While we're celebrating birthdays...

Okay, go put on some flannels or sweats or something, turn on the closest space heater you can find, and turn a really intense spotlight on yourself. Make sure you have a big lemonade or sweet tea or something. Alright, now we're ready for a middle of July post. Kinda brings summer back, doesn't it?

Here are a couple of random pictures from one of the days we had friends over this summer. It's easy to have kids over to play during camp time since there's so much going on here all the time, and I'm not doing meals at home. We had several friends over during the course of the summer, including Violet (Elizabeth's age), one or more Davidsons, Abigail and Andrew W., the Hicks boys, and the Sumptions. This particular day we had Kory over and Amelia went to play with Sarah at her house.

 

Afternoon swim time! I believe this game is called "Shove Your Friend Into the Lake."

Boogie boarding is a little more difficult without waves, but it didn't stop the kids from taking them to the lake every day.

I had to take this picture, regardless of the fact that Elizabeth will probably one day dislike me for it, because it's representative of her swimsuit style for the entire summer.

We also visited a class that was skeet shooting that day. Kory and Avery got to pull the skeet thrower. This made them super cool dudes. Kory wasn't sure why he couldn't shoot one of the shot guns, since he had some past experience with a BB gun.

Random pictures of Shannon getting ready to lose his second top front tooth.

The classic Bubba tooth pose.

Another Grandmom on the four wheeler moment. The kids spent a lot of time arguing over who got to ride with her to meals, to the field, back to the house, pretty much everywhere. The golf cart is way slow. The four wheeler can pass the golf cart on the road to dinner at a high rate of speed, much to the delight of its passengers.

We celebrated the third birthday of the summer on Saturday, July 16. Amelia turned eight, somehow, in spite of the fact that she was just this little person last week:

She shared a party with Elliott, whose birthday was in January but there never was an actual celebration for it. Alison had been saying she wanted to celebrate it but the timing kept being off. His birthday is January 2nd, poor guy, so hardly anyone is in a partying mood after the crazy Christmas season. So we celebrated Amelia's 8th, and Elliott's 7 1/2th. We crammed it in between the ending of overnight camp and closing banquet for the staff on Friday night, and the beginning of horse camp and hosting of a group on Monday. (A more diligent person would have pictures from the staff banquet. It was very special, a fun time of sharing memories from the summer and celebrating the staff and the great job they did.)

Amelia wanted a flip flop cake, and since she is a Waya and Elliott is an Awahili we decided to make a red pair for her and a blue pair for him.

One day I will get adventuresome enough to try my hand at writing on a cake, maybe something crazy like "Happy Birthday." My actual handwriting is so bad I just hate to ruin all the hard work by blobbing something unintelligible on the cake in icing.

We played at the lake for awhile before moving to the dining hall for dinner and cake. We didn't have the rain like we did at Elizabeth's party, but we did have the cold. It had rained the day before, and brought with it a very uncharacteristic and weird 20 degree drop in temperature. The evening of the party was cloudy and barely 70, kinda cool for swimming. It only stopped the adults, of course.

Sarah and  Todd.

Some Hickses, paddling out to watch the blobbers.

Maggie

Bennett

Meg didn't have an ideal landing off the blob tower, but somehow managed to save it. The blob was behaving a bit oddly with the cooler temperature. We're used to having it huge and puffy, filled with hot July air. It was a little smushy that day.

Ready, set...

Boing! Doesn't look like it's going to be too comfortable of a landing, does it?

James' hi-yah move off the blob.

This graceful person in flight is my bro-in-law Jason, who moved to Marietta this summer from Austin, TX. He's a counselor at an elementary school. We're really glad to have him on this side of the country now only an hour and half away instead of 17. That's one Texan east, six to go!

Curtis

Shannon likes to kayak around the lake. He also likes to pretend like it's a floating recliner.

Some Knotts

Chilly girls!

Dinnertime, complete with leftover bouquets from the staff banquet.

 

Jason and Jen. His birthday was just a few days before.

 Happy 7 1/2 and 8th birthdays!

Maggie's prepared for the cutting of the cake, plate in hand. This is how I sing Happy Birthday too, prepared and ready. :)

Serve it up! I'm not a good cake cutter/server. I have always wondered why it's considered an honor to be asked to be the cake server at a wedding. What a stressful job! Those darned things are always round and tiered, and there's no way to cut them to get the pieces the same size.

The best part of the party.

Looks like they've resumed that former game of Shove Your Friend, only this is the dry land version.

You never count your money, before you leave the table...fireplace? There's a song in there somewhere.

Love this shirt. Thanks Knott family!

Happy birthday, sister!

It occurred to me earlier that I once again escaped being in a single picture. The biggest reason I'm doing this blog is so the kids will have a record of growing up years. I should try to be in more pictures so they'll know I was really there, and what I looked like when they were this age. That's my October's resolution.

Another snaggletooth....

Told you it was loose. I see orthodontia in our future. He gets that from me, lucky guy.

 

I've stayed up way too late to finish this post, so it's about time to end it and go to sleep like the rest of the world is at this hour. Days are just so full there's no time for fun like this during normal hours. I've been using the two hours during the kids' co-op classes each week to work on the blog but we don't have classes this week, so no blogging this Thursday. 

I have yet a few more Elizabeth quotes to share again before I sign off.

Lately for some reason she's had an opposition to having her teeth brushed. I called her into the bathroom a few nights ago to brush, and she said, "I'm a hamster. Hamsters don't brush their teeth."

Last night we were on our weekly Skype session with James' folks, and she asked when we were going to Mimi's house in Texas again. James was joking and said, "But I don't want to go." Without missing a beat she looked at him and said seriously, "Well you don't have to go."

This week Elizabeth was watching me make her a grilled cheese sandwich and as I spread the butter on the bread she said, "I don't want that!" I explained that I had to put butter on it so it would cook on the griddle right, and she paused, then stuck out her chin and said, "Whaddya thinkin', dude?"  I might have considered it disrespectful if it wasn't so darned funny.

Today the kids were kicking around Halloween costume ideas, and said I should dress up as Super Mommy. I asked them what special powers Super Mommy had (I was really liking this idea), and Amelia said, "She can change everybody's attitude." Avery randomly said, "She can spit fire." I'm a little afraid his might be based on some truth he's witnessed around here, though I liked Amelia's super power idea much better.

The kids and I were driving back over the mountain Saturday night from a faux camping expedition to Vogel State Park (more on that later), and everyone was in high spirits. They were all taking turns doing their best animal impressions, and I even got in on a few of them. Most of them were dead on. In the darkness Avery said, "Want to hear my kitten cry?" All of a sudden he produced the loudest "PPPPPPHHHHHTTTTT!!" noise on his arm I've ever heard. It was over after that, since none of us could top his kitten cry, and we were all laughing too hard to do any more anyway.

We're still in July. Are you still in your sweats by the heater? Go take a break for a few days, and I'll try to have another post up before too long. Stay tuned to read all about horseback riding day camp and Mimi's visit.

Later.