Cheer Camp

 Here are a few pics from the second week of cheer camp-which ended with the little girls cheering with the high school girls at the first football game of the season.

A quick practice before the game(in uniform):

 J was very restless-which surprised me. I thought there would be enough going on to occupy his brain, but au contraire. I gave him my camera and that occupied him very well. I also had to delete about fifty photos-but it was worth it! He took most of these:

 I wasn't going to include this strange pic, but then I saw Mr. J's smile and I couldn't pass it up. Look how proud he is of his little girl! How sweet! I love this man!

 That's how he acted most of the game: (needless to say we left at half-time when the little girls were done cheering).

 M had a GREAT time and loved every minute of it. She made new friends and wants to do it again this summer. The big girls luuuved her and wanted to carry her around and such. It was fun for mom and dad to watch as well...

Saige and Caroline

M saved up for at least a year and bought herself another American Girl Doll. After much deliberation she decided on Saige. She loves the dolls and we play with them often. She has accrued quite the collection of clothes and accessories so after Saige came we made a closet for the two dolls to share. It doesn't fit nearly all the stuff, but we had a fun time doing something together.

(See the cabbage patch in the bottom corner? After M opened her doll, J wanted a special doll to play with so we found Micheal and J made sure he was in the picture too!)

Summer Time

Here is another day at the beach for us Wild Things! 

Berrien County Youth Fair Week

Y'all may not know this, but MI is all about some fairs! I'm pretty sure if you wanted to, you could find some kind of fair every weekend of the year. It's a little overboard-but fun! Well, our little town has the biggest fair in the state. It had 124,773 visitors this year.  Including our little family! We weren't really sure what all the hype was about, but turns out we enjoyed the entire week. And it is most certainly a week-long affair. Even the library shuts down. Don't expect to get any business done the week of the fair in this place! Anyway, we went every day and did something different every day. I didn't get to capture all the moments, but I did manage to snap a few shots. Some things we did not pictured here are: watch a cow in labor-for two days! Finally when the kids and I went back Thursday morning the cow had had her baby just two hours before! It was so sweet watching mama and baby! We also walked around and saw ALL the livestock-including five year old children showing their baby cows-that was cute. We watched horse riding competitions and rabbit judgings and marveled at swine and fowl and people watched and ate and ate and ate and saw crafts, floral arrangements, baked goods, a circus, and went on rides! Which, incidentally, when we were there on Sunday turning in M's entry they were still setting up the rides and we were discussing what the workers had to do for that. Well, that night little J prayed for the workers to be safe and that he would get to ride the rides! It was so sweet! And he prayed for those things ever day thereafter! Here is M with her entry: it is a fruit cocktail cake. We even changed the recipe and left some stuff out because I thought the judges didn't even taste it-that it just sat there-we sure didn't get to taste it! But I was wrong. The judges tasted it and M got an A ribbon. She was so proud! I can't remember if I ever took a pic of her with the ribbon-might have to follow up on that... 

Here it is on display. We visited it several times during the week!

 Here we are eating funnel cake for the first time. J got real into it:

 These pics are kinda gross! But, it cracked me up that M begged me for a caramel apple to eat while at the circus and that toothless child couldn't eat it! It was pretty funny!

 Aren't I lucky to have such handsome men in my life?

 (By the way, J said he didn't like the circus. He wanted to leave and after we asked several times what part he liked and he kept saying, "nofing, I didn't like it."

Daddy rode the ferris wheel with M because mommy is too much of a wuss: 

 She loved it! J and I are down there somewhere:

more rides:

 Can't see them there, but cool shot, huh?

First Day of First Grade

It turns out I held it together while dropping M off at school today. Again. I thought M going into first grade might be easier for me to handle (than kindergarten). But it's not. I think every year will be hard all over again. Why? Because I miss that girl while she is at school. I really do. (Not that I'm not grateful I will get to work on some projects during nap-time.) And as she gets older and time is speeding by faster than I can comprehend most days I know she will be headed to college in the blink of an eye. And that is SAD! But also happy because she is a bright, happy girl who will do well in life. I love her and am excited for her even though I have to learn how to let go. Here are the pics from the shoot this morning: (of course I didn't leave any out!)