Life At The Circus

My family came for a visit this week.  My brother wanted to take his kids to the beach, so we spent two days playing in the sand and waves of the Chesapeake Bay. The weather was perfect.  Low humidity, blue skies, and temps in the 80’s.  It was perfection! I can’t really even put into words what a joy it was to watch the kids play with their cousins.  There is something special about watching your children develop relationships with your siblings kids.  It’s something my heart longed for for years and to watch it unfold is something I am so grateful for. These two are only 10 months apart and are such good buddies!  They just spent hours out on the water talking and floating.   But truthfully, all of them are close in age and they all have unique and individual bonds with each other.  It’s not like they only spend time with one cousin.  All week they kept flip flopping back and forth.  With 8 kids there was never a shortage of so...

Because our kids all left for one place or another on Father’s Day, we decided to celebrate the week after.  I had originally planned a low key afternoon followed by a family picnic at a park for the evening.  But, Saturday ended up being an incredibly LONG day…. 8 hours total of driving in the rain to pick up our campers and bring them home, plus a soggy basement to sop up once we got home…. Mom and Dad didn’t really feel up for much on Sunday. We did our typical breakfast in bed on Sunday morning, followed by church.  Home for lunch and then Dad got a nice long nap on the couch.  We then took a long walk as a family and ended with a fire in the backyard.  It was a restful day of family time.  Which was just what Dad needed after a long week of work, followed by a long day of driving. Our oldest son bought some kind of light up stick at camp, that he was so excited to share with the family.  You put it in the campfire (provided your not planning to...

The same week our daughter went to gymnastics camp, our oldest son went to his first week away at camp with the Boy Scouts.  I have to say I am so impressed with the Boy Scouts.  Our son has learned so many valuable life skills through his years in Cub Scouts and his months as a Boy Scout.  And I am super thankful for the troop he is in.  There is a great group of guys there, both in his age group, and in the older guys.  The older guys really are wonderful leaders and truly help and take the younger guys under the wings.  It is encouraging to watch.   Boy Scout camp was the perfect environment for him.  A week in the woods, mountain biking everywhere they went, building fires, shooting archery and 22s, and earning two merit badges.  His troop leader was so kind and would email home pictures every day.  I can’t tell you how much it meant to this Momma to see a pic of her boy each day.   One major accomplishment for our son that...