Summer Round-Up

Just a few last odds and ends from the month of July as it FLEW by once we were back home and settled in, gearing up for the kids nemesis-- school! Summers here go by way too fast.

I love preserving Zach's drawings and doodles, and made no exception on this great Superman drawing, especially since it was colored. He loves drawing with pen and ink, but actually hates coloring, as I think he finds it rather tedious. I love that he represented the speed of flying with all the colors bleeding together. 

Nice action shot there of ol' Superman.

Our garden really came on about the middle of July, and every few days we'd get a major wave of produce. Leah and Lizzie especially loved helping me harvest everything. We had oodles and oodles of zucchini, eggplant, peas, herbs, tomatoes, raspberries, and cucumbers.

We harvested TONS of rhubarb while my mom was here visiting too, so I made sure to have her bake us a few pies to freeze, as well as stew some rhubarb jam before she left. Yum!

Love, love, love our garden so much. It's probably one of my favorite things about spring and summer. I dream all winter long about what we should plant next year, and how many of what, and where we should plant it. It's kind of become an obsession.

Leah and Liz enjoyed playing outside on the new swing set as well as in their little pink wading pool. It never did get very hot this summer, and most of the the time it would thunderstorm if it did, but there were a few afternoons that were pretty near perfect so we were sure to make the most of them.

One of the babysitters at the gym I teach at, took this picture of Lizzie and her bestie Frankie for me. They are always there together it seems like, and they are almost the same age, and they love to sit and read stories to each other. So cute!

The kids were all invited to our neighbor Evelyn's birthday party on Saturday, the weekend right before school started. There were tons of bounce houses and then cake and ice cream right after-- and Elizabeth absolutely loved being treated like one of the big kids!

Leah helping celebrate her BFF Evelyn's 5th birthday! So glad they're family moved to the neighborhood.

We continued the party attitude since it was our last weekend of total freedom, by visiting Hammond's Candy Factory in downtown Denver. It's one of the only candy factories that is still predominately hand-making their candies, and they are famous for the candy canes.

Pretty much every flavor you could ever think of, they have a candy cane of it! Pumpkin spice, black cherry, root beer, sour apple, bubble gum, pina colada, etc. My sugar loving kids were in heaven picking out a candy cane to take home!   

Liz was operating without a nap, had already been sugared up at the birthday party, and was pretty much a hot mess during the tour part. Yikes. She also tried to steal whatever candy she could get her little paws on. So much fun toting around an 18 month old everywhere (eyeroll).

Bye bye Hammond's candy! A fun, free, family-friendly tour down in the books.

And just like that, the 2017-2018 school year started back up! I will miss my helper-big-kid-babysitters like crazy. Especially since Leah will only be in preschool two afternoons a week, and I'm admittedly not very good company for inquisitive almost 2 and 5 year olds. Here's to an AWESOME year!