Bella, Gabe and Josiah

Every year our neighbors host a block party for National Night Out. They shut down the street and then the police cars, firetrucks and other emergency vehicles show up. It’s a little boy’s dream come true. This year it was pouring all afternoon. I was not looking forward to it. But then the weather broke right as we were about to head outside and it turned into a nice evening. Once all of the emergency vehicles showed up, Gabe followed all of the neighbor kids to go exploring and Josy stayed with me, a little nervous. It took him a few minutes to warm up, but then he was fine. However, he ended up in the opposite vehicles as the rest of the kids, so he got to do a lot of exploring by himself. It also meant that I didn’t get any pictures of Gabe. He got to sit in a real police car and talk over the loudspeaker. He got to play with the remote that controlled the spotlight. He was very focused on spinning it around and making it go up and down. That may have been his favorite part of the ...

“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.