I was sick with bronchitis this last week, so I skipped out on fireworks with the kids and neighbors, but it looks like they had a lot of fun:
We also have been hosting a student from Lebanon this weekend through a summer program at the college. We’ve been berry picking and baking and mostly hanging out, enjoying the pace of a lazy summer weekend:
We just got back from our St. Louis visit, and here are a couple pics from visits with my mom, cousins, friends from high school and grad school and their kids, too:
The kids enjoyed Turtle Park, the City Museum, the St. Louis Zoo, Chess camp, the Missouri Botanical Gardens, parks and playgrounds, feeding the ducks at the boathouse in Forest Park, going to Ted Drewes. We tried to pack the trip full of activity!
We had our bounce house birthday party today, with a Harry Potter theme, and the kids had a great time. We rented a snow cone machine and hung out with friends and gammy in the 70 degree weather. Here are a couple pics:
We were pretty inundated with kids’ birthday parties this past weekend, so the kids had fun fishing, fencing, and playing outside with their friends all weekend. We also made this apple tart for Jake on Father’s Day and played jokes on each other all day long by dressing up a teddy bear and having the bear appear doing different things (yoga, reading, brushing teeth). Total 6-year old humor.
Here are a couple pics from the bday parties.
The kids have been having some playdates lately:
Madeline’s little face here cracks me up.
We also went to Chicago for a night to get out of rainy Indiana and take advantage of some of the museums:
Madeline loves the little Family Room in the Art Institute where she, too, can create.
And here is one from the first morning of their day camp. “Will we make new friends this year,” they asked this morning. Oh, my heart!
The kids and I have had a bunch of playdates and swim dates and Madeline’s last drum lesson of the season lately. And yesterday I decided to drive them up to Silver Beach for the day to build sand turtles and ride the merry go round.
Here are a couple pics from the daytrip:
She had me with “It was a dark and stormy night,” back when I was ten, but my love for Madeleine L’Engle continued for many years, especially as I read Wrinkle to my own Madeline last year. Yes, I named her after her.
“Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.”
And so she turns six tomorrow. And I still marvel at her digging for worms, drum-playing, arguing ways.
