So Much Going On - Highlights

Golly, I haven't updated my posts in forever! Based on my previous posts it appears like we did very little school the last several months. We finished up school at the end of May, it has been so nice to have a break.

Although I don't have school photos to share, we have had lots going on and I wanted to share.

We celebrated some birthdays around here. Sweet Baby isn't such a baby anymore. She turned 7 and celebrated with a Tangled birthday party. Yes, that cake is my pitiful attempt at making a castle with cupcakes and a sugar cone on top.

Peanut turned 9 and had her first sleepover party with a couple friends. She had an owl themed party.

In my last post I shared that we had to put our dog of 14 years down the Monday after Easter. It was awfully quiet around here, so we added a new member to our family. Daisy joined us at the end of May. Isn't she cute? She is a beagle/lab mix. I had forgotten what it was like to have a puppy around the house. LOTS of energy...lets just leave it at that.

Our dear friends who moved to Oklahoma 3 years ago came out for an extended stay. They were here for 2 months. What a blessing to be able to make memories with them. They are as close to us as family and we enjoyed every opportunity we were able to see them while they were in Michigan. Their daughter is close to all of the girls and I love having photos like these...

And because they are kids, we had to have a photo like this....

Our niece graduated from high school so we were able to spend some time with family at her open house. Here is a photo of Sissy and grandma (my husband's mom).

We spent at day up at grandma's house. Grandma lives literally across the street from Lake Huron. So, we loaded up the kids, the dog and even my husband's youngest brother and headed for the lake.

We discovered that Daisy really likes the water - once we got her in there. When she came out, she kind of resembled a wet rat.

Here the girls are swimming, they had such a great time.

And this is my favorite picture...a photo of Sweet Baby and grandma enjoying a walk together.

That is all I'll share for today. I will be working on another post sharing some more highlights, like summer camp.

American Heritage Girls Camporee

The girls and I attended our first American Heritage Girls Camporee last month. It was an amazing day! There were close to 160 AHG girls and parents there to share in the fun. We camped at Michigan Christian Youth Camp, one of my favorite places to be. Since all of our girls are Explorers or younger, we were unable to camp in tents, but slept in the dorms, which was just fine by me!

We arrived with dreary but dry weather, set up our stuff and headed down to the campfire.

After some campfire songs and smores, we headed back to the dorms to get some rest. Thankfully the rain held off till around 10 pm, but when it did decide to rain, it poured! It just kept raining all night and into the next day! It was such a wet day! It rained till around 1:00 pm!

We all had breakfast, and then split up into their different groups for activities. All of our girls made no mess tye-dye bandannas. Here is Sweet Baby with hers....

Peanut with hers...

The Tenderhearts and Explorers were able to do Leathercrafts. Here is Sweet Baby as proud as can be to show the project she made for her AHG pen pal. It is a key chain of sorts shaped like a heart and "broken" down the middle. On one side she stamped the word "Pen" and the other side she stamped the word "Pals". As soon as we got home she packaged up one side to send to her pen pal. Too cute!

The Explorers were able to participate in several team building exercises. They really seemed to enjoy themselves. Here is Sissy making her way across the tire swings on the low ropes course. It is amazing to witness than a young girl scared to try something and then seeing her peers cheer her on.

The Tenderhearts were able to participate in a section of the low ropes course as well. Since we spent a year last summer at this camp, Peanut had already done the activities, but Sweet Baby had not. She was TERRIFIED but an even great thing to witness than peers cheering their friends on, is when a child conquers their fear and sees that they CAN do it! I LOVE these photos as you can really see how happy and excited Sweet Baby was as she made it across the ropes.

It was an amazing weekend. Sweet Baby was able to experience her first trip to camp, the girls and parents in our troop were able to bond and make amazing memories and accomplish things they never thought they would!