Whew! What a week

It has been a BUSY week! Because I don't have alot a family around at one time I never realized how tiring it can be when everyone is together for a couple of weeks. Even though we were having a great time I am exhausted. Megan ended up staying with us a couple of days so that kept Summer entertained but it still kept me on my toes with fetching and cleaning. I think that is the longest I have ever seen Summer tolerate another human being without turning into a demon. Megan is 11 years old and very compliant and easy to get along with so that helped her case and also Summer is used to relating to older kids because of Lucas. We gathered at my dads house last night for the farewell party and to say our goodbye's. My brother hates public emotional displays so I always save my tears until after his departure.....every year I hate saying goodbye to him. I was really surprised when on the way home Summer began to cry so I asked her what was wrong . She told me she was going to miss Megan......she was even entertaining the idea of moving to Viet Nam to be with Megan (no way baby girl) . I was surprised because it was the first time I have ever witnessed Summer crying over anyone but me or Toby. Megan obviously made a very good impression upon Summer!

Canoeing Attempt

The plan was made yesterday for a canoe trip with my brother and his family for early this morning. (the early part my brothers idea) I got Lucas up extra early too because him and his friend were going to join us. Well, when we got to our destination, Chickasabogue Park, they informed us they did not do canoe trips anymore, even though their website clearly states that they do. We all decided since we really wanted to canoe we would convoy to Escatawpa and canoe there....but when we got there guess what??? "We don't do canoe trips on Monday's ma'm and we only do them by appts." so with an hour of our precious time wasted we just decided to stay there and swim instead of drive another 50 or so miles to look for canoeing. I made the point for our area to be so full of water there sure aren't that many places that offer canoeing....or atleast not any that I know of. We had a decent time anyway. We all stopped at the only Dairy Queen left in Mobile to eat and then Megan rode home with us to spend the night.

Goofy Golf

Today we took Summer to play putt-putt. We played on the cruise when we went last year and ever since she has been wanting to play again. We never got around to going when the weather was a little cooler and I certainly didn't want to go play in the heat of the day, but we passed by the putt-putt place and she spotted it and wanted to "go there". I figured what the heck, we didn't have anything else to do and I had a coupon for the place. It was atleast 100 degrees outside but to Toby and I's pleasure the place had a lot of shady areas. She got free tokens with the coupon so after golf we let her use her tokens. We all had a good time.....much better than I thought we would.

Independence Day!

Even though there was the threat of rain the whole day we did manage to get in our family 4th picnic before the bottom dropped out. It was really cool because it was one of the few times that my very small family is together all at once. Toby brought a few "kid's fireworks" for the kids and we ate hamburgers, hot dogs, and of course watermelon. When it was time to leave the girls had not had enough of each other so Megan and Elenora came home with us. With 3 girls in the backseat on the way home, Toby and I realized why we did not have more than 1 child together. :-) Later on Charlie (Toby's brother) came over and we grilled again and shot off some more fireworks after the rain finally passed over.

Tuesday

Just another errand day for us. Since Summer has been spending so much time in the backyard pool this year I decided that she needed some new pool toys. (I call pool time P.E. so she doesn't think she is just getting something for nothing.) Our first stop was Wal-Mart and we didn't find what we were looking for there so off we went to Toys R Us. Thank goodness we didn't spend as much time as we normally do in Wally World because about an hour after we left some kind of tornado hit down on top of the building. It did some pretty extensive damage, not to mention wounded some people and scared the poop out of some others. Summer has a bad enough fear of storms, this would have sent her over the edge! Since it was storming we didn't get to test out the new pool toy as we intended and did our usual stuck in the house routine and watched movies and played games.

Canoeing

Toby has been wanting to go canoeing for awhile now and since it was such a beautiful day that's where our destination for the day was. I was a little worried about how Summer would react to it considering the last time we went canoeing she didn't seem to be real crazy about it. She doesn't like the unsturdiness of the boat. I guess, that was just a passing phase though because she had a blast. Her favorite part was getting out of the canoe and "pushing" us along. The temperature was high so the cold water felt great too. After canoeing, we stopped by a fireworks stand and purchases some "kid oriented" fireworks. Toby knows exactly what to buy and what Summer likes........fireworks are something I don't like being a part of, but they love them.

Field Trip

We had both boys, Toby and Lucas, off today so I decided that I wanted to show them the new 5 Rivers museum. Summer and I had went there for Earthfest back in April and we found it to be pretty impressive. Lucas has also just recently bought him a kayak and I thought he might find it a good place to launch. When we got there we discovered they were closed on Sundays. I always find that a strange thing for a place like that to be closed on a Sunday, considering the weekends are when the majority of people have off to do family activities. So we decided to trek across the street to Meaher Park. It was hot as fire out there but nature was very active. We saw very large grasshoppers, alligators, crabs, birds, and the fish were jumping and flitting around all over the place.