Oh what do you do in the summertime?

Now that we have less than a month of summer left before Jessica starts kindergarten (yikes!), I figured it would be good to give an update of some of the things we've been up to. 

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? I'm pretty sure that means I can stop writing here...but I won't.

First off, we built a fairy house and a fairy garden. And then, a few weeks later, when this fairy house got rained on and fell apart, dad built Jessica another fairy house out of wood to last forever. She swears she saw Tinkerbell visit a few times.



We built a beautiful fence! Man...gates are hard work! Andrew is patient and I'm grateful he was willing to build the design I wanted, because, really, doesn't this look beautiful??



We planted our garden...and this year, we even planted an herb garden. I love it! Today I picked my first Armenian cucumber, and I had to use my shirt as a bucket to hold all the cherry tomatoes I picked, so the garden is finally getting real.


We got a dog...Bailey! And we loved her...



But sadly, after a few weeks, Bailey had a hard time adjusting to life here, and we had take her back to her first family. It was rough...and the only thing that made it easier was seeing her so happy to see them. We still miss her sometimes though.



We made some sweet homemade tie dye shirts (with craft paint) to celebrate Independence Day. Best family night activity ever!



We celebrated Jessica's 5th birthday too!! This was an awesome card she got from one of her birth grandmas. It played music, and we heard it a lot!



We had two exchange students from Japan come to stay with our family for two weeks! It was fun and exhausting, and it made me very thankful for google translate.




We've also played with lots of friends, eaten picnic lunches, gone to the library, the park, and the water park many times...and made a lot of messes. Here's to another month of summer fun!