!

Our summer has come to an end:( The kids started school on August 13th. Usually when school starts I am kind of ready to get the kids on a schedule again but not this year. Most summers I work and only have off Thursday-Sunday with the kids but this summer since my maternity leave ended in the middle of summer I decided to just stay off of work until they went back. It was great! I loved being home with them and having lazy days. Actually we didn't have that many lazy days....we filled our summer with lots of fun activities and stayed quite busy. We did  have some lazy days though filled with Harry Potter movies and lots of popcorn! We jokingly call this summer the "Summer of Harry Potter" because my nephew gave all the videos and we literally watched each one like 5 times!
Our first week off we got organized and made our "Wall of Summer". The kids absolutely love this wall and started talking about making it about a month before school was out! This wall has a list of movies shown at the park downtown, a list of the free movies played at the theater, our pool hours, schedules for camp times (Young Writer's camp, Safety Town, Soccer camp, Football camp, Camp Thurman) and some of the goals the kids want to accomplish over the summer. Believe it or not we actually stick to this schedule pretty well. It helps us make sure we get done as much as we want in the summer because man, does it go fast!!

Some of our activities included:
Lots of pool time!!
Did I tell you how much I am going to miss this pool! Oh yeah, we are moving this coming summer...more details to follow! This pool is fantastic and we have such great memories here. It is never crowded so we stay for hours. Our pool bag is always packed and has a special money bag which we load up with coins the beginning of the summer for ice cream they sell during adult swim...one of the kids' favorite parts! I just love it!

It was even more fun getting to take AB this year. Every single time we went she would fall asleep in the shade. We had such a cool summer which allowed us to take her to the pool more than I expected. I was prepared to take fans and misters to help keep her cool but didn't need any of it!

 Scooter rides down by the river
The kids and I would go to church in the mornings which is near the river trails so we would pack their scooters and AB's stroller so we could go for a nice walk afterwards. Again perfect weather for this! Its hard to see Ella and Luke in this picture but they are a head of me taking off on their scooters. It is such a nice trail over the river and into the woods. We would eat cherries off the cherry trees on the side of the path and then visit the community gardens at the end. We also so lots of deer on the path!

AB would sleep most of the way in her stroller.

Rock climbing
There is a climbing center close to our house so we hit this place up several times this summer. The kids love it!

Diamond Mining
This was an epic fail! It had rained the day before and since I had never done this before I wasn't prepared for it at all! It was about a two hour drive to get there. It was steamy and so so muddy.

The mud made it impossible to dig and they were out of all the tools you could rent to dig so we bought these little rakes and they were basically useless.
Ella and Luke were having a little bit of fun getting muddy but we so disappointed that they couldn't really even attempt to find and diamonds. They had big plans to find a diamond big enough to take them to Disney World:(

But mud, heat and a screaming baby caused me to lose it quickly after getting there so it really wasn't fun for me at all! We did eat at the nice Diamond cafe which turned out to be the best part of the whole adventure. Although it truly was a miserable experience, Luke said this the following week, "Remember going diamond mining. That was so much fun!" What?? Is he remembering the same thing I am? Ha!

Yard Sale
I had a big yard sale at my house and my friend Katie joined me. It was fun but the best part was watching these four play together!

Scavenger hunts at home
The kids were bored one day playing in there room so when they came out I had a surprise waiting for them. I lead them all over the house and outside finding clues which lead them to the freezer for their treasure...popsicles!

Fun at home
I helped the kids put together a big tent in Ella's room. They loved it!

 AB even spent a lot of time in there playing!

We also got lots of cousin time. My sister and I got together with the kids several times and we spent a week at my parents' house where Joshua and Landon live during the summer. We spent a week in Dallas where the kids went to Camp Thurman and played with their Burdine cousins. What can I say...it was such a wonderful summer! I wish we could start it all over!