Sweet Summertime . . . Gone too fast

I don't have long, as school starts here tomorrow, but I just HAD to get back on here and blog about our sweet summer that we've had.  I am so sad to see it over.  I think everyone goes through a bit of a depression around our house when summer is over and the busy fall season begins.  We've so enjoyed the downtime we've had this summer, without such hectic schedules.  But even so, we've been pretty busy!  I will attempt to catch up a little at least on all we've been up to.   As I already blogged a little before, our family went to the Outer Banks  the last week of May for our vacation this year.  We had around 22 people from our family and extended family, and it was so great! We had such a good time, it really started the summer off right!  Sharing some more pictures . . . 

Then after our vacation, the summer really just FLEW BY!  I'm sitting here looking at my calendar and wondering, what did we DO EXACTLY???  I know we were busy, but my mind can't remember it all without looking.  

June really was spent doing things mostly around the house . . . playing with friends, going to the pool, and attending Vacation Bible School at our church for one of the weeks.  It really was great having time to schedule times for our kids to get together with friends and just play with friends that live in our neighborhood too.  I love less busy schedules!  Here are some pics . . . 

July actually was a pretty busy month.  We had our annual 4th of July party with our two neighbor friend families that we've been doing this with since our oldest kids were little.  We have food, fun, and games and fireworks.  So fun!

In July Alaina went to a 4 day dance camp and the boys went to Kid Fuge, a Christian day camp at a local church, the same one they went to last year and enjoyed a lot.  There was minecraft playing, hide and seek playing, and going to a jumpy/bounce house for fun with friends!  The boys also got to participate in some of the 2 Cool Fun Days at our church with messy and water games, movie watching, skating, and rock climbing. (Don't have pics from the 2 Cool Fun Days, as they were gone away from me. :-)

The last week of July the boys participated in AYSO UK Soccer Camp again for the 2nd year in a row.  This year we decided to host a UK Coach in our home for the whole week of camp.  We had Joe, from Manchester, stay with us and he was a very nice young man, and the boys said they want to host another coach again next summer too!

The boys and Alaina and I also got to go to a water park with friends, we got to go to a Greenville Drive game with Mama & Papa Brisken, and got to go to the zoo with Mama & Papa Brisken and Mama & Grandpa Bailey too.

Then we took one last quick road trip (me and the kids and my Mom, Scott had to stay at home and work:-( to my sisters' houses in VA and MD to visit my sisters and their families.  The kids had a great time hanging out with their cousins!

While we were visiting Megan in Baltimore, we also got to go to the Maryland Zoo!

And I'm sure I've left out something!  But I still have school supplies to go label before tomorrow.  Usually, the weekend before school starts I'm really ready to get back to schedule and routine and the past two years I've done organization posts . . . but I don't think I'm doing that this year.  Another thing I've done this summer is get serious about my health and nutrition and I started another blog called healthyandfitat36.blogspot.com that details my journey there.  Now that school is starting though, my focus is changing to my kids schedules, school, and routine, and I probably won't have as much time to devote to that, at least not as much time to devote to blogging about it.  I may not blog at that blog until next summer again, and that's ok.  Sometimes I spread myself in too many different directions.  I'm really trying to just take things one thing at a time this week, not over-stress or over-worry (which I can easily do the first week of school), and just BE!  Taking one day at a time, praying for God's strength and protection over our household and our children as they start back to school.  Here we go into a FULL FALL!!  Just found out we have soccer practice between the two boys every night Monday - Thursday . . . it may be the end of Fall before I have another moment to blog.  Until then . . . !