June 2014

These last two and a half weeks of June we are without our big boys. Ezra and Jonah left on a vacation to Alaska with Justus, David and Arne as well. Oh, they are having a marvelous time!!

I am trying to plan fun things for the rest of us to do. Not big exciting fun, but small out-of-the-ordinary things. It seems strange to be a family of 5.

Sunday afternoon picnic:

Writing in journals up in the tree.

Picking berries off the tree branches.

Annabelle and Grace went on a walk down to the lake. They brought back a fish bone.

 Annabelle is doing two camps - one in the morning, one in the evening. They both last two weeks. One camp is about creative writing - creating a world and writing tales. The other is about optical illusions in art.

This is the rock right outside of where we take Annabelle for summer camp, on UI campus.

 New rollerblades!! Now the girls can rollerblade together instead of taking turns or using ones too small or way too big. Even with our old/garage sale blades and cheap-o roller skates, they had gotten quite good and used them enough that we decided it was time to buy some decent rollerblades. They love them!

We finished up teeball/softball/baseball this month. Everyone had fun. Jonah's team was starting tournament time when Jonah left on his trip to Alaska, so he missed the last couple weeks of baseball.

June 21 The Boys ran a marathon this morning! Here in Iowa we drove early to Ames, met with Lizz's family and Emmeline, and went roller blading at Ada Hayden park.  Hard workout for some of these kids on such a hot day! They were so happy to take the roller blades off and wade into the lake to cool off.

And even take a dip.

Woops, slipped.

Might as well go all in!

June 23 Grace and Olivia started an art camp at the elementary school. Suminagashi marbling art, kaleidoscopes, silhouettes, stop art animation, and more. They love it!

June 27 Annabelle's last day of camp (optical illusions in art and creating a new world creative writing). This is the day we went to city park to the amusement rides. See previous post.

June 28, 2014 We took a day to visit our land. We went looking to see if the vast raspberry bushes were bearing fruit. We only found a handful. They look like black raspberries. So we just walked around in the woods and played a bit.

But we did find a mulberry tree ripe with berries!

June 30, 2014 A severe thunderstorm labeled a "derecho" (A derecho is defined as a widespread and long-lived wind storm that accompanies rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms). The strong wind picked up our trampoline, carried it over the play structure and dropped it on its side. Then another gust toppled the trampoline onto the fence. During this storm the kids were scared. It was about 3:00 in the afternoon, the sky was very dark, and the rain was pouring buckets and buckets, the wind was frightening. To help them take their minds off the storm we turned on a movie.

The trampoline frame was bent and broken. Too bad. But luckily the fence only had a small notch broken on it, and we are very lucky the damage ended there!