June 17th - July 12th, 2014

Hello Everyone! 

We have been enjoying our summer here at the new house. It's feeling more and more like home and we are really enjoying having more space. 

Here's what we've been up to this summer...

 Owen is being integrated into Story Time at the library. As you can see, he is still learning the basics. Like who he's supposed to be paying attention to and who everyone else is supposed to be looking at. :) 

 Boy, if I know how much boys enjoyed gravel, I would have gotten them a big pile a long time ago. They love that stuff. Digging, throwing, shoveling...endless entertainment. 

 We had our horizons expanded with the discovery of a "Sprayground". It was so fun!

 Summer isn't complete without at least one Burlington Royals baseball game. 

 I guess Owen had enough baseball at this point. 

 You know us, always doing some sort of project around the house. We decided blood-red walls wouldn't be the best for our school room this fall. 

 Good bye red! Micah is such a trooper and willing to help me improve and beautify the house. 

Muuuch better. :)

 Outdoor concert in Downtown Burlington. Micah's brother, Jesse's, band was the main attraction for the evening. They did a great job!

 More gravel time... :)

 Had a neighbor join us for dinner. Yes, that's a tick I found crawling up MY dining room table! Ugh. We do have a lot of ticks and chiggers out here, but we've avoided all but one tick bite so far. We've been working on getting rid of some of the brush around the perimeter of our back yard hoping that will help.

 The view out my kitchen window. These guys show up most late afternoons to eat clover in the shade of the house. 

 Owen is slowly mastering the spoon! It takes a lot of concentration, but depending on the consistency of whatever he is eating, he manages to get most of it in his mouth. :)

 Had our propane tank buried. Goodbye ugly metal tank in the middle of the backyard! 

 Blake has really continued to amaze me with he reading. He has a stack of 1st and 2nd grade level chapter books in his arms that will take him about five afternoon quiet times to read. He's doing so well. 

 4th of July fireworks at the park. Owen was a bit concerned. 

 Special reading spot and cushion. 

 Here's a view of our house from the front. We are wanting to do landscaping this fall...we will see. I need to figure out what we'd like to do first. 


 We celebrated Blake's 5th birthday on Thursday! Hard to believe we are old enough to have a five-year-old. 

Started the birthday with a trip to the bounce around. Owen was in hog heaven. :)

 Blake was so cute. He got some money from Aunt Joy and Uncle James, so he taped it on the fridge for all his birthday guests to see. 

 We had fun playing pin the tail on the donkey. 

 Even Owen wanted to get in on the action. 

 Water balloon launching...this is serious folks. 

 Blake had a few of his boy friends over the day after his birthday for a play day. They did "man stuff" and sweated a lot outside. 

 Blake's expression in this picture makes me laugh. He is about to say "YES!" really loud.  :)

We had another "first" in our family. Blake lost his first tooth. Unfortunately, it is really lost. We still don't know where it is. Thankfully, the Tooth Fairy accepted a small token in place of the tooth and Blake found a little letter from her. 

Other News...

We are looking forward to celebrating Seth's fourth birthday in two weeks. 

Jonathan returns to the States from Afghanistan in about three weeks. He is able to take some leave to come visit so we're looking forward to that!

Family beach trips are coming up in August and September. The boys have been talking about that pretty much all year.

I know it's a shocker to most of you, but after weighing different options and praying for direction, we've decided to homeschool. :) We have been researching various curriculum for kindergarten for Blake, and boy is he ready. I vacillate between being excited and completely overwhelmed at the prospect of being responsible for educating our children in the academic realm. It's definitely the way God is leading our family and the best choice for us. It's kinda crazy to think that this fall will mark the beginning of us homeschooling for possibly the next 20 years! (Depending on how many kiddos we have). Whew! I know we won't do it perfectly, but I also know God will give us wisdom  and the grace to do it for however long He wants us to. It's neat to see homeschooling becoming so much more popular over the years and we are blessed to live in a very homeschool-friend area with many sports and co-op opportunities avaliable. There is so many more options for curriculum now a days than there were when I was a homeschool student. So anyway, we will have our first day of school sometime in September! 

I better wrap this up. The World Cup is almost over and the boys are beckoning me to join them in the living room. :) Hope you all are doing well! 

In Christ, 

Kari, Micah, Blake, Seth and Owen