The End of our Summer Break

 Our summer was rapidly coming to a close as August began and we crammed in the last few fun activities we’d still had on our wish list for summer! One was a day at Pineview with the Josephs. This is the third summer in a row we’ve done a lake day with them and it’s always so much fun- and as the kids are getting bigger it’s also getting much easier! We had so much fun on the paddle boards, playing in the sand, and enjoying each other’s company that I only got a few pictures!

I did get them all to line up in age order for one picture right before heading home. These kids all get along so well! I love that we have six boys with one tiny girl at the end. 

And testament to a really fun day- four kids asleep in the car on the way home. Also, I’m pretty sure this has never, ever happened before! 

We spent a lot of time enjoying our backyard once the deck was complete!

And a lot of afternoon popsicles on the front porch. We’ve been doing this for years during the summer and I just love it. The simple things!

We hosted a whole bunch of fun swim nights with different families. This particular night we had the DeForests there who have a bunch of little boys that Davis loves to play with. Davis and Dean ran around like crazy all night. And after every time they got out of the pool, Davis would inexplicably “fix” Dean’s hair and then they’d run off the board again. It was darling!

Our usual summer camping trip didn’t happen this year, and not wanting to disappoint Davis who prays frequently to go camping, we pulled together a little backyard camp out. Will’s girls want to go camping too. So we had a Friday night that we set up tents in Nana’s backyard, swam, cooked hotdogs and s’mores on the fire, swam some more, and then sent the babies home to sleep in their cribs. Will and I stayed with the big kids for the night. 

Will’s tent is a little four man. Ours is an 8 man. Davis talked all evening about how our tent was SO MUCH BIGGER than Will’s. He was so proud of it. When given the option to sleep in Will’s tent, he quickly responded that he wanted to sleep in the BIG tent. The kids shuffled around and Huds and Nora slept in Will’s tent, and I had Chase, Davis and Anna in mine. I told them a story about Elsa and Spider-Man meeting and bonding over their shared experience of being teenagers with weird powers. I’m pretty proud of it as it kept them very entertained.

Davis was so excited he couldn’t go to sleep. He kept standing up and walking to a new part of the tent. Lying down right on the floor and deeming that to be the right spot, only to move a minute later. He was clearly so tired and just couldn’t calm down. Finally I laid right between him and Anna and within two minutes they were both out! (Chase had been asleep for a good 20 minutes at this point). Will and I both slept horribly, but had to admit it was worth it for the amount of excitement it brought to these cute little kids! (And Lila had no idea what she missed out on!)

One of the sweetest memories of this summer will be our cousin swim mornings! We went every Wednesday morning and these kids had so much fun together. Hudson and Nora are always off in their own world and Lila and Rosie truly became best friends! We all gushed over how cute they were together all summer! And I usually let Chase bring a friend along since there isn’t anyone his age. 

The boys did our traditional system of 100 points again this summer! They get points for doing jobs, yard work, babysitting, reading, piano songs passed off, etc. The big kids finished at the first of August, and it took Davis a few weeks longer to finish. I took this picture on the last day when he finally got his 100th point! He was so excited! For their reward, they got to pick a date to go on with their dad. So far, only Hudson’s date has been cashed in (more on those later). 

For Hudson’s date he wanted to go test drive cars. This kid loves cars so much. So they went and test drove a really fancy Mercedes EQS. It’s over $100,000 and obviously we have no intention of buying it, but Hudson loved the experience. He chose dinner at Blue Lemon and then they went to another car dealership and checked out other cool cars. He’s been talking about this date ever since!

Our neighborhood hosted a Makers Market for kids to come sell stuff they’d made. My boys baked like crazy and sold so much stuff! Hudson made no bake cookies and coconut lime cookies. Chase made scotcheroos and mint brownies. It was a darling little fair and the kids all had lots of fun! 

On the last day of summer Chase came running errands with me and we got his haircut! It’s been so long all summer and he looks so handsome!

I’m going to miss these sweet moments of all my kids home together! There have been so many sweet memories like this (and a fair amount of fighting too) all summer long!