June/July recap

Hello, dear blog world! Once again, I've neglected you dreadfully. I haven't even published comments for a couple weeks or so! Oh dear. And now we're gearing up for our annual trek to Ohio at the end of this week . . . so my blogging will probably continue to be sporadic for a while. However, here is a pictorial update of what we've been up to for the past couple months, and I hope to also get some goals posted, as well as a couple of long overdue book reviews. So, get ready for a slew of posts and then . . . silence again. :)

At the end of June, we went strawberry picking with my mom. We got around 25 pounds of berries and made lots of jam! (58 half-pints, to be exact.) The farmer's wife found this huge berry and gave it to us . . . had to get a picture! Sam especially loved having such a huge berry. :)

A few days later it was the 4th of July! We started the morning off with a special breakfast. Red, white and blueberry smoothies, and red, white and blueberry muffins! :)

And I made a red white and blue dessert for our church picnic, too! :)

We enjoyed good fellowship with friends, and lots of yummy food, of course!

Some of us got a little extra sun . . . and there were lots of happy smiles.

And we celebrated again the next night with sparklers!

Also in July, our new Sonlight curriculum arrived! I had to get some pictures of our "Box Day."

Cutting it open . . . oh, the excitement! :)

Three kids with the open box of books. We will be diving into these in a few weeks!

We enjoyed a day at the beach with a bunch of friends . . .

and had smoothies after supper that night, complete with smoothie mustaches!

We went to a baseball game with my parents . . .

and a friend's birthday party, where my kids experienced their first time on a slip-n-slide!

We even got a new (to us) Suburban! (And yes, the kids are more than a little excited about being able to spread out in here!)

And Jim built a little coop for our chickies, and we moved them into it last weekend. I'm very happy to have them out of the house. :) Eventually they will go in with the big chickens, but not till they're older and not so apt to get picked on.

And last but not least, I thought you might like to see a new picture of our little Sleepy. Not so little anymore! :)

Whew! That pretty much sums up the past month plus a little more for us. Hope you enjoyed this peek into our days! I'm sure I'll come back from vacation with lots more pictures to share . . . eventually! :) Hope you are all having a lovely summer too!