In which I (sort of) catch up on a month of blogging.

I decided what better way to make up for my scarce and sporadic July posting than to offer a mini slide show of what all we've been doing.


It is partly because of all the 'doing' that I haven't been blogging.  Ironic, don'tcha think?  To be perfectly honest?  All of these pictures (plus 200-something more) were all still on the camera (and not in the computer) until an hour or so ago!


So, without further ado, the condensed version of our July 2011.


Started with a long-anticipated (ok, so June must have been pretty busy too) End of School Recital / Open House Program.  The boys took turns reciting a few of their Bible memory selections, and Dale played a couple of pieces on the piano.

We laid out all their lapbooks and some of their other work for show-and-tell.

Little did I know they would want to show-and-tell every detail for every item!


We celebrated the 4th by attending a concert and fireworks show.  Daddy played in the concert and Dale and Alan enjoyed the music to the we're-outside-and-can-run-around fullest.

We also held our own little fireworks display one evening.  Dale was thrilled to be big enough to 'help' Daddy!

We then spent the biggest chunk of the middle of July on home-improvement projects. And by 'we' I mean Greg did all the work and I stayed busy feeding us all and trying to keep boys out of the way.  That is, when they weren't helping:

Towards the end of the month we took off on a week-long trip to visit family and pack in some vacationy type stuff along the way, which included Tyler's (and Alan's!) first time in a 'real' pool.  I tried so hard to capture Tyler's unique grin - a mix of total enjoyment and cautious reservation:

The boys enjoyed lots of time playing with their cousin, including not 1, but 2 beautiful carousel rides.

And because we apparently believe in double-dipping in everything fun, we made not 1, but 2 different trips to Chuck E. Cheese.  Trip two was with my sister and her husband.

Greg and our brother-in-law in a skee ball match up while Tyler looks on:

I don't think any of us knows who won.  Not that it matters.  All the winnings went to Dale and Alan and Chuck E's fantastic-a-wondermous cheapo prize counter.  Fun times!


Grandma & Grandpa took everybody to an indoor playground extraordinaire that offered a playground maze, train rides, arcade games (triple dip on the skee ball - yay!) and the second carousel ride:

We finally arrived home to finish up the remodeling projects, and let the boys make the most of a house empty of furniture and carpet:

And that brings us to today.  With traveling done and house projects completed, Greg had his first day back at work for the 'fall'.  We'll be starting school on Monday!  Even so, there is still time for fun, games, and time with Daddy.  I'm just not sure when this sitting on the table business started. ;)