Jackson's Special Day Plus One

Graham made sure we knew right off the bat this summer how feisty he'd be, and I felt bad for Jackson that the days weren't necessarily as fun/calm/quiet/more pleasant like he perhaps deserved...  Josh quickly thought of the idea to give Jackson a day all about him!  So, Jackson made a list:

 

 1. Fishing, 2. Park, 3. Pool (Creek), 4. Lego Star Wars, 5. Natural History Museum (Saved for a future date), 6. Mall (Did lots of times with Mommy this summer), 7. Go on a train (Tomorrow!), 8. Find 11 caches (Did on a different really fun day!), 9. Go on a tour, 10. Get a trumpet, 11. Have a playdate...

 

 ...12. Go to McDonalds, 13. Go to movie theater (Did last weekend), 14. Make slime (Did this on a rainy summer day already), 15. Make a present for Mommy, 16. Build a Lego (Saved for a future date!)

 They started off this fun day by inviting Izzy for some fishing.  Izzy ended up staying all day.  And, all night :)  After fishing at Locust Shade, they stopped at The Marine Corps Museum to play at the playground and visit a bit of the museum.  Then, lunch at McDonalds!

 

The afternoon was spent mostly having an adventure in the creek area behind our house.  These friends came home with them...   

The late afternoon activity was working on my special surprise!  Josh cut the wood and the kids got to work sanding and painting!

 

Then, Josh assembled the pieces into a box!

It's a place where I can keep special things :)

We took a small bathing break, and Izzy went home to collect her sleepover gear before joining us for dinner, playing Zelda with Josh and sleeping over.

We still needed to fulfill "Ride a train."  Luckily Burke Lake Park has not only a train, but a carousel, a great playground and cool woods to play in!  I loaded up our provisions, and off we went!

We bought our tickets for the carousel and the train.

The carousel was going to run first.

All ready for our train ride!

What a sweet bunch :)

Spontaneous tee-pee building!

 

We had SUCH a fun day with Izzy!  I think Jackson truly enjoyed doing all of the special things on his list :)  

Summer Winds Down

We had our first Family Movie Date to see "Finding Dory!"  It was the perfect activity for yet another HOT afternoon...

We loved the movie and the Qdoba dinner afterwards :)

We'd been meaning to catch up with these friends all summer!  It FINALLY worked out to meet up AND it was Kate's birthday!  We helped her celebrate with a little Cracker Barrel brunch :)

Haircut Day = Treat Reward!

Fill a huge container with Slurpee for a ridiculously cheap price...and then take it on your Target shopping trip!  LOL!

It got a bit breezy, so they got our their umbrellas "just for fun..."

...it pretty quickly turned to this!

Summer Days

Continuing with the trend of starting our mornings early...  But, you do get to watch the Garbage Men...

Graham's face of pure excitement over this is pretty cute...

#daddywearsallofthesunglasses

#jacksonwearsallofthesunglasses

These friends have been so hospitable and taken us with them to the pool loads!  These treats may or may not have been earned by some swift toy-cleaning-up-moments-before-we-left-for-the-pool... ;)

Of course the summer camps I had my eye on for the boys and swim lesson levels, locations and times did not all line up so perfectly...  That's ok, I just did a little more driving back and forth.  Graham had a week of camp first at a great park near us called Locust Shade.  His camp was Little Naturalist and he even got to do it with some buddies who will be in his preschool class this coming year!  Jackson started swim lessons at the same time, so after dropping Graham at camp, we drove to the rec center (on the other side of town) for swim lessons.  Then the whole process switched after that as Jackson did Naturalist camp at the same great park and Graham took swim lessons.  It was a bit of a flurry of activity!

Graham's level of swim lessons happens in the kiddie pool, so they get to have a few minutes of play time at the end with the mushroom turned on and toys out to play with.

One of the mornings Jackson was at camp, Graham and I spent a little time at the mall play area full of fruit!

Virginia Summer Begins

Well!  We arrived back to Virginia just in time to celebrate a very rainy 4th of July!  Fireworks were rained out, but we were really quite happy to just stay home and keep unwinding from our vacation!  LOL  

The brand-new mini-bats we got at the Slugger Museum made a great addition to our photo!

Red, white and blue dessert!

We had an awesome summer morning out in the yard with Eden over to play.  We hooked up the Slip 'n Slide for it's first go this summer, and they kids had such a fun time!

A little popsicle break!  Then we did held a toy/car wash.  While all of this fun playing was happening, I vacuumed all unwanted souvenirs from vacation out of the car, swept out, cleaned out and organized the garage and supervised the car washing.  I also convinced the kids it was a super fun idea to "paint" the porch with water, and they got it so much cleaner!  HA!

Well, summer is going to be a bit of a workout around here this summer... :/  The boys are living the saying of, "The days are long, but the years are short..."  They are up SO early, and the disagreements start just as early.  There will be a lot of breathing in and breathing out...  So, to celebrate surviving my first week of summer, we had a date night to go out kayaking!  It was lovely and the water felt so peaceful!

A morning visit to the Zoo, and we discovered a wonderful selection of temporary art pieces made completely out of trash taken out of bodies of water and beaches!

He's SO big...!!!

We always love a trip to the Zoo, but this one was a little bittersweet, because the Carrillos are our SECOND set of friends THIS SUMMER to leave us for Texas :(  It's a pretty great new adventure, though, and we are happy for them even though we'll miss having them close.

So well trained!!!

Cheesy photo op

The 4th of July is always a great start to summer tradition followed closely by FREE SLURPEE DAY on 7-11...

...and Cow Day at Chick fil a!!!

We had such a great time with our Super Cow costumes last year that we modified them just a smidge and used them again!

Those three faces are alarmingly cute... ;)

LOVE movie dates with this fella! 

Water beads keep us happy

Good friends take you to the beach and provide not only good conversation, but also friends to occupy your children and this view :)