Coloring, Junior Rangers, and Team Toni

Just a cute picture of the boys coloring before we took Jackson to camp!

Jackson completed a four-day Junior Ranger camp at Leesylvania State Park.  He LOVED it!  Each day they hiked, did a craft, played at the playground, and checked out various animals.  This picture is from a little closing ceremony they did where each camper received a certificate proclaiming them Junior Rangers and a t-shirt and a badge to iron on.  

Right after Jackson's Junior Ranger ceremony, we hurried back home to catch the last of the sno-cone party for Toni.  Toni and her family had just moved to their new duty station, but Toni was in a pretty serious firework accident on the 4th of July, so they were back in this neck of the woods seeing doctors and taking care of other things.  We were SO happy to get to visit with her and her mom, and to hug them in person :)  We put together a bag of goodies to keep her in good spirits while she works on her recovery.  We are sure going to miss her smiling face around the street!

Ashley, Toni, Jackson, Alyssa, Graham, Violet, Izzy and Mary

The girls are wearing pink t-shirts that have a special "T" emblem on them to represent Talon's Team Toni!  We are so glad our friend will be ok :)

Fourth of July with a Little Taste of "Home!"

When the Kennedys asked us if we were interested in going to the Cubs game when they were in town to play the Nats, we said, "Sure!!!"  This was months ago, so who knew we would get such a gorgeous day???  It barely broke 80, and there was a pretty nice breeze all day!  

Situated in our seats!

Even better, Mrs. MacHenry was at the game!!!  We knew she is an avid Nats fan, and that she likes to go to lots of games, so we were hoping she'd be at this one!  We took a little field trip over to her section to meet her, and Jackson was SO excited!  I hadn't told him where we were going when we left our seats  :)  Here they are in their opposing t-shirts ;)

We all made it through the 7th inning, but then we decided to move the fun to the Kennedy house!  Josh has Graham on his shoulders, and Craig has Donovan on his shoulders.

Resting up before more playtime!

Cute lil' Cubs fan!

Future swimsuit model?

Craig and Bianca had the pool set up, corn hole to play, tons of food to eat, and a wonderful yard to enjoy the day and good company :)

Pool-break selfie!

Muah!

The Original Snuggle Buggle :)

Almost sitting in order--Graham (2) and Hunter (1 1/2) should be switched.  Donovan will be 4 soon and then Jackson is 5 1/2.  

Popsicles to end the fun day (so far)!  

My original plan was to be home around 6:30 so we could lay Graham down for bed at his usual time, and let him nap for a couple of hours before getting him up and taking him to fireworks.  But, as I suspected, we were having such a good time with the Kennedys that we didn't want to leave :(  We finally tore ourselves away, and we pretty much just swung by the house to grab a blanket and went right to the fireworks.  Graham did snooze a bit on the way home, so he was hanging in there, but we could tell he was a little befuddled as to why he was still awake and not in bed.  LOL  We scored an invite with the Walburgers to go see some great fireworks super close!  They had invited us two years ago (when Graham was just a month old--those are some sweet memories), and it was a wonderful display with no traffic to fight :)  

We had a truly lovely 4th!  Josh and I are SO proud of both boys!  We can't remember the last time we were gone from the house all day.  They both hung in there and did awesome!  Hooray!

TEN Years Later!!!

Josh and I celebrated TEN YEARS of marriage last Wednesday!!!  We have experienced SO many things together, and I can't wait to see what other adventures are ahead of us!  Most immediately, we will adventure on a week-long Alaskan cruise in mid-August with Mom and Dad and Larry and Michelle!  CANNOT WAIT!

To celebrate more immediately, we went kayaking!  It was my first time, and it was SO much fun!  It was a gorgeous afternoon, and the river was so peaceful and pretty!

I later ditched the life vest when it got too hot...

I love this handsome outdoorsy man :) :) :)

Beautiful!

Kayaking selfie!!!

Unfortunately, our fancy dinner plans to go out to Red Robin were postponed as we came back to find this shattered window on our car :(  We think a rock flew up from the weed-eater being used nearby and cracked the window.  We were at Fountainhead Regional Park, and they were AMAZING!  First, they helped us clean up our car.  Then, they paid to fix the window since they agreed there was a good chance their weed-eater was what threw up a rock.  They were super nice and amazingly quick in helping us get everything coordinated so we could get the window replaced ASAP!  The ending to our time in the park didn't discourage us from wanting to explore it some more!

Always Room for New Friends, But You Never Forget the Old Ones!!!

