summer in full swing

be warned this is long blog, lots happening and lots to share for this first month of summer

first we need to back up a bit. BEFORE riley's birthday at the beginning of june lucy had her first dance program. she got all glittered up in a purple tutu and twirled on stage. she loved every minute of it...and i gotta say it was pretty darn cute.

then we had the last day of school respectively for each kid. as i do on the first day i like to take a picture of the kids on the last day of school....helps me see how much they've grown in a school year when i compare it to the first day.

lucy's pre-school had a little graduation ceremony complete with a tea party. several of the kids in her class are off to kindergarten next year. she still has another year of pre-school but enjoyed the pomp nonetheless.

riley was so excited to be done with school...not because he had a bad year, if fact he thrived this year..... but mostly he justed wanted to be home because his cousins were out visiting from Denver and that is WAY more fun than school!!

todd's brother chris and his kids brendan and megan came out for a visit. chris stayed for part of the week and the kids spent the whole week with us. my kids were over the moon to have their big cousins around to play with.

they did a little hiking

tried some stand-up paddle boarding

the dad's celebrated father's day together

went strawberry picking and then came home and made some jam

more hiking...this time to some falls

spent a day at the beach

all in all a wonderful week.....we hope they come visit us again soon!

seven

our sweet boy turned seven today! seven! hard to believe.

anyway we had a great day celebrating. this year riley wanted a snake birthday.

he started the day with chocolate pancakes shaped like snakes.

then he opened some of his gifts.

loved his new rocket.

but super loved his new bow and arrow. (i still have misgivings but todd talked me into it....riley of course is over the moon excited about it).

then he had his buddies over to help celebrate. todd put together a great little scavenger hunt for them. mostly though they had fun swinging and climbing trees and doing the parachute.

then it was time for cake. this year i made a (you guessed it) cobra cake.

what a great celebration of seven years......

happy birthday riley!!

reach the beach

so this post is a little late but we did the 'reach the beach' bike ride a couple weekends back. it was a 55 mile ride which ended at the coast. last year todd waited for me on the beach with the kids but this year we did the ride together which was a fun treat. this is a shot of us on the beach at the finish with the group we rode with.

our good friends jason and liz camped with us and were nice enough to watch our kids while we did the ride (we love jason and liz). i unfortunately didn't get a picture of liz but managed a couple of jason and todd and the kids playing on the beach.

we camped out for the weekend which was a fun adventure in itself. overall a great reach the beach ride!