4th of July

I really look forward to the 4th of July.  It is always a day of pure fun and memory-making with my family.  First up is always the neighborhood parade.  The girls decorate their bikes on their own.  The parade is even better now that we have lots of school friends in the neighborhood.  

I like that every 4th of July starts the same, but is a little different.  This year we went swimming at PV Pool...and then to a friend's backyard pool.  Two pools in one day?  Amazing.  Back home for a quick change of clothes (and nap) and then to Leawood Park.  We really liked their fireworks show last year.  This year we we got some sweet balloon swords that made noises!

Like last year we got a spot up on the hill.  It is pretty awesome to look out over the crowd while snuggling up with my girls.  This is the same field where Hannah had her very first soccer practice and still practices now.  Ah, memories.

We continued the 4th of July fun on the 6th of July in Chillicothe with fireworks at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  Uncle Justin was back for a visit from Idaho.  It was the first time we saw him since he moved in February 2017. 

Olive is still scared of sparklers.  So it is just Hannah.

And then even more 4th of July fun...on the 7th of July!  We picked up Ainslyn and Gwendolyn from the fireworks stand and watched the Chillicothe show in Simpson Park.  It turns out parenting four girls isn't that bad when they all run off and play together.

We can't wait until the next year!

Random Summer Pictures

After a very busy spring, it was nice to have an lazy and unscheduled summer.  Hannah took tennis lessons.  Both girls took swimming lessons.  And we took our longest family vacation to date to the Black Hills.  Other than that, we had nothing planned.  It is very relaxing to not be tied to a schedule!  In our free time we did "homeschool" that was the same country curriculum I taught my 2nd graders.  We read over a hundred books about Brazil, USA, and China this summer!  I taught my students about Canada, but the girls opted for USA instead and we did that around the 4th of July so it worked out perfectly.  We'll probably take a break on the homeschool now that they are back in real school.  Here are some of the other random things we did this summer.

Prairie Village Art Fair

3D movie on national parks to get us excited about our vacation

We went to our usual kid events in June.  This year we saw a puppet show and live bird show.

Hannah is finally tall enough to ride the tandem bike with Steve!  She has been waiting years for this.  They have taken a few bike rides together.  The longest was 1.5 hours!

Hannah went ice skating for the first time at a friend's birthday party!  She has been looking forward to this for years, too.

fun at a new park

building huge block cities

Our board game of the summer was Carcasonne.  It is so much fun now that the girls are old enough to play real games with us!  When Steve worked from home he could play with us after lunch.

We cleaned their rooms (a major undertaking!) and reorganized closets to hang their shirts instead of fold them.  This is Hannah's.

A Friday night concert in Franklin Park was even more awesome with balloons.  A pink sword for Hannah and a purple tiger for Olive.

science experiments

In July it was too hot to do anything but swim.  So we did.

We went to this park at the beginning of the summer and Olive only climbed about 2 feet off the ground before she wanted to come down.  At the end of summer she climbed up here with no fear!

And Olive got freckles this summer!

Fourth of July

For the first time in as long as I can remember, it rained on the 4th of July.  There were tears at the thought of a cancelled parade.  Luckily at the last minute it got postponed to noon instead of 9:00.  The parade went on!  In the sprinkling rain!

Free snow cones!

tiger

Unfortunately the rain cancelled Village Fest.  But we found other fun.  We went to Leawood Park in the evening.  They had lots of inflatables (and fewer people than Village Fest...which Steve calls Line Fest).  It was our first time so we don't know if there were less people because of the weather or because you had to pay for wristbands.  But it was definitely a more fun experience without lines!

This girl climbed all the way to the top!

We watched the fireworks from our blanket on the hill.  It was an awesome view of the fireworks and all the people on the soccer fields below us.  It was one of the best fireworks shows we've ever seen!  Our rainy 4th of July was awesome!