Sweet Summertime!

This summer has seemed to fly by! It seems it was just two weeks ago that Grace started her summer break and here she is back in school already. We tried to make the most of summer, while also trying to not spend it always running around. I think we had a great time, here are a few photo collages:

We went with Amy, Shawn, and Chace for C's first trip to the zoo. It was fun, he really loved the animals. Grace had a fun time showing him everything. We love going to the zoo in Evansville so much better than St. Louis; it is smaller, but you get to see the animals better and it's not as crowded! It was very hot that day, and I was dealing with a very bad sunburn from the day before; I think all future trips to the zoo will be in the spring or fall! Grace had a small breakdown as we were leaving proclaiming it as "the worst day of her life" because we wouldn't buy her a $40 toy from the gift shop. Mind you, we had already been in May and she got something then. So, she was mad for about 10 minutes, then she was over it.


In June, we took our vacation to N. Carolina. I've blogged about this a little before, so I won't go into great detail, the pictures can speak for themselves! Grace loved the plane ride, the ocean, the battleship, everything. We had a great time visiting with Bill's family some, and made great memories as our own little family.


One night, Grace mentioned wanting to make a tent in the living room to sleep in. Now, when I was a kid, we used a few chairs, sheets, and a fan. We also had to sleep on the floor...straight floor, too. Well, Bill got out his homemade backdrop stand he made for me once upon a time and rigged up for their tent. Pretty genius, I think! What's better than camping out with daddy in the a/c watching spongebob? Not much, I think!


Bill's sister and her family drove over one Sat. from Kentucky and we took them on my dad's boat. Neither of my nieces had ever been on a boat, but they loved it! We tubed around Rend Lake, jumped out and swam, and enjoyed the day!


This collage turned out small, but I think you can view it bigger....Since we'd never been to Garden of the Gods before, we took off one Sunday and went. It was beautiful! It was a bit warm, but it was still fun! It's amazing to me that So. IL has such beauty. I think I see a trip back there in the fall when the leaves are changing! Grace wanted to go up the tower, so we all started the climb up there. I got about 1/4 the way up and decided it was too high for me, so I went back down and took some pictures! (I'm not sure why my arrow doesn't look right, it did when I edited it...)


We did so much more, but a post can only be so long before you get tired of reading! As I said before, some of it is in previous posts, so check it out!