summa time!

most of you know that i can't really swim, so i have really wanted the kids to pick it up, to be confident at it, and to LOVE it. so, we enrolled lucas and emma in swim lessons these last 5 weeks and they have done incredibly well. lucas has taken to swimming like a fish in water and his instructor told me yesterday that he is extremely comfortable in the water and is doing great. he has advanced to the next level in each of the 2-week sessions he's been in (same for emma), and we'll find out this friday if they'll get to move up again. i think lucas will, but emma is the youngest and smallest in her class and i have a feeling she'll repeat it one more time. i'm just really proud of lucas because a year ago, allan and i had to drag him (literally) into the pool. now, he's jumping in on his own and even wants to jump off of the diving board (with floaties on). praise God!

here's lucas at his first session with his instructor, miss stephanie.

our newest friend

we have been waiting and waiting for the arrival of a very precious little girl and finally, at the end of june, she arrived! our friends, jordan and abby, are the proud parents of their baby girl, kamille, and we had the honor of going to visit the new family of four a few weeks ago. emma and elise couldn't get enough of baby kamille (i don't blame them!) and they kept wanting to hold her and give her kisses; abby was gracious and very brave to let them. lucas, well, he and his buddy canaan were just having a blast shooting at each other with canaan's plethora of guns and ammo. it was fun to finally meet kamille and visit with our friends, the proud parents.

my girls and a happy birthday to my sister!

i love having emma and elise be so close in age (i can only say that now that they're both older!). they love sitting next to each other in the car and are almost always holding hands. so sweet. i pray that they will be the best of friends in the years to come. on father's day, allan took lucas and emma to go see toy story 3 in 3D so i got to spend the afternoon hanging out with just elise. we went to browse at a fun little gift shop and i ended up buying a mini euonymus that i love! i'm not a huge plant person. it has to be the right plant for me to want to water and tend to it regularly. it sounds a little lazy, i guess, but it's true. we also went to a local nursery that has the coolest stuff, including several koi ponds where we get to feed the koi. the neat thing is that allan and i had a koi pond in our last house and we ended up donating all of our koi to this nursery when we got rid of our pond. i have no idea which koi were ours, but it was just neat to think about it. elise loved feeding the fish and refused to leave. she kept asking for more fish food and when i wouldn't buy any more for her, she searched for the ones that dropped on the floor. allan and i can already see that she is one determined little girl. good in many ways, but not in some. our girls are growing up way too fast. the other day, emma told me that maybe she would "shrink down" instead of grow up so that she can stay my baby. awww! must have been something i said to her at some point. sounds like me! i love my girls and am so glad they have each other as sisters. i'm also thankful to have MY sister as a sister. she's caring, considerate, fun, funNY, reliable, and extremely resourceful. she loves the kids and takes as good of care of them as if they were her own. she's my best friend and we all love her! it's her birthday today...happy birthday, vick! we love you!

"sparkles"

we had another great fireworks show on our street this year, but i have to say that it was a little less great than last year. seems that there weren't as many people out there this year, so there were less fireworks to see. nonetheless, we had a great time with our own stash of explosives. the evening began with some very tasty pork shoulder that we had at our friends', the wilkersons, house and wanted to try to make it ourselves. we used the outback steakhouse rub recipe and it was deeelicious! we also grilled some veggies and had some very tasty baked beans that i ate way too much of. the almond jello dessert put me over the top. it took me a couple of days to recover from such a big and tasty meal! once the sun went down, we lined up our camp chairs and started the show. emma and elise did NOT like the fireworks. they got really scared, in fact. so, i ended up taking elise inside and put her to bed. i was worried that she would be sad to be left out of everything, but she went down without a peep, even with all of the noise going on outside her window. i was shocked. emma wanted to stay up with us, but she wanted to sit inside of vicky's truck. towards the end of the night, i pulled out an old pair of "old school" headphones to cover her ears and she finally came out of the truck long enough to play with some "sparkles" (sparklers). we had a great time celebrating our country's birthday and being thankful for the freedom we are granted because of the many who served and continue to serve the united states of america.