Summer Week 2

Here is a look at week 2 of our summer....It has been busy and I am looking forward to that mythical part of the summer where I get to actually slow down and rest and refresh....I am hoping it exists!!

All of our record rainfall made our lawn a little too happy...the grass went from a normal length to taller than our dogs in a very short timespan!  It took a while to hack through this...

...and luckily for me the Houston heat has kicked in in full force!  I had to take a couple breaks to get the whole front and back yards done and consumed quite a bit of water and gatorade!

A while back I got my nephew Jeremiah a set of KEVA planks.   It was the contraption set and has directions for building contraptions that you drop a ball through.  They are pretty cool!  The other night, Shonda fed us after a long day of VBS prep and my girls built this contraption.  IT was pretty awesome...you let the ball roll down the ramp on the right and it bounces off the platform in the middle and into the cone on the left and out the slide.   I tried to get a video after first time but stuff got knocked over and that was that!

On Thursday evening we watched the Virgadamo crew and while they were over I pulled out Olivia's tooth!  To get even with me, Amanda pulled out MK's tooth!  

We started with a chore and reward app this week.  The girls have the app on their tablets and I can add chores and they get points for the chores they do and lose points if they don't get them done when they are supposed to, and they can cash in their points for rewards like sleep overs and other fun things!  So far the dogs have been more well fed than ever in their lives!

Ben made a friend with Uncle Mike when we were watching him Thursday!  

As I said before we have been prepping for VBS all last week.  It starts tonight and it should be awesome!  Here are some pics from mid decorating.  We are using Orange's curriculum and love it!

Last Saturday was Bria's dance recital.  She does ballet and jazz.  Her cousins also do dance there so Saturday morning was busy with hair and makeup for all!

I love me some Haylie...she is growing up so fast!  I think she looks so much like her late Nana here in this picture!  She told me "Auntie Erin, I have never had sparkly eyes before!!"

And my Prima Ballerina!  So beautiful!

Shonda and her girls joined us for girly dancy recital fun!  This was Abigail's last day of being 3years old!

Auntie Erin gets a little silly

Gotta get some Essie in there too!  

After the recital we had a quick dinner at Chick-fil-A per the ballerina's request and then went over to the Virgadamo's house for some adult game night/kid movie night.  We had a lot of fun playing Trouble, Spades, and Go Fish...yep!  Apparently kittens were buy one get one free at the pound and so Ben and Olivia have new kittens....they are so cute.  This is Ben with his kitten Rocky!

For Father's Day it is becoming a tradition to take Mike to Hibachi for lunch.  Our favorite is Wild Ginger in Conroe.  

The Hibachi chef said..."small fire or big fire....of course we said BIG!"

The girls let Mike take a nap then made him cards and a crown to wear!  He is such a good daddy and they are lucky to have him!

Around 8:30 pm we were finally hungry from dinner and so we made some Brats (supposed to grill but we had MORE rain!) and I made a yummy warm southwest corn salad to go with it.  We started getting veggies from a co-op and there was fresh sweet corn which I cut off the cob and sauteed with garlic and onions and a poblano pepper and then tossed with diced cherry tomatoes and cilantro...it was so so good!

I am trying to snap out of my case of the Mondays and be productive since tonight is the first night of VBS.   It helped when I got the email from our Adoption agency this morning that we are all set with all of our trainings and paperwork and are ready to schedule our HOME STUDY!!!  Now to get our house ready....eeeek!  Hope your week was good!