Summer Highlights Reel

Since our last post in June, we've been a little busy.  Apparently a little too busy to keep our blog updated, but maybe we'll get back on track soon.  Or we'll just have to do seasonal highlights.  

Our summer has been delightful.  Just a good, fun, summer full of activities, friends, family, and joy.  We have been camping, swimming, biking, dog walking, ice cream eating, adventuring.  I pulled a few photos off my phone to share some of our adventures.  Enjoy. 

Walking the puppies for our friend Shari.  Scooter loves Anna.  

This girl always has style.  On her way to a swim party down the  street and she's got her rain boots on.  

The girls were often put to work this summer, here Anna learned to remove screws by taking out the old safety catches that were starting to annoy us all.  

Claire's look is short hair.  She got a hair cut early this summer and is already due for another.  

We spent a few days this summer swimming at the pool with Pam.  Lovely days.  

In this family, it's not a weekend without a trip to Menards.  The girls are starting to despise Menards, but we are a family full of projects, so we spend a significant amount of time.  At least they have fun escalators.  

We had a great 4th of July.  We got fancy with braids.  

The girls got to do sparklers two days in a row.  One day to celebrate our friend Ann's birthday and the next to celebrate our country's birthday.  

Both girls had swimming lessons.  Claire was excited to jump in the deep water.  Both passed their levels and had a lot of fun.  

We have been overrun with horses, so we decided to build them a stable.  

We have served at our church's community dinner every month, even Claire has gotten in on the serving.  She's the fruit girl.  She does a great job!  More people are eating their fruit because of that cute girl handing it out!

We harvested our first peas and beans this year.  YUM.

We adopted this little creature the girls named Humphrey.  The pros-he stays in a cage and doesn't really bother anyone and likes veggies from our garden.  The cons-I am still struggling with the rodent thing, but they love him and he's kinda cute…

We have been doing a lot of baking.  This girl is my newest little kitchen helper.  I think she only helps for the benefits of tasting.  Our specialties include chocolate chip banana bread and zucchini bread.  

The girls were thrilled to get to have cousin Will come for a few days.  

We spent some time at the park.  

Anna taught Will how to rollerblade.  It was so fun to have him visit us.  

Earlier this spring Claire stopped using training wheels.  Then she was mad she couldn't keep up with the neighbor kids and wanted them back.  Watch out--this girl is outta control on this big bike!  She rides fast and takes chances for sure!  Maybe we should go back to no training wheels to slow her down!

We had a visit or two to Iowa and the girls got to see Lane!  These three always have fun together!

We definitely hit our fair share of ice cream places.  Claire always likes the Superman or Bubblegum flavors.  Anna is mint chocolate chip every time.  

More baking adventures…this time I had three taste testers.  This frosting may have resulted in very green mouths.  

And another ice cream adventure.  This was the best find of the summer!  Adele's Custard is amazing--especially when they top it with the best cookie dough ever.  

We didn't just eat ice cream, sometimes we had popcorn too.  

If you know us at all, you know we always have a project.  This year we've been getting the girls in on more projecting.  

This girl is a monkey bar fanatic.  She skips multiple handles and could do them 100 times a day.  She's got callouses built up on her sweet little hands.  Such a strong girl.  

The girls were excited to get their own cowgirl boots.  Had to get their attire for Uncle James' wedding in November!

Of course we got to spend some time with Aunt Katie!  We talked her in to coming during VBS week, so she got to help unwrap 200 Rice Krispie Treats.  

We caught a couple movies this summer.  This may have been the favorite of the summer, "The Secret Life of Pets."  

We enjoyed lots of good food this summer.  Man are we lucky!  Onion rings at Snuffy's to celebrate the last day of VBS.  

We took out the backyard fence enclosure while Brian was gone.  Had some great helpers/neighbors come and I learned to use the Saws-all!

Enjoying some Olympic Games.  The girls LOVED the Olympics.  Some favorites were of course the gymnastics, but also they were big Katie Ledecky & Michael Phelps fans as well as sand volleyball fans.  We wear braided pony tails a lot so we can look like volleyball players.  

We road tripped back to Iowa in August as well with Aunt Katie and got to do a little shopping on the way.  

The girls like to dress up Chloe when in Iowa.  

Also on our trip to Iowa, we got to see Cy!  

We checked out the Crayola Experience at the Mall of America.  Very fun place to go and so much to do.  The girls really enjoyed it.  Claire got to make her own crayon and name it.  She insisted on typing the name, it was something like "Ciqueirleslas."   

They gave the experience 2 thumbs up!

And lunch at Crave afterwards was also a hit.  Apparently we didn't teach Claire manners or how to eat oranges in public.  

We did spend some time at the County Fair.  Thank goodness  for  Mr. Chad and his willingness to ride these crazy rides with the big kids!  

The little girls had fun on the rides too.  

This picture really sums up many of our summer days.  Playing Trouble and cooking in the kitchen/folding laundry/multitasking in some way because you can only play so many games of Trouble before you need something else to keep you awake for the game.  I would approximate that 1,765 games of Trouble have been played by each member in this household.  Claire has even been known to play against herself at times.  She's a little obsessed!

The big camping trip of the year was kicked off and we got our starting the journey selfie.  With the truck we actually all fit in the selfie and Katie got to ride along!  It was the start to a pretty fun journey.  

I feel a little guilty about this picture, but most of my pictures were looking like the following one and I felt like our camping book would be a lie if I didn't include one that told the truth of most of our hikes.  Claire was typically crying or upset about something, tired legs, falling, thirsty, hungry, you name it….so I didn't want us to look back and not remember that hiking with a 4 year old isn't all peaches and cream.  

I do have to say though, that both girls were TROOPERS!  We hiked a lot of miles and 10,000 steps for one of us was probably more like 20,000 for Claire and somewhere in between for Anna, so we cut them a lot of slack, brought snacks always and did a lot of piggy back rides.  We did some great hikes to great places.  We threw a lot of rocks into Superior and we found a lot of great rocks to bring home.  We had great campfire food and caught 3 inch long perch off the dock.  Many memories were made and fun was had.  We even had a new experience with a little puke in the tent, but everyone came out stronger from the whole event.  

We like to get our craft on often.  The girls love when they get to do some painting on canvases.  

We hit up the MN Zoo as we were rounding out summer.  This girl is such an animal lover, it's unreal.  She could have stayed all day with the goats.  

Claire had some bonding time with this bear.  He hung out right by the glass looking at her for a while.  They shared a connection.  Claire is definitely our bear.  We have learned a lot from her, especially that you NEVER poke a sleeping Bear.  

The girls are always big into the garden.  They love to go out and pick me some fresh produce.  Claire has been a big fan of finding tomatoes.  They both do a great job of getting only the ripe ones and they also love eating a lot of it.  

1,776.  

More crafting fun!  Remember that fence I mentioned?  We may have turned the fencing into more projects…

Summer can't end without a trip to Fall Harvest to hold the baby chicks.  This year even Claire got in on the holding.  "Mom, this one really loves me!"

The 3 little piggies.  These three, Grace, Anna and Claire, have spent a lot of summer together.  They love, fight, and play like quite the little trio.  

Phew.  If you are still here after all those pictures, I hope you enjoyed.  That was quite an overview of all the fun we've had.  Now we are looking at our last days of summer, Monday brings back to school workshops, girls going back to daycare and pre-K and then the next week is the start of 2nd grade for Anna.  Oh my, we have some adventures yet to come, but this was one great summer!