Charlie Turns 7 1/2 !

Charlie and His Best Friend

Charlie has a best friend Nolan. They've spent quite a bit of time together lately. Nolan spent the night last weekend. We went to dinner and then Charlie wanted to take Nolan to his favorite place-Red Mango!

When we returned home, they had fun wrestling, dressing up, playing with Nerf guns, watching E.T., watching some fireworks and laughing a lot!

Visiting with an Old Friend!

I met Jeanne in 1994 at the University of Iowa. We lived in the same dorm-Burge! We've been friends since. Last time I saw her was when we met up in Chicago in 2008 when I ran the Chicago Marathon.

She was recently in Iowa visiting family, so we drove up for the day. It was so good to see her!

Father's Day

This year for Father's Day we made our first trip of the season out to a family lake in Iowa. The boys look forward to this every summer. They love swimming in the lake, grilling out, having a bon fire, looking for bugs and frogs, going on the paddle boat and playing in the sand. It was a beautiful Sunday for the lake and a good start to lake season!

Camp Matisse!

In mid-June the boys attended a three-day art camp at Just Be Free. They LOVED this. The camp had them studying the artist Matisse. They learned his techniques and for each technique they learned they made a project. They journaled about all they learned as well. It was fantastic.

June Misc.

In June the flooding in Omaha and Council Bluffs started getting worse. I took the boys down to the pedestrian bridge to walk around and take some photos.

Also in June, Charlie attended VBX with his friend Grant. He went to a church that we wouldn't normally attend, but he had the best time ever. All he could do was talk about how much he loved it and didn't want it to end. He even went so far as to say that he wished it was as long as a school day. We will be sending him again next year and he already can't wait.

I have also been working with the boys on cooking. They made monkey bread all by themselves and loved it.

We also went bowling!

Great Wolf Lodge--Again!

Wow, we had a busy June! We started off the month with our third annual trip to Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City. The boys love going here and we are veterans, now that we have been there three times.

We did the usual activities of swimming and water slides. Charlie and I love using the outdoor pool, while Jack and Doug don't mind doing the indoor activities a little more.

I think the boys' favorite part of the Lodge is the arcade. This tends to drive me crazy, but they love it. They play lots of games, win lots of tickets and pick out cheap prizes.

This trip we played MagiQuest again. I didn't get many photos of this. We also played miniature gold and visited the T Rex Cafe. The boys did the Build-a-dino.

At the end of the trip, we made a stop at the Deanna Rose Farmstead in Overland Park, KS. We did this last year, too, and the boys had fun. The boys fed the goats, went fishing, and rode a pony.