cool summer days

Summer greetings from the fam! Hard to believe summer is in full swing. The kids had their last day of school back on May 22nd. It’s hard to believe we now officially have a 2nd grader, a kindergartner, and a preschooler. We all celebrated that evening by going out for supper to Sonic and Jarlings!

Noah completed a week of basketball camp at the local high school and had a super time. Not sure if he’ll be a basketball star but he seemed to like it. Nate even got our $2 garage-sale basketball hoop mounted on the side of the barn so now we can go shoot hoops whenever we like. I have to admit, I just like to go out there and play myself! I’m really looking forward to the days that the kids will be able to play out there and have some fun with it. Noah is also playing coach-pitch baseball this year and it’s fun to watch the kids get excited about playing baseball! The games are so fun to watch. His team is doing well and all of the kids are quite young so they’ll have a couple more years of playing together to get better. Our nephew is also on the same team so it’s a fun time with all the family to watch the boys play ball. Marie and Calvin are also playing tee ball and Nate helps coach. Tee ball isn’t quite as fun to watch but Marie is really into it. Calvin, not so much; he’d rather be over on the playground!

Dominic is full-force mobile now and crawling around and pulling-up on things like crazy. He tools around the house exploring everything! Luckily our house is pretty babyproofed already so he’s free to roam safely as long as the older kids don’t unlock the cabinets or leave the stair gate open. Tonight was the first night we’ve put all 5 kids down for bed at the same time and it worked out great. Dominic moved into his crib in the boys room last month and took right to it. The boys really love having Dominic in there. Seems like we’re finally settling into a routine again and leaving the “newborn crazies” behind.

Nate is working like a madman again. He took on some extra jobs for PAQ and another side project so many of his evenings are spent on the laptop working away. I have to admit the extra $ is nice and much needed but I’m looking forward to at least one of the jobs ending so we’ll be able to do more stuff together in the evenings. I miss my Scrabble partner!

We spent today hanging outside and enjoying the nice weather. I set up the slip-n-slide and the kids played on that until they turned blue. After lunch we went down to the “neighbors” if you can call someone who lives 5 miles away a neighbor 🙂 and played at their house. The kids had a blast playing with her son and running around their farm. I was interested in seeing her older farmhouse and the painted paneling. Her paneling looked awesome and now I’m definetly motivated to do something with our living room and dining room and maybe even the kitchen. I can hear Nate groaning now because we don’t need another house project! Anyway, painting is something I can do myself pretty easily while the kids are in school this fall. So I think I’ll start looking for colors!

I keep looking at our calendar and asking myself where our weekends are going! This weekend includes 2 ballgames, yardwork and a family reunion. Our projects are getting put on the back burner until we get some free time! Right now we’re lucky to get the 3 hours it takes to get the mowing done! Fortunately Nate gets 2 weeks of vacation in July so we’re going to be *cool* and do a staycation (yeah, whatever) and get some of the projects done. We may go somewhere for a couple of days just to get mom out of the house 🙂

Ciao!