Oh, it's been a long time... a very long time. I'm going to do a speed catch up of our summer. We started the summer with our annual Tate trip. I can't even go through those pics right now because there are always a lot. Such a great week with our family. Here is the rest of my "summer at a glance".
We came back to Wilmington in time for a week of VBS, which inspired our girls to do a lemonade stand to raise money to buy backpacks for kids who can't afford them. It a was well oiled machine, that lemonade stand, complete with 3 little managers :)
The two older girls took swim lessons in the evenings for a few weeks. The parents enjoyed a solo cup of wine in a pool chair chatting and watching from a distance most of the time. Hadley loved the water this summer. She regularly marches to the deep end calls out "Un, Two, Free, JUMP" and jumps right in. She loves to go under.
Here's Parks playing with the girls after lessons and after Hadley used my half full cup as a water toy :(
We played at home in the afternoons while Hadley napped. Here are the girls playing "beach" in the driveway. Can you tell which one was talked into being the husband?
We took ballet lessons. I spied on the girls through the large glass window. Most of the time they were making faces at themselves. I guess it's too tempting to have a wall of mirror in front of you when you're 4 and 6 yrs old. Fun times.
We took art camp. Well, Charlotte took art camp and Kate took fine arts camp with singing and acting. It was a fit for sure. I didn't get any pictures of this except that they asked us to snap a picture of our family in front of our home for a slide show they did. Since I couldn't take a picture of myself I snapped this one of the kids on our front porch really quick and it has turned out to be one of my favorites.
Lily Kate got her ears pierced!! This was a big deal in our family of girls. She has been asking to do this for many months and it was a momentous occasion. I may have teared up a bit.
My parents came to visit. My dad worked his tail off planting flower beds with Parks. I'll do a before and after of our backyard/patio makeover. I love the end result! We found time for fun too. Here are some shots on the patio sitting by the fire pit.
Mom & Kate
Dad & Charlotte with marshmallow mouths
The big girls
We also celebrated Hadley's 2nd birthday while they were here. It was a blast. Hadley is really growing up. She was such a parrot before, repeating everything we said, but now she is just chatty, full of her own ideas. She is really a ham, she loves to dance and sing. She is very loud and animated. She still likes Parks best of all, which I think is so great. Funny how I can't imagine our family without her.
It was a great summer. We went to 1st grade orientation tonight and LK starts school on Tuesday. The end is rapidly approaching. Hopefully I'll do a better job posting this fall!