Summer Games...

I love when my kids invent games to play. The kids found a pair of walkie talkies and have invented a spy game. When I walked into the living room after about an hour, Maxine was dressed like this:

I asked if she was a ninja but she said she was just a regular spy. I heard them saying things like, "Get back to HQ! We have to get the bad guy!" Rock on summer.

Flying high for #12

For our 12th anniversary, we decided to go on a helicopter ride! A place opened up in our little town that offers helicopter rides for $29! It was probably 5 minutes but so cool! If we hadn't taken all the kids, we could've gone for longer but it was totally worth it! Julie and Jack were pretty scared at first but both said it was fun. Maxine said it was the most amazing thing she's ever done!

Merril and Jack taking off!

View from the helicopter while I was riding with Maxine and Juliet.

Family pic in front of the helicopter!

We figured we better hurry because we just don't see a business like that staying around long term. They take off right from state street! How nuts is that!? Wahoo, we had a great time!

Juliet's 5th birthday!

Father's Day was epic because it was also our 12th wedding anniversary and Juliet's 5th birthday!

I love Juliet, she has so much cute personality. I can't believe it's time for her to start Kindergarten.

It was her year for a family party. She also went out to breakfast with Merril this morning because she couldn't go out for breakfast yesterday (Sunday).

I also arranged the pictures differently to accommodate Mikayla's picture. I'm loving it.

Swim team!

Maxine joined our local swim team this summer and swims every day for an hour and 15 minutes. She loves it! We had a swim meet on Saturday. Here she is in the bull pen, waiting to race.
She competed in the 50 meter backstroke.

She also did the 50 meter freestyle and the 200 meter medley relay.

We cheered her on from the side!

Mikayla was a good girl the whole time! She played and then fell asleep without a fuss.

While waiting between races, we got bored.

Merril went early to set up our shade tent, which was awesome. While we were there, this girl that I don't know set her chair under our shade tent, sat down without a word, and proceeded to text for 2 hours. So weird. She sat in between me and my friend Sara G., so I was talking over her to have a conversation with Sara. When my friend Val showed up, Sara had the courage to politely ask her to move, which she did indifferently. (She moved her chair under another shade tent that didn't belong to her. I saw the people move her chair out when she wasn't sitting in it.) The whole thing seemed surreal. We still had fun!