The week of the fourth of July it was absolutely beautiful! Emily, Grace, and I walked down to the park, and they wanted to splash around in the water.
Which eventually devolved into them wanting to swim, so they went swimming fully clothed!
The next day was Friday, and because the fourth fell on a Saturday, he had the day off! So, everyone but Alice walked down to splash around in the river, this time appropriately clothed!
Emily was trying to help me take a selfie of the two of us. It was a partial success! ; )
We really live in a pretty little village!
We think that this group of four ducks was actually a mama duck with her almost grown ducklings! Brave of her to swim between me an my babies.
This dragon (damsel?) fly kept landing on this stick, just as I needed to move, and it took me forever to catch him on camera!
This was the view not even an hour before a storm blew through and took out our electricity for almost 24 hours!
Around 9pm, we broke out our trusty generator, so that we could run the fridge, some fans, and charge our devices. We went up to Sarah's house to fill some buckets with water, since we still have not changed our well pump over to a plug that we can switch to our generator. Maybe one day. She and my mom didn't have power either, but had enough emergency things to last her through the night.
Sadly, the next morning we woke up to no power, still. = ( It did cool off overnight, but life without water is no fun. Emily and Grace had planned a party with some friends for Fourth of July, and had to cancel it, since we had no water. = (
We did enjoy eating the party food though!
After a tough night, napping was a big activity the next day.
Since we had the grilled food all defrosted for the party anyhow, Billy fired up the grill and made us lunch (and leftover dinners for the first part of the next week!)
Alice found that she got better phone reception outside, so she hung out on the swing quite a bit.
Grace's set up.
Billy couldn't stand being dirty one more day, so he wanted to go to the truck stop and shower. I was not turning down an opportunity to get clean, since we had no idea when our power would return. My expectations were super duper low, so I was pleasantly surprised by both the cleanliness and amenities provided! We were provided towels and shampoo, plus unlimited hot water, with excellent pressure!
As we were leaving the truck stop to go refill our water tubs, the kids all messaged me that the power was back on! We didn't want them turning off the fridge, so we told them just leave the generator running.
We were all in a better mood with running water, so it was time to decorate! I think I doubled my mini flag count this year, so we were able to space them along the entire sidewalk and most of the street in our yard. Sadly, our lawn guy hadn't come recently enough, so our grass was a little tall. But the flags still made me happy.
Since the party was cancelled, Emily was invited out with a friend, and was already gone when I took a picture of Grace with the banner that they made for the party! They repurposed some packing paper to make it, and I thought it came our super cute!
I had also purchased some sparklers for the kids, and it was still light, but I was exhausted after a night of precious little sleep, and just wanted to go to bed. They still had a good time, I think! I had my phone on a weird setting while Alice was participating, and so none of the pictures with her look right, but she was out there with us!
Usually, this post would have been broken down into several smaller ones, for crafts, nature, and even the fourth of July, but while sorting the almost 800 pictures into folders, particularly the 16 state park folders, I decided that 'fun stuff' would be a little bigger this go round.
All that to introduce the repurposed fourth of July poster! Emily, Grace, and Juliet were going to host a little shop at Tabitha's upcoming party, so I thought I would try my hand at making some bags. They had more tape than I would have liked, but I felt like the thread on each edge took the bags from 'meh' to 'precious.'
The handles were repurposed shoelaces whose aglet had been lost.
Waiting for Daddy to come in from the carport! (I joined the crowd after taking the picture.)
We did another round of tea and poetry, this time I got some pictures! I need to replace one or two of my current poetry books with more like this beautiful volume!
We arrived really early to Grace and Juliet's doctor's appointment, because Emily was driving and there was known construction, so we left really early! I'd walked around the area a little to catch Pokemon, but had never gone left, so we went to see where it would lead us!
The sidewalk ended. Adventure over.
This appointment was so sad, because our pediatrician's office is closing in August, and this was the final appointment we would have with her!!! We still got ice cream afterwards though.
Quite the collection of mushrooms!
Alice wanted to meet up with her friend at the mall. Emily, Grace, and Juliet also wanted to come along for the ride, and any fun we might have afterwards!
The twins used to fit in the shuttle, together!
At the thrift shop, we found what we were after: a bat for the office space party!
Grace can't remember when she saw this cloud heart, but really wanted it included in the blog. = )
A beautiful summer sunset!
One of Juliet's friends really wanted to go to comicon this year, and the theme was My Little Pony. The original plan was that I would drop the twins off with Alice in charge of just the twins! Then the plan changed to the group going on Friday at opening. Well, when I messaged the responsible parent, they were actually planning on going on the Saturday! Sadly, Grace and Juliet already had plans, so I offered to become the responsible adult and take everyone on opening day Friday.
It was my car's first day back with us and it was the party car! This was Grace's trial run with her costume.
The day before the event, they all traded accessories, but everyone looked so good! Twilight sparkle and Fluttershy weren't able to come on Friday, so Emily wore 'Fluttershy colored' clothes, and I put on a purple skirt & shirt to complete the party.
We did pick up one non-pony too!
Kids 12 and under are free, so I just had to pay an entrance fee for me and Emily. I was really glad to have Emily there, because she was at the front, and I was at the rear, and was able to easily call to her if someone in the party wanted to stop.
They found more ponies!
The girls pooled their money to buy a bag of treats, that they all shared.
Charlotte bought a 'blind box' pony, and everyone enjoyed watching her open it! It was twilight sparkle.
One evening I was really craving pastries, but when I stood up to make something, realized it was late, and that I was probably just tired. I still got out some of the leftover phyllo dough from the freezer so that it could defrost. Emily was opposed to mulberry filling, which was what I was planning to use with all of the mulberry jelly the girls and my mom have made lately! I had some frozen cherries from earlier in the year, so we made cherry turnovers!
It was more time intensive than I was expecting, but they did turn out pretty tasty!
Speaking of Mulberries, my mom and the girls made mulberry jelly, syrup, tea, and assorted treats for a "mulberry tea party" one Sunday. Grace made some cute labels to put on the cups so that people could take some to go.
After replacing some flashlight batteries, Grace made a shadow puppet show. The first one wasn't the best, but her second one, that she actually wrote down, had a much better plot!
I scored a whole tray of tissues in a free pile, and spent ten or so minutes folding them together to put them in our tissue box. What you see here completely refilled our current box, and all it took was a little time!
Another Tea and Poetry party at noon! It really reiterated the need to find some more kids poetry books before next summer!
My first heartvest! This is looking like it might be one of the few that we have this year, since my garden is filled with weeds!
Kroger magazine sent out another win: Buffalo chicken bowls! It was a crockpot meal that Billy actually liked. He did request flour tortillas next time though. The kids (minus Emily who was at band camp) all enjoyed it too!
In the same issue, they had adorable snack butterflies that Grace couldn't wait to create! She did a great job, using the clothespins leftover from our Missouri trip!
It's been a fun, busy, July, but staring down August has me feeling all the back to school feelings! We still have Jellystone to look forward to, so I'll try to keep my focus there until the first back to school event!
later days
