July 2021

 We decided to also paint the inside of our cabinets. For some reason I thought it was a great idea to spray paint them instead. I thought it would be faster and easier. Instead it was messy, got all over me and wouldn't scrub off, was hard to spray without leaving spots of thicker paint in places, and didn't even cover up all of the wood color like I was hoping. We ended up having to paint some of the inside anyway. I definitely learned that lesson the hard way! 

Brooklyn lost another tooth pretty quickly after her first one and it was so cute to see her toothless smile. It did break my heart a little bit because her little smile was my favorite thing in the world! She is growing up so fast.

Our summer has been consumed with the kitchen so far and the poor girls have been great sports. We did manage to go see the 4th of July parade and let them stay up for fireworks that night. This is the first time we had been to the Municipal Park for fireworks and we got a great spot to watch the fireworks.

We got really good at only using the bare minimum amount of dishes that we had to in order to cook and eat in our torn up kitchen. We had to wash any used dishes in the bathtub. The first time the girls thought it was so fun but that quickly wore off as we did it day after day. It's amazing what you get used to though!

Our library had a petting zoo come and set up in the grass outside the library. The girls were in heaven! They went back and forth between all the animals a million times. There were ducks, pigs, bunnies, goats, a huge turkey, and more that I can't remember. They also had chicks hatching inside the library and the girls got to hold those too!

After a month and a half of our kitchen being completely torn apart, and a lot of frustration and setbacks from the counter company, we finally got our counter installed! The new counter is beautiful and it is incredible to have a counter and sink back again! We were able to start on the next steps like adding contact paper to shelves, hooking up the disposal and dishwasher, and so much more to come.

We all went a little crazy with the house being torn apart and so much time being devoted to us working on it. Richard and Kaylee really needed to get out one night and went to the river to chill. It was a beautiful night and the fresh air did wonders in helping them detox enough to come home and get back into all the craziness. 

Some of the other things the kids for our summer challenge was dress up like a scripture hero (Brooklyn chose Jesus), 

make your own comic strip, 

and one of our favorites was throw a themed party. Since the girls had been introduced to the Star Wars movies, we threw a Star Wars party!  We each got assigned a character from Star Wars and McKenna made place cards for us with our character drawn on them. We had to have a themed dinner: Yoda cucumber slices, monster spaghetti, BB-8 cheese balls, Leia bun rolls, light saber fruit kabobs and, of course, blue milk! We made edible BB-8s out of rice cakes and frosting, made Chewbacca bookmarks, colored a coloring page of our favorite characters, had a light saber fight, and took turns shooting pictures of Storm Troopers and Star Wars figurines. 

We did try to get out and let the girls do fun things as well. One of their favorites is always the pet store so we try to go as much as Richard and I can stand it. 

We got a fun science book from the library and tried to do a few of the experiments in there. One that Kaylee was really excited about was trying Baked Alaska. We messed up the topping somehow and ended up with melted ice cream all over the oven. It was a giant fail but was still fun to try and still delicious to eat!

We also got a pass for the summer to the YMCA so the girls could take private swim lessons and we took advantage of lots of swim time! Lessons were really good for the girls and they all improved a ton. On the last day, Kaylee and McKenna wanted to prove that they could pass the swim test to be able to swim in the deep end by themselves. McKenna has always been so nervous in the water but lessons were such a good thing for her and she passed! Kaylee is a good enough swimmer that she could have passed it off but when she tried, she took off too fast and got an asthma attack and had to stop. I was proud of them for improving so much and we were able to have a lot of family fun at the pool to blow off steam.

The best part of our summer was Mom and Dad coming to visit! They drove across the country to deliver all of the things we still had in storage at their house. It was great to see them after so long. The girls made them a poster and decorated to welcome them.

We took them to Hocking Hills and went on our favorite hikes. Someone (cough cough, Richard!) forgot to pack the peanut butter and we ended up with only honey and jam for our sandwiches. Dad got creative and stuck all kinds of things in his disgusting sandwich. Brooklyn was inspired by him and has been trying unique combinations of food ever since.

Other things we did with them were the zoo (complete with a dinosaur boat ride), went bowling, played lots of games, and showed Mom some of our favorite spots from the Riverbox hunt. 

 

We also had an Olympics party with them! We divided up into 3 teams and each team picked a unique fruit, veggie, and a new food from another country. Then we did events like soccer, fencing, balloon volleyball, shot put, and cornhole. We all got gold medals at the end for being good sports :)