Summer

Summer is almost gone.

We drove to the pool on Friday night only to find out it was already closed for the season.

The kids were soooo mad :(

We have one last week until school starts.

Trying to spend as much time as possible outside.

More Kicks

My boys can really jump and they love when they get to do flying kicks at TKD.

Here's Cole

and here's Ethan

Campfire

After our camping trip last weekend, Ethan came home wanting to have a campfire every night.  Last night we went to the local park to try it again.

Shawn and Ethan worked on starting the fire.

While Cole and Liv ran around playing and jumping on tables and playing games.

The park was beautiful this time of night.

After we got the campfire going, we started cooking some tinfoil dinners

And then we enjoyed our dinner.

 Liv can't seem to keep her shoes on and her feet always look like this at the end of the night.

We finished the night with some Smore's, we even tried some with Reese's Peanut Butter cups.

It was a beautiful night!

Late night dinner

We have been enjoying the beautiful summer nights.  We went out to a late dinner in the village at the pizza place with the kids the other night.  It was a beautiful night, the food was amazing, and the music was great.  We had a great late night dinner.

Pancakes

Ethan's new skill is cooking us breakfast.  He LOVES to make everyone pancakes.  He asks to make them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Concert in the park

Last night the kids and I walked down to the park for the summer concert series.  It was a chilly night, but the kids had a great time.  The band was an irish band with lots of dancing.  

Camping Trip

I've been begging to take the kids camping for a while and Shawn finally agreed.  We drove up to Devil's lake and camped on Thursday night.  The campsite was great.  We had lots of privacy and a great spot to set up our tent.

Ethan spent most of his time playing with his new knife.  He was determined to start a fire without matches, and spent hours with his knife and a stick of flint.  He got really close, but in the end needed a little help from an aeresol spray can.  That might have been a bad thing to teach him, but Shawn and I were getting hungry and he refused to use a match :)

I know this picture below is blurry (Cole took it) but I like it anyways :)

After getting the camp set up and having dinner we went to the lake.  It was beautiful.  The kids spent time trying to catch little tadpoles swimming in the lake. 

Afte the lake we went back to our campsite.  We had a little talent show.  Liv did a gymnastics routine, and the boys performed a Tae Kwon do routine.  

We finished the night with smores and a big fire.

Then we all went to bed.  Unfortunately, Shawn has a bad back and after sleeping on the hard ground he woke up and tried to pull the stakes out of the tent to take down.  He ended up falling to the ground and couldn't get up because he pulled his back out.  It was pretty bad.  I had to pick him up off the ground and he could hardly move.  The kids helped me finish cleaning up the camp and then we drove to the Wisconsin Dells to spend the next night at the Wilderness Resort and Water park.  Shawn nursed his sore back while the kids and I swam and went down water slides for the next two days.  I am always able to convince my boys (Liv would be there also if she were taller and made the height requirement) to go on a scary water slide.  This time it was the Hurricane.  It was crazy fun and the boys screamed the whole way down, I couldn't stop laughing.  One of these days I am going to bring an underwater camera and record all the fun we have at the dells.  We drove home Saturday night just in time to do lots of wash and get cleaned up for church the next morning.