cousin sleepover party

Since we had a blowout party last year and didn't really have a crew to invite this year, Seth decided to have a cousin's sleepover birthday party.  Very easy for a mommy to plan.  He has read the entire Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and we've watched the three movies with him.  It seemed like the perfect thing to put on his cake (box mix triple chocolate with homemade buttercream icing):

 He opened presents from cousins, more on the volcano in a later post...

 First we took the cousins to the pool.  The adults even got in on the fun.  Here are Aunt E and Nathan on the slides...

 Someone may have been abusing her "only girl" status...

That evening we went to a movie in the park.  Evan really wanted to win tickets to a baseball game in BINGO.  We'll try again next year, Ev.

 Nathan on kid duty...

 So we had pizza, candy, and ice cream, and then went home for...

 ...ghost stories!  Elise and the boys had headed home mid-movie, so it was just the NC cousins sleeping over.  Evan and Amelia moved out before they settled in for the night, but the other three camped out in the bonus room all night!

pool time

We've tried to sneak in as much pool time as we can this summer, in between storms.  Here they are with buds Hannah and Mason:

 And waiting out a pool break:

zucchini bread

Before the plants when mushy from too much rain, we had a bumper crop of zucchini and cucumbers (right now we only have tomatoes and watermelon left in the garden).  I have made lots and lots of zucchini bread, and it's frozen for the months ahead.  Nathan has become an expert at shredding zucchini.  The recipe I found said to squeeze the water out of the shreddings.  Who knew a zucchini contained so much water?

VBS

The first week of summer vacation was spent at VBS.  We haven't joined a church, but found one to attend.  The kids had a great week, and I found the best found the best volunteer job ever...snack assistant.  The last day they had water fun:

And here they are at the closing program...Amelia is behind the baptismal font, Seth behind her left should and up three rows...

I'm glad they had fun, and we met some more people, but I was not sad to take the five song CD off repeat in the van!!!

summer photobooth

I was in charge of Seth's class party.  My hands were slightly tied, because his teacher wanted it to be toned down, and you know I don't do that very well.  I have end-of-year-water-party down to a science, but that wasn't allowed.  And it's kind of a good thing, because it POURED that day.  I came up with a few indoor games, another mom brought strawberry shortcake kabobs, and I created a summer photobooth, which the kids loved.  Of course I deleted all the pictures after I printed them out, but here is one on my kids that we have hanging on the fridge:

The next day the weather was only a little better...it felt really weird to be excited about the start of summer when it was overcast and 74 degrees...

butterflies

The very last thing covered in second grade science was life cycles.  The butterflies came in a week later than planned, but luckily, they all started to emerge from their chrysalises the second to last day of school.  Seth's was the supposedly the first to appear, and Seth named him Casper.