Other July Adventures

We had a busy summer. Here are a few adventures of the rest of July.

Spencer got a dino-dig kit at the cousin party, he loved working on it and would dig for longer than I have seen him do anything in one sitting.

This is my favorite part of our garden this year.  I planted some wildflower seeds, and they went crazy.  Now they are taller than the wall.  They attracted a few hummingbirds, which was really fun, we will have to try these again.

This is the rest of our garden when it looked good.  Actually we had a great tomato year this year, but beyond that the rest of our garden was eaten by ants.  We had beans for a few weeks, and we have lots of pie pumpkins, but the rest was pretty sparse.  It was fun though, I do enjoy gardening.

Kids love boxes, what can I say.  For about a week the boys played Jack-in-the box with these boxes.  As Devon says, "Why do we buy them toys?"

On to San Antonio

After visiting Devon's family we went on to San Antonio to visit my sister Emilee and her family. In Denton James got sick, we weren't even sure he was sick, it seemed like such a fluke, but he was and every cousin that we saw got the sickness, and poor Devon who had it the worst and for a week instead of 2 days like the kids. Anyway, Spencer got sick on the 4th of July, so we stayed home and made our own celebration.
We decorated our bikes and had a bike parade.

Spencer's $5 garage sale bike

Jame's didn't mind riding pink

Scott joined in the fun too.

Then we did pop-its- who doesn't love pop-it's?

That night we watched the fireworks from Sea World since my sister lives so close we just had to go out side.  Devon got some cool pictures of the kids playing with glow sticks.

We visited a cave called Cascade Caverns.  This dinosaur was a prop that was used in a movie they filmed here (a long time ago)

Spencer is following in his dad's footprints, we had to clear his camera from all the other pictures he took in Texas before he could take pictures here.

This is James in the bucket they used to use to lower people into the cave- i like the modern intrance much better.

There cave was pretty neat inside.

Spencer's favorite part was the bat on the ceiling, which was a very lucky find since it was not the right season for them to be there.  My favorite part was the Mastadon bones, I've never seen those in a cave.

On the last day we had a cousin birthday party because all the cousins have birthdays in the summer.  We started with the classic water balloon toss.

Then we threw water balloons at a target, which was a little easier for the little ones.

We did a pinata

With lots of candy for the trip home

In spite of getting sick, we had a great time.

Visit to Denton

So it has been a very long time, we have a lot to catch up on. We celebrated James' birthday in Texas, but he opened one present at home, a James engine that talks and goes on it's own with a track. He has loved it.

We stuck with the train theme and made a train cake with cousins.  Everyone got to decorate their own car, there were some pretty create cars.

This is the finished product.  The engine is orange because James has decided that that is his favorite color.

James loved opening more presents, this boys loves anything with wheels!

He carried this Captin America around all night.  I didn't notice when I bought it that it had no on and off switch- so it was hidden for the rest of the trip.

Here are all the cousins, birthdays are so fun when you have people to share them.

We also got to set off rockets with Ben's rocket launcher- the boys loved it!

The best part was running to get the rocket everytime.

We got to do some other fun stuff in Denton too, like see some long-horned cattle

Devon, Spencer and Grandpa went to a Rangers game. I wasn't sure Spencer would like it, but he still talks about it all the time, he loved it.

We also did a lot of swimming, garage saling (Spencer got a new bike and I got to go to my first estate sale) and visiting my favorite Braum's ice cream. It was so fun to see family and relax. Poor Devon had to take classes, but he still got to join in most of the fun.