Nolan's first cub day camp!

I cannot believe I am old enough to have a eight year old- SCARY! But alas, nothing I can do about it. As for Nolan, he was super excited about being about to go to cub scout day camp for the first time this year. He was not "technically" old enough, but his b-day was only 2 weeks away so we figured he'd be alright. He loved it! He got to do bb gun shooting, archery, make a bat house, and all sorts of other fun stuff that is not really feasible at regular den meetings.

Here is Nolan on his first dayHere is Nolan with Bill and Elaine, they were great and volunteered at the camp for several days. It was nice to know that someone was with Nolan on the days that Jim and I were not there to help out.

Nolan shooting the BB gun

Nolan and friends from his den

Getaway to Ozona

We have come to love taking some family time and driving 2 1/2 hrs north to Jim's parents beach house in Ozona. We have vacationed up there several times this summer and feel like it is becoming our second home. It is so nice and peaceful there. Ozona is a tiny town located next to Palm Harbor, which is next to Clearwater which is near Tampa to give you a general idea. The house is located about 2 blocks from the water, and the beautiful beach of Honeymoon island is a mere 1.7 miles away. While there we spent time at the beach (of course), and we ate out and had ice cream in the small town. We also enjoyed walking on the pinellas trail which is only a block away from the house. It is such a great getaway place for us.

Jim and the kids having ice cream at the local ice cream parlorEating at Molly Goodheads.

(It is a restaurant in a house that used to belong to Elaine's great aunt)

Tiff and Zoie

The kids at the beach

Ha ha... so hilarious

Zoie fell asleep in the water floating on a tube. I could not believe it.

Tiffany and kids in the water

Nolan's awards day

Yes, I am posting Nolans award day pictures from the end of school in August.

I am frantically trying to catch up on my blogging. I don't know why I always fall behind.

At the end of the school year Nolan's teacher invited all the families to come and see the children receive their awards for the year. It was nice to see all the hard work that he (we) had done throughout the year being recognized. Nolan ended up being the top Math student in his class and had the highest math score on the SAT 10 of 92%. He has always loved math and it seems to come fairly easily for him (luckily he takes after Jim in that way).

Nolan with Petra the skunk (the class mascot) Nolan and his teacher Mrs. Stabenow

Nolan receiving his awards

FHE fondue night

I don't know why but for a few weeks I got really into the fondue, and we did it all the time. We even had it for dessert for family home evening. The kids had a lot of fun playing in the messy chocolate, as you can see.

More hangin' with the Ojukwus

We always have tons of fun when our friends come to visit. For this trip we went mini golfing (yours truly was the big winner), had some fun fondue at home and made a trip to the pool and the beach. In case you are wondering from the pictures, yes, Jim hurt his hand playing basketball, again.

This is too cute I had to post it. Nathan was helping to teach zoie how to dive into the pool for the first time. I cannot believe how fast Zoie has picked up swimming. She is really good and the boys were too chicken to try swimming at her age.

Aidan's graduation

Now that it is almost time for Aidan to start kindergarten I thought I should post the pictures of his graduation from Pre-K. It was really cute. The school provided caps and gowns for all the kids and they got to keep them after.

Here is Aidan getting his diploma

This is all the graduates up on stage. They all danced and sang for everyone.
Aidan pointing at us from up on stage.

Aidan and Ms Elise

Aidan and Ms. RoseThe whole gang. This is as good of a picture as we could get.

Rays game

Jim and I decided to go to St. Pete and go to a Rays game together. So we arranged babysitters for the kids and took off for the 2 hr drive. We stayed overnight since we knew the game would not be over until late. It was great to get away for those few precious hours and have some alone time. The game we attended was the Rays against the Indians and I must say it was pretty boring for the first 5 innings because the Rays were getting whooped. Then it picked up and the Rays came back to win it in the end.

This is where we were supposed to sit, all the way at the top, but since it was not exactly a packed house we "accidentally" found ourselves some better seats

We had to come up with different ways to entertain ourselves since the game was not so thrilling, so here is what we did....

1st inning - Nachos
2nd inning- Jim drinks the massive amount of salsa that the vendor gave us for our nachos.

3rd inning- cotton candy4th inning- making fun of this guy...
why in he wearing sunglasses inside the dome???

5th inning - peanuts Next we watched the funny race between the huge bottles.

I thought the pepsi bottle looked more like a giant...

.... well you can guess.

We did actually watch the game in between all the fun and I got a few pictures to prove it. Here is one of Nolans favorites; Grady Sizemore- with a swing and a miss.

Here is Carl Crawford
After we left the game we went to our hotel to crash and then had to get up early and drive back home. This is the view from our room. It looked nice and we were envious of all the people who were relaxing on the beach and by the pool. Too bad we didn't really get to enjoy it since we had to head back so soon, but we still had fun.