July Round-Up!

This was a whirlwind of a month, and it's hard to believe it's already August! I feel like I spent half the month driving between home and central Arkansas, and with four trips there and back just this month I may not be too far off. Really though, I'm so grateful for a rich and abundant life. Here are some of the things that filled our month. 

I'm always, always amazed by the sunrises and sunsets we see from our front and back porch. God's artwork is incredible! 

{sunset}

The I-Run Endurance Club that the kids all participated in again this summer ended on July 4th. Prior to that, Coach Renee set up a scavenger hunt for the junior high team at our local Nature Preserve. Bren ended up being the only boy who was able to attend, but he held his own :-). 

Kyrie, Ruby, Immaline, Adele, and Bren

Adele, Bren, Kyrie, Immaline, and Ruby

Before completing the I-Run Endurance Club for the summer, the junior high and high school participants had timed trials. Coach gave them all fun socks as their reward for completing the program!

The elementary kids had an 800m race to mark the end of the season. Brooke and Brecklyn both raced well.

They finished strong at the same second with a time of 4:01. This is actually up a few seconds from last year, but I'm happy with the hard work they are putting in. 

On the day of the time trials and race, we had to leave straight from the park to go to a funeral. A lady we had known for several years through church, Ms. Marcella, had passed away a few days prior. That same evening, I played with the Claremore Civic Band in our patriotic concert. It was a beautiful evening for some music in the park!

The trombone section - Chelley, Ed, Richard, Jack, and Mel

About half-way through the concert, Chris and the kids left to go to an annual 4th of July party at the Burkholder's house. I was sad to miss it this year, but they had a great time. It was quite a day!

Bren and some of the other boys blowing things up!

Brooke and Brecklyn swimming with some of the other kids

July 4th was a Friday this year, and we spent most of the day taking care of our usual responsibilities and errands. However, that evening was our monthly youth devo. The Rowells hosted it at their house, and we had a nice time. We continue to be thankful for the youth devos! 

Jax and Bri at the youth devo

After we got home from the Rowells, I decided I had better snap a few 4th of July pics. I almost lost the opportunity! 

Brecklyn, Brianna, Brooke, and Brenson

💙 Family 💙

The next day, we hit the road early for Arkansas. We met Shawna and Kaylee at Chick-Fil-A in Conway for lunch so Brianna and Brenson could go back to Tennessee with them for Horizons (you can read about it here). While I loved that they were able to go, our house felt awful quiet and still during that week. However, we had Caroline and Sadie over for a sleepover one night and that helped (especially with the quiet issue, haha!)

Making sugar cookies!

Sadie and Brecklyn

Caroline and Brooke and flour for days!

After we made sugar cookies, we delivered some fresh cookies to my parents (and of course, Grampy served ice cream to go with the cookies). The girls were thrilled to make the delivery, and I think the recipients were pretty happy to receive them!

Most mornings, Brecklyn will crawl into our bed as she's waking up for the day. I can usually tell what kind of night she had by the state of her hair, haha.

Every year, the kids write in a book for me for Mother's Day, and then we add recent photos of us to the book. We do the same for Father's Day for Chris, but in more recent years instead of posing for photos I have been using photos of the kids with Chris from our vacations. This year, however, I didn't have any photos of just Bri and Chris from our vacation. We kept forgetting to take a photo for the book, but we finally remembered! It was only about a month later. *ahem*

In between running kids to run practice and driving back and forth to Arkansas, I was able to let my creative juices flow and vinyl some shirts. This is one I did for Kaylee:

And here are a few I did for Shawna. She's a fourth grade math teacher, so these were fitting, for sure!

My kids are definitely at the age where I often open my phone and find random photos of them. It's a little bright spot in my day. The photo below of Brooke and Brecklyn (at Sam's Club) is one such photo :-).

As Brianna has gotten older, her social schedule has increased quite a bit. Recently - due to an interest in a certain boy - she has been spending some time at his house. One afternoon this month, they got together with a couple other friends to cook.  

I wasn't there, but rumor has it that it was quite the mess! Bri had a great time though. 

Jake, Victoria, Bri, and Jaxen

We ended the month with another death at church (Mr. Walter) followed by a trip to Nebraska (I will post about that in a few days). It was a month that began and ended with some hard things, but had lots of good and lots of travel in between.