One hot summer

May and June kind of flew by. I had wanted to write many times, but never seemed to be sitting long enough to do it.

May was busy because it was the end of the school year stuff colliding with the beginning of summer stuff. Soccer started. Several games were canceled because of weather. Too cold, too windy, too hot, and raining, raining, raining!

My folks weren’t coming (since they’d gone to FL the month before), and after I rearranged our end of the year program to fit the Wenigers’ schedules, they decided to come…the following week. Oh well, they got to watch it on video. We had fun with our program this year. The kids sang a song about the parts of the brain and Lauren wore a hat that had a plastic brain sticking up out of it. Our play at the end was about when the USA tried to open treaty negotiations with Japan that had been closed to outsiders for 200 years. We did a shadow play for the first half and finished with a classic Japanese "voice-over" drama. Jud did all the voices and they just mouthed nonsense to make it look like one of those old movies. They all had on Japanese costumes and wigs and it ended with a slow motion karate fight. Everybody was laughing! Had to be the best one yet.

Well, my folks came the week after, and brought Emma. We did the usual touristy stuff and had a great time. Jud was in the process of buying a new church van. He scored a great one for a fraction of the price it was listed at and just in time to cart my family all around. Thank you, God!

Toward the end of the visit, Emma was getting sad about leaving. My mom told me Emma really didn’t have much to do in the summer since both her parents work, and that she’d be spending a lot of time at my parent’s house. The kids were having so much fun playing together, I offered to have her stay with us until camp (three weeks off). Her parents agreed and the kids were thrilled. We spent the next couple of weeks trying to show her all of our fun places.She started getting homesick by the end of the second week, so Chris and Mom came up to get her.

Then it was camp and the parade and Backyard Bible Club and of course, lots of trips to the lakes.

During one particularly nice day (sunny but not too hot and breezy but not windy), we started off on our bikes to see how far we could go. By the time we finished, we had passed Jared’s house and ended up at the Mills’ house six miles away. Lauren, the six-year-old on a little kid bike, went the whole way without any complaints. I was pretty impressed! After a short break at the Mills, we headed back. She got a half-mile into the return trip and decided she was not going any further. She actually got off her bike and sat down on the sidewalk with her arms folded in protest. I had to call Jud to come get her. The rest of us finished the trip–12 miles! Not bad for two kids and me on my 100 lb. bike cruiser.

The next day Jud wanted to get out and enjoy the weather, so we ended up canoeing down the Canon River 12 miles. What a workout! The day after that, we just laid around reading library books. :)