Bella, Gabe and Josiah

“Look Mom! I can do a headstand!” Sure. Silly kid.

Josy decided that he needed to make his own peanut butter sandwich this morning. So I decided to let him. I may have helped with a few of the more complicated parts. Spreading peanut butter is hard. “And butter.” He’s so proud of himself! I’m guessing that his sandwich will be extra yummy today at lunch.

And now everyone has gone home and we are back to normal things, like cleaning the bathroom. Luckily, I have a super good helper who only sprayed water all over the bathroom once… I made a roast the other night. Gabe thought it was so great that he went back for fifths. He also requested adult supervision so that he could cut his meat by himself. He also decided to take this whole pirate thing to a new level and chopped off one of his legs. My friend Angela moved this week, so we went to a goodbye party for them. She’s the one who’s been watching Gabe in the afternoons all year and he’s gotten really attached to her kids. We’re really going to miss them. Back to Sunday night Bible time. Angela gave us a giant box of Popsicle sticks, so Gabe has been making all sorts of art projects with particle sticks and tape. He’s been making airplanes too for Gram and Gramps. So far he’s the American plane, Gramps is British and Gram is Italian (she refuses to be the German plane!), so Gabe is all

One of the best parts of the last couple of weeks had been that Great Gram had been here. I love watching her love on my boys. And they love her too. In fact, the other night Josy went over to Gram and Gramps’s house and saw her sitting in the chair. He ran up to her and yelled “Me missed you, Bate Bam!” That might be one of my favorite pictures ever. They have such a special relationship. But the other boys love their Great Gram too. Lucy had actually gotten rather possessive of Great Gram. Apparently her lap is the best for naps??? They’re all going to very sad when reality sets in that she had to go back home.

While Katilyn and I were doing our shelves, Josy and Bella were napping, so Seth took Gabe and Bryson out hiking. This time it wasn’t crazy hot, there wasn’t a giant hill at the beginning, it was a shorter hike and there were clear expectations about how many rocks could be picked up. I think this went better…

We all slept in after the fireworks, so I was shocked when we woke up 40 minutes before were needed to leave. Apparently we were all very tired??? Gabe was perfectly fine, so we all packed up and headed to the parade. We managed to find all the same people from the night before, so that worked out great. It’s been a long time since I watched the parade with that big of a group of people. It was crazy hot and some of the floats passed out otter pops. Brilliant! We got home and played some games. Gabe even learned how to play Bananagrams. We didn’t make him connect the words, but he was able to spell some, which was great. The neighbor decided to work on his boat, so naturally all four boys had to watch. Then we had burgers and s’mores and the boys decided to host a dance party.  It was a low key day, but it was really nice.

Every year we go watch the fireworks Aunt Jan’s house, since she has the best view. Then an hour before we left, Gabe came down with a stomach bug, so he and Pat stayed home. Poor baby fell asleep on the couch as soon as we left and then woke up at 11:30 and announced that he felt fine, so could they still go see them?? Um, no… But the rest of us had a great time. We grilled hot dogs and s’mores, played cornhole and talked. My cousin Gail was in town and I haven’t seen her for years, so that was fun. The first thing Josy did was tote every single one of these cars onto the porch. Jeremiah was very grateful. Josy never fell asleep. He stayed up the whole evening. People started shouting fireworks off early and he would yell “Big Boom!!” every time. I even had trouble getting him to put his jammies on because he wanted to be outside to watch the booms. He stayed awake until we got through the traffic on the way home. Then he was gone. Bryson, on the other hand, made it until five minutes