Learning to Swim

We started swimming lessons!  The kids have been looking forward to this all summer.  We joined an aquatics center for the month of August.  We have been able to go for family swim several times and we can stay after lessons on some days for free swim as well.  The kids love it!  Our first week went pretty well and we are ready for week 2!  Celeste is the only one who is not in lessons and she is not happy about it.  Luckily she has other opportunities to get in the pool.  She will be old enough for independent lessons next summer.

We've been really busy the last few weeks with orthodontics appointments for Anna Elise.  She has an expander in right now and she loves it (not really).  She is looking forward to getting head gear and then braces.  Exciting times (that was sarcastic =)).  Our chickens started laying eggs!  This was earlier then expected, but so exciting.  We had one chicken that was really early, but today we collected 6 eggs so we think that all of them are now laying eggs.  It's fun for the kids to get check the egg box every 30 minutes and bring in new eggs or to report back that they had found another cracked egg not in the egg box.  Apparently the chickens have a short learning curve when it comes to where to lay their eggs, but they seem to be getting the hang of it.   We also celebrated Mike's birthday.  The kids blew up balloons to surprise him.  Mike came home earlier then expected - while the kids were all upstairs - I motioned him out the back door just before they came downstairs and he was able to make a second entrance and be 'surprised'.  We had apple pie to celebrate.  On Saturday of that same week we had our 12th wedding anniversary.  We went out to dinner and a movie, it was very nice to get out for a few hours.  Calvin participated in the cub scout cardboard regatta and raced in a cardboard boat his dad helped him make, his boat did ok, he did eventually tip over during each race.  We also went to Busch Gardens (again) and had fun until we got rained out. Unfortunately I have not been taking pictures these past few weeks and I only have a couple to share.  I didn't take any pictures of our eggs, I plan on getting pictures at swimming lessons this week and I'm sad I missed pictures of Mike's birthday, of Celeste getting her hair fixed for church (we can squeeze a teeny, tiny ponytail out on the top and clip a little barrette to it), and lots of other things.  I'll try to do better these last 2 weeks of summer.

A sign the kids made in our yard - so funny!

Calvin in his boat

Calvin not in his boat =)