A Week Gone By...

... and no blog post to show for it.  So much for the relaxed pace of summer leaving me with more time to blog.  We've been busy this week!  Here's a little of what we've been doing... if I didn't record the event with photographs (which happened a lot this week) I'm supplementing with N's artistic renderings of the events that she drew when we put together our calendar at the beginning of the week.

Last Weekend:

Did I mention that M has Fridays off for six weeks in the summer?  Lots of 3-day weekends.  We're so lucky!  Last weekend, we stayed at home and got a few things done (mostly boring stuff like grocery shopping and laundry) PLUS covered a lot of ground in the "having fun" category.

L happened to find our old Star Wars pancake molds while rooting through a drawer of stuff, and of course we had to make some:

N and I re-purposed an old sock with a hole in the toe by cutting it into a new dress and hat for her Rapunzel Barbie.

Daddy took the girls to the splash park while I took the Massachusetts teacher test so that I can teach a course online next year (yay, a job for me! more on that later)!

We set up the tent on our porch so the girls could "camp out" and had a couple of movie nights out there.

Monday:

Mommy had an appointment back in our old neighborhood so the girls were able to spend the afternoon with some much-loved friends from our church:

N's drawing of our church friends!

 Just as we departed to drive back home, severe storms broke out and I received an alert on my phone for a tornado warning!  The girls and I pulled off the highway and treated ourselves to dinner while we waited out the storms.  (No actual tornado touched down in our area, thankfully.)

Tuesday:

Shopping day.  Tuesday has remained shopping day ever since we started our calendar.  This week we got groceries for our Fourth of July party.

Wednesday:

Beach day!  The state forest near our house has a little pond with a swimming area.  We've been twice so far this summer and love it!  It's perfect for the girls because it's shallow, small, and has lifeguards (which means safe swimming for all of my kiddos, and an easier time for me keeping track of them).

Managed some pics on my phone that day...

Oh, I got my hair cut!  Should have included that in the "last weekend" portion...

Thursday:

Happy Fourth!  We had a small group of neighbors/friends over and it was super fun.  One of the girls' friends brought face paint, which became body paint...

Here's Snow White trying to be covert about covering herself in paint... it took two days of scrubbing in the bath to get it all off.

C was a bit shy with some of our newer friends. 

Friday:

Vacation for M.  We had an appointment for our van to be fixed:

We brought the girls along because it was HOT and we decided it was better to hang out at the air-conditioned Honda dealership than our NOT air-conditioned house.

We watched TV and played with toys in the waiting room, and then it was home for lunch and naps, violin and hiding out in our finished basement to (sort of) beat the heat.

Today

We went to my cousin's bridal shower.  I didn't take a single picture, but the girls had SO much fun.  We can't wait for the wedding in a few weeks where L will be the flower girl!  Everyone there was so helpful with the girls and they made some great new friends.

It was a 2.5-hour drive to the shower, so the girls and I got kind of a fun road trip out of the day.  On our way back, we stopped for gas in the town where M and I lived when N was a baby.  I said as much to N, and of course she wanted to see our old house.  So we drove by and I showed her the tiny attic window that had been her bedroom.  As we drove back towards the highway, I was reminiscing aloud about how I used to push her in the stroller down that street as a newborn, all the way to the coffee shop at the end of the road (one of the best little coffee shops ever... it was a soothing balm to my sleep-deprived new mama's soul).  L then suggested generously, "Well, why don't you stop for a coffee right now?"  And so we did.  Mama got some of the best coffee ever, and all three girls got a cookie from the bakery for being so good!

And tomorrow M and I are singing in the choir at church with girls in tow.

Meanwhile, as a sort of Fourth of July celebration, M and I have been re-watching one of our favorite series during our evenings this week: John Adams.  I am riveted by it every time.  Definitely worth a watch if you haven't already seen it!

What a fun and busy week!  We'll see what the calendar brings us next...