First Day of School 2022

Summer was packed full of stuff, but man it flew by.  And just like that, we were heading back to school again.  I actually HATE when everyone goes back to school.  I don't really love being alone all day and I do better mentally/emotionally when they're all home with me.  But we eased into things by starting on a Thursday this year so we only had two days that first week.  Now we're all adjusted and are geared up for another great year of school and Braddock is especially excited to be at the Jr. High.

Bridger: 1st Grade

Braddock: 5th Grade  and   Landon: 7th Grade

Tanner: 10th Grade

Dean: Been teaching for ages! Hahaha!

And thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Hilton for sending some first-day-of-school treat money, we got Brusters after everyone got home....

Flour Ball

The Young Women were in charge of the combined activity for August, and both the Young Men and Young Women had been begging to play flour ball, so flour ball it was!  It's amazing how much fun throwing little balls of flour at each other ends up being.  We split them into two teams and each team hid a flag and then they all had to try and get the other teams flag without being hit by any flour balls.  We played several rounds and then they just had a blast pegging each other for the rest of the evening.  I sure enjoy spending time with this awesome group of kiddos! And I even ended up in the action thanks to Tanner and Landon.  They had no qualms about throwing flour balls at me!

Summer Nights at the Fair

The Hookstown Fair is something we look forward to every year.  The boys love going on rides, Dean and I enjoy the food, and we always love seeing the Cunninghams and their cows.  We got there in time to see Colby's cheese basket go up for auction and he pulled in over $500 for his 4H Club! Poor Bridger still isn't quite tall enough for most of the big kid rides, but he was a good sport about things.  The weather turned out great and everyone had fun soaking up one of our last nights of summer before they all head back to school.

The Arcade

Back in June when I got back from Girls Camp I came home to the supplies and plans for an arcade machine that Tanner had cooked up and convinced Dean to help him with.  The other boys were on board to help support things financially.....Tanner is GOOD.  Haha!  So fast forward a few months and a LOT of work on both Dean and Tanner's parts and we have a fully functioning arcade machine.  It's REALLY cool and they've all had so much fun playing retro games together.  I especially love seeing Dean spend time with them.  This will be an epic childhood memory that will live on for many years to come.

 

Braddock's 10th Birthday

Braddock's birthday was a lego theme cause he is for sure our master builder of the bunch.  He can make and create anything his little brain comes up with.  It fell on a Sunday this year which makes things a little different but it just meant we celebrated for days.  He was coming off of being sick but was better in time to spend Sunday at Church and at Grandma and Grandpa's.  We started off the morning with peach cobbler and chocolate milk for breakfast before Church.  We came home and did his presents from us here at home before heading over for Sunday dinner at Dean's parent's house.  He requested Grandma's delicious lasagna for dinner and Grandma and PapPap came too.  He was spoiled with gifts from them as well and we took over his cake to share with everyone there.  Braddock helped me make the lego head cake and we made the face out of rolled out tootsie rolls.  It turned out awesome but by time we went to cut into it the heat and humidity got the best of it and it was dripping tootsie roll tears.  We were cracking up over the whole thing and it was a memory we won't soon forget.  Later that night Braddock got to video chat with Grandma and Grandpa Hilton too.  They brought him his presents early when they visited at the beginning of the month.  Then we celebrated again the next day with his birthday dinner at our house.  He chose wontons, egg rolls, watermelon, and jello.  Everyone loved it and we sure enjoyed celebrating this fun boy.  We're so blessed to have Braddock in our family.  Happy Birthday bud!  10 looks good on you!

 

Kayaking the Ohio and Beaver Rivers

The weather was great for a day on the river and we happened to go on a day when there was a little festival happening on the side of the river so we had live music to paddle to and it was fun to people watch too.  There was a bit of squabbling over kayaking partners (surprise, surprise!), so we did some mid-river swapping and finished up the trip more peacefully than it began.  And it wasn't until weeks later that Braddock told us he lied about how he was feeling so we could go kayaking.  I feel bad he felt like he had to do that, but he felt so bad the Great Wolf Lodge trip was foiled he didn't want to ruin any more fun and with a little tylenol he did just fine so I guess it all worked out in the end.