Summer fun!

Elena went to Girls State in June. She had a great time, made a lot of friends and learned a lot. One thing she learned is that she definitely does NOT want to go into politics. All the meetings were long and tedious. In her words, "If you agree with someone, just say 'I agree.' You don't have to repeat everything they just said over and over again!"

I already posted about Olivia's 5th birthday in St. Louis, but we did have a follow-up party with an actual cake after returning. She wanted her cake to look just like last year's cake. And she did all of the decorating herself, which explains why there are way too many candles.

One of the biggest June highlights was a visit from Uncle Joe and the Boston cousins!! All the cousins except for Alex (who had a baseball tournament) were able to get together. The girls were reintroduced to life in small town Minnesota. They were shocked by things like driving on gravel roads and the way we knew practically everyone - and waved even if we didn't know someone! 

Hoku accurately pointed out that this view looked just like the original Microsoft background. 
In case you forgot, here it is:

Grandma and all the granddaughters

And of course, we've gotten in lots and lots of swimming. Olivia has been working hard on swimming without help or a life jacket, so she asks to go to the pool almost every day no matter the weather.

Frank's friend, Teddy, successfully buried Frank up to his neck in sand at Camden Park!

And Charlie's baseball team won first place this year in the championship! There were enough 5th and 6th grade boys in baseball this summer that they had 3 teams. Thankfully, they put these 3 cousins all on the same team. 

And here's one random quote from Olivia: 

I don't know what you're talking about....but I do know what my coffee is talking about: drinking coffee!

Summer work

As usual, summer is full of work and projects to be done. Sam has been getting up at 5:30 every day this summer to work a full day of construction, then coming home to lift weights and squeeze in a round of golf before bed. Recently he cut his head at work and it was bleeding pretty badly so he wrapped it in a t-shirt and finished out the day. Fortunately, once he unwrapped it, he discovered it was a much smaller cut than suspected so no hospital visit was required. 

My summer projects have been primarily tending the garden and painting. I just finished painting the front porch (minus the floor - that will have to wait) and a stairwell at St. Ed's school that was peeling. Unsure of how to reach the high walls, Seth told me he could just "build some scaffolding quick." He went to the school and finished in about 2 hours. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this! It worked really well and covered the whole area without needing to be moved so it made for a quick and easy paint job.

 

In addition to the weeds, some of our grapevines have been getting out of control. In one area, they had completely taken over our gooseberries and yellow raspberry bushes. Frank was complaining that he was bored on the day I had decided to tackle the grapevines so I told him I would pay him to help me with them. He worked outside for about an hour while I did laundry, and when I went to check on him, I was blown away by the work he did. He had gotten right into the thick of the (very prickly) bushes and pulled out most of the grapevines including some very thick vines that required a lot of hacking and tugging. Then he made several trips to the compost pile and packed them all down. This was our conversation when I got outside:

Me: I'm really impressed you did all of that! That was really hard work.

Frank: Well, I pretty much got that from Dad. Dad's really strong and works hard so I got that from him. And you're good at cleaning (this is debatable), so I got that from you. And that's why I was able to do it! 

After thinking about it for a minute, he added: "...but my dance moves. That's just all natural."