I have been in a huge funk since my parents left.  Of course, I am SUPER excited for our big vacation to Alaska at the end of the summer, and it's not even that long until we see them again, but it was extra hard to say goodbye to them knowing we had another really hard goodbye coming up.  We moved into our house Mother's Day weekend three years ago.  The Bashore family moved in for good about a month later.  For the past three years, all members of the families have enjoyed such fun times and made TONS of memories!  We learned from each other, encouraged one another, ate LOTS of yummy food, traded recipes, played countless games, roasted bunches of marshmallows, grew babies, raised sweet children, camped, canoed, ran, crafted, shopped, relaxed, lent out last-minute grocery items, helped with heavy lifting to save marriages, and truly made the most of living two houses apart.  The inside of the houses was even exactly the same layout!!!  We wanted to soak up as much time as possible before we had to say our goodbyes.  

We were more than happy to have Levi hang out for the day, and we took him to see Rocknoceros at Stonebridge!  I'm not sure how any of them felt about the music, but they sure loved being together :)

We sat with Lillian and Heidi again, and Graham liked Miss Heidi's hat!  And her harmonica, but I didn't get a picture of that funny sight!

Three boys enjoying the fountain after the show!  Jackson was just shy of 3 when Levi was born.  Levi was getting ready to turn 1 when Graham was born.  Cute stair-stop boys :)

Special buddies!

Looks like Jackson and Levi need a little more time in the sun compared to Grahammers!

The goodbye fun continued with Hallie, Aimee, Rachel and I went out to get ice cream.  Our goodbye to Hallie is coming in just under a month.  Sigh...  One at a time!

Graham, Levi, Sage and Jackson enjoying Sage and Clay's super awesome new pool!  I LOVE that Graham and Levi's swim trunks match!  Jackson had a pair that matched, but he out-grew them :(

We squeezed in one last dinner at our house with the Bashores after the moving truck came and loaded up all of their boxes.  We had spaghetti and cheesy garlic bread.  This peanut butter chocolate chip pound cake was for dessert :)  The kids all got some more playing in, and the grown-ups got to relax a bit and chat.

Yesterday was the day to say, "We can't wait to visit you in your new house!!!"  Hugging this wonderful family goodbye was really hard :(  We couldn't believe our luck with what amazing neighbors moved in with us!  We still have some awesome ones living here, and we are crossing our fingers for some wonderful new friendships to form...

Jolene had no way of knowing, but her dinner invitation for last night was PERFECT timing!!!  Hitting the road to spend time with some other good friends (who are NOT moving) put us in a better mood!  Josh and Rick played a little golf, and I kept Jolene company as she made yet another amazing meal for us, and the boys all played.  These two are just adorable trouble together!  Graham caught on quickly that Kermit was Owen's special lovey.  He tried to use Kermit to get Owen off the stool, so HE could get up there!  Smart cookie!  (They only posed like this so I could take a picture!)

We distracted ourselves right away by making cookies to take to our new neighbors!  This was my first time with both boys helping, and it went pretty well!  

We made LOTS of cookies, and we used them as an excuse to go meet two new families!  They were both REALLY nice, and we are looking forward to getting to know them.  We will get to meet our third new family sometime in late July or August...

Slip-n-Slide!!!

I found this gem after the season last summer, and we finally got to try it out!  The boys (and friends) LOVED it!!!

Running start...

Slide!

Graham prefers the Slip-n-Bear-Crawl!

Miss Sarah was nice enough to provide the after-snack :)

Uncontrollable Cuteness Before Hiking

I just happened to take a whole bunch of pictures, and I LOVE this whole sequence, so I posted them all :)

After an early nap for Mr. Graham, we headed out to finally explore Leesylvania State Park!!!  Graham did the best yet in the Ergo.  He definitely does not love it, but we pushed on, and he really didn't fuss that much...  Check out the view behind us!  I would consider this a pretty tough hike, but Jackson did AWESOME, and this view was pretty great!  I must say, I am SUPER proud of myself, because I was the one to finally spot a really stubborn cache in an area we searched for a good half hour.  Go Mrs. HooClass2002!

We finished our hike just around dinner, so we didn't get to explore too much more of the park, but we can't wait to go back!!!

Josh and I both noticed how far Jackson has come with his stamina since we started really hiking together as a family two years ago.  The summer Graham was born, we really had to have lots of promises of playgrounds, yummy snacks, etc.  Now, he pretty much keeps up, no problem :)

It was pretty warm, but we had a really great family day :D