Summer Fun at Home

The week following our long stay in the Midwest was a wonderful time to just be home and enjoy life at a slower pace.  The kids went to VBS while Dave and I took advantage of quiet mornings at home to get stuff done.  Lots of time was spent this week starting to reconnect with church family-- including a couple dinners, a sleepover and a rollerblading date.  One day in this week was Delia's birthday.  While she had no shortage of celebrations with family members in the two weeks proceeding her birthday, we didn't want the 13th to go by totally unrecognized, so we planned this small date with our good friends Rachel and her kids Evan and Zane.  We used our "pastors and their families golf for free" card and played a round of mini golf followed by a frozen yogurt outing.  It was the perfect little activity to connect with our friends AND make Delia feel special.

Another afternoon, when VBS was over, we took the kids to the county fair.  It's been a while since we've been to a fair and this was a fun one.  As you would imagine, the animal barns were favorites-- especially any having BABY farm animals!

The animals were our favorites...until we got the butterfly house!  Here we were encouraged to dip Q-tips in nectar and feed the butterflies!  We've been to butterfly exhibits before, but always with the rule of "Don't Touch the Butterflies!"  Here we were encouraged to feed and handle them!  It was awesome and crazy and actually a bit scary when 10 would flutter around your face and land all over you!

Giant bubbles and games in the kids' tent and Footsie Wootsies were other fun things we found at the fair.

Like I said, this was a good week to just be home to rest and get caught up on things, BUT it was also during this week that we had what I'll call the Cinderella Realization-- that our summer and Dave's sabbatical was quickly coming to an end and we wanted to squeeze one more dance in before midnight.  Also, some guilt set in for Dave that being home, but not being at church, was hard.  And so we found an amazing last minute deal on a hotel in the mountains and took off for one last summer getaway, just the 4 of us...