the week through the lense of my phone

I love the instagram app for my iphone. It takes all my blurry pictures and turns them into cool shots!  Here are a few glimpses from our week -

Swimming lessons for the girls are every Monday afternoon.  At a hotel pool, 5 minutes from our house.  It is perfect!  I'm so glad a friend let me know about this program.

We couldn't have asked for better weather on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week.  We took the boat out for a little while on Tuesday evening after Scott got home from work and Elle braved jumping in one last time.  The water is cold! 

She can now proudly claim the family record for the earliest to jump in the lake in the spring and the one to jump in the latest in the fall.  :)

School outside on the porch.  I love it. 

A friend of mine had a precious little baby girl this month.  So fun to get to hold a newborn.

summer highlights

We had to wait a long time for summer to finally get here but July's sun and heat has definately made up for the cloudy, rainy June.  We have had a blast getting out on the lake any chance we can.  Here are some pictures of our summer so far.

Watching fireworks on the lake. 

Scott ran the Firecracker 10K race again.  There's a slip and slide to go on after you cross the finish line.  The kids loved watching him go on that.

And he beat his time last year by 3 minutes!

Trac Ball in the lake is the favorite game this summer.

And she still loves to play Polly Pockets.

Sporting the sunglasses Elle found in the lake and gave to him.  A very nice early birthday present for him and one that was much appreciated after he jumped in the lake last month in the deep water with his pair on and lost them. 

She is reading through A Series of Unfortunate Events this summer. 

Scott tried wakesurfing with a friend this weekend and was hooked.  We bought a board the next day and both he and Thomas can just pop right up on it and go. 

This is me wakesurfing.  After about 20 attempts I still have yet to make it up.  :)

This is a short video of Thomas.

they were determined to jump in the lake before june

faster daddy, faster

Today we took our first boat ride of the year.  Ava was all about going fast.

Elle was all about breaking the family record for jumping in the earliest in the season.  She's been asking since April if she could jump in.  It took just a few minutes to actually work up the courage to jump.

She did it though.  May 15th....that's the new record.  I will be happy to let her have the pride of keeping that record!

Swim to the boat as fast as possible!

Then one jump to ham it up for the camera.

It started clouding up so we went back in.  Ava was happy to be going fast again.

Thomas is missing from the photos because he hasn't been feeling well.  I'm sure he would've been right there with Elle otherwise!

blue skies and sunshine

Sunday we finally had our first day of summer. After church we came home, packed a lunch and spent the rest of the day just relaxing and soaking up the sun. Too much sun actually, Scott and I are both a little red. It was sunny, 82 degrees (that is hot to us!) and there was no wind. The water is still very cold. We just put our toes in.

I keep going missing from this little blog and it will probably be that way most of the summer. We have a lot of projects going on around here. I've been busy planting, painting, and staining. I am hoping the warm weather is here to stay so that we can spend more time enjoying the lake.

This picture of Ava on the boat makes me smile. She's just having a little snack of goldfish crackers. :) I had given her the bag to take a few handfuls out and instead she dumped the entire thing out!

one more swim

It was in the 80's here on Sunday so we decided to take the boat out one last time before we bring it in until next year. Thomas and Elle had been playing outside and were hot and sweaty and automatically went and put their swimsuits on when they heard we were going on the boat. I told them that the water was going to be cold but they said it would be fine. They both jumped in without hesitation and quickly realized that Mom knew what she was talking about! Thomas jumped in one more time but Elle jumped in several more times. Each time she'd jump in she'd swim back to the ladder as quickly as she could.



We ate dinner on the porch that night and were talking about how we couldn't believe they jumped in the lake. I asked them if they would jump in again for a dollar. (That's a lot of money to them!) Thomas said, 'Yeah, for a dollar' and Elle said 'of course!' I asked them if they'd do it for a quarter and Thomas said, 'Nope, that's not enough' but Elle said, 'Sure, I'd even do it for a penny!'

tubing fun

Yesterday was such a good day. We spent the morning working and the whole afternoon and evening playing. The weather was hot (88 degrees), there was a breeze blowing, a bright blue sky, and the water temperature of the lake is just right! The kids spent lots of time swimming...even Ava. She got in the water for awhile with Scott. She just loves to splash around!

Thomas and I double tubed for awhile. He was on his orange kneeling tube and I was on the big, round super screamer. This was the first time I'd been tubing this year. I'm not counting the two times I went in Thomas's tube. It won't go out of the wake so it's not what I consider serious tubing. :) But it's perfect for Thomas! Oh man, I am feeling the aches and pains of it today! Scott has the driving down to a T for tubing. He knows just how and when to turn to make sure I hit the big waves and make it a challenge to stay on. It is a fun time!

Here are some pictures from the day -


Naptime for Ava Mae.

Yummy Twizzlers!
This is Thomas's tough guy pose in his cool shades.

tommy's favorite picture

boating fun

I love days like today. This morning after breakfast we all went to work getting our chores done around the house so that we could play this afternoon. And play we did! We went out on the lake at 2:30 this afternoon and came back in at 8:30. The weather was gorgeous! We spent the afternoon laying around on the boat working on our tan :), the kids did some swimming and we ate a few of our favorite snacks. Love the boat snacks!

For dinner we decided to go eat pizza at a restaurant on the lake. Pepperoni pizza for the kids and taco pizza for Scott and I. On the way home the kids said they wanted to swim again so when we got close to home we stopped and let them swim for awhile longer. It was such a fun day together. Here are some, I mean several, pictures from the day.






Scott said the caption for this picture should be 'Not only does Ava clean her plate, she eats it too!' :)