Just Another Day in Paradise...

So far the summer has been treating us fairly well...

We've mostly been hanging around, BBQing, swimming, flying kites and doing all the other easygoing fun things that children should be doing in the summertime.

In July Astella celebrated her 5th birthday. She keeps telling us that now she's 5 and she can go to kindergarten. She'll start school on the 19th of August. It's approaching more and more quickly and while Astella is very excited, I find myself fighting back the anxiety of letting her go. It's such a paradoxical situation seeing as how I've been so stressed with 3 small children at home that you'd think I'd be thrilled to have one gone for a few hours every day. Maybe I'll feel like that AFTER school starts.

Astella insisted on having a "Tree Party" for her birthday. Since she's only going to get about 3 or 4 big parties while living in our house I figured I'd let her pick the theme. When she announced that she wanted a Tree Party I was pretty surprised and confused. How do you have a Tree Party? What do you do at a Tree Party?

After thinking about it for a while I decided we'd have a "Garden Party" and invite a few friends. This was a little easier to plan. The girls painted pots, decorated flower and butterfly cookies, had a little picnic and then played with Play doh. All in all, it was a very successful party. As a compromise I made her a "Tree Cake" for her actual birthday. That was also a big success! So, now we have a 5 year-old and we're enjoying it.

We also took a camping trip in July. We drove out to Blue Lakes near the California/Nevada border right outside of Carson City area. We met with our good friends the Pedersens and have a phenomenal time with their family. We each brought along 3 small children (that makes 6 children 5 and under) and our one and only teenager, Kasey. While she was outnumbered, she took it all in stride and was quite a trooper! Big surprise--Teenage girls don't really enjoy being without a shower, a curling iron, make-up, friends and boys. All that being a given--she was an incredible help and enjoyed herself reading books and venturing into the lake (which was pretty cold!)

We only stayed a few days and nights and managed to make it home pretty unscathed. Blake and Wesley had obtained enough bug bites on their foreheads to warrant the many questions at Church the following day of whether or not they had the Chicken Pox. While they looked pitiful (and we felt pretty badly about it) they managed to keep themselves in very good spirits and only scratched a little bit.

Mitchell also took a business trip near the end of July to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In the spare time he had he enjoy a few short trips around the area, a look at the night lights of Miami and the highlight--falling asleep to the sound of an evening monsoon rain. We are sorely missing the monsoons here in California. He returned home to me with horrendous allergies and had still been battling to get them under control since the California pollen doesn't help much.

We plan on spending the rest of our summer reading library books, playing in the water and making big decisions. We'll keep you posted as often as life allows.