First Day

We somehow have 2 juniors, an 8th grader, and a 4th grader this year! I sprained my ankle really badly the night before school started excuse the odd spot for the first day of school photos...

 I spent my first day with them back in school at urgent care making sure it wasn't broken (it wasn't) and hoping it would be better before mine and Jason's trip to Iceland in a week (thanks to lots of prayers, it was good enough to go!). 

Braces for the 3rd

Shortly before school started we got braces for Eli. We remembered to take a before picture with him!

Ali and Logan decided he needed a gummy party the night before he got them on; they went to the store and bought $20 worth of the kinds of candies he won't be able to have for the next couple of years:)

After!

 

Family Birthday and Gary's Birthday

We celebrated our family's birthday (our anniversary) and Gary's birthday with ice cream cake.

Happy Anniversary

A while ago, I saw an ad for a fireworks cruise downtown Chicago, and suddenly I knew what I wanted to do for our 22nd anniversary. Jason humored me, as usual, and we had a wonderful time. We've spent lots of time downtown, seen their fireworks show, and have been on river tours, but this combined all three of those things and we loved it!

(We thought this shot of the lighthouse looked like the Eye of Sauron!)

The fireworks show was beautiful!

Squeezing it all In

With a week left of summer, I asked what people still wanted to do. Logan wanted to go to Naperville's Riverwalk. He made an amazing cairn.

Eli wanted to go to Lincoln Park Zoo. The good part: we got to see the lions up super close! The bad part: they were closing early for an event so we only had 30 minutes there.

Since we had some extra time we went to Lincoln Park Conservatory, and it was lovely.

We also got to go to Feed My Starving Children with Lindsay and Liam.

Summer Band

Eli enjoyed summer band. I enjoyed having his brother or sister drive him most days!

Jake's summer

Jake and I got to do a lot of fun things together this summer! We took advantage of $2 kid movies:

We went to a minor league baseball game because he earned it reading during the school year:

We made Olympic goodies to kick off the Olympics:

We went to Blackberry Farm (again):

What a fun kid.