We were excited to welcome summer with a couple of weekend trips, basketball camp, swim lessons, and more. The month flew by quickly, and we had a lot of fun. Here are the details:
The girls look forward all year to being able to swim at the neighborhood pool. We didn’t waste much time this summer and met Emily and her girls there on June 1st. Always a good time with sweet friends!
I had a PTA board meeting/dinner at Josanne’s house that night for all of the board members and families. Josanne and Robby had the perfect backyard for the kids to play! They had an inflatable water slide, water balloons, a swing set, roasted marshmallows, etc. We all enjoyed it!
Travis and I went on a couples trip with friends from church, the Lovelesses, Broadwells, Smiths, and Dvoraks on the weekend of June 2nd. We dropped off the girls at the lake house with Paw and Rae Rae and got to our rental house in Muscle Shoals that evening around 5 pm. We found a big house on a creek off of the Tennessee River, and it was great for what we needed. Once everyone arrived, we went out to eat and got hibachi. We came back and spent a few hours sitting out under the loggia in the backyard and just talked and laughed about old times. The next day, we didn’t do a whole lot. The guys fished for a while, and the girls all just hung out and talked. Nate, Becky, and Leif came in the afternoon and stayed to eat dinner with us. We went out to eat at Ricatoni’s Italian Grill for supper. It was delicious! We played Code Names after we got back to the house. We checked out of the house Sunday morning and went to church at College View. We saw several people we knew, including several friends from college we hadn’t seen in forever. Such a special treat! We ate brunch afterward at Big Bad Breakfast, and it was really good too. Florence has some really good restaurants and such a cute downtown area. We didn’t take many pictures over the weekend, but we enjoyed a lot of laughs and it was great to have some uninterrupted, quality time with friends.
The girls enjoyed playing on the new lily pad at the lake, practicing casting with their fishing rods, and swimming 3 days in a row! We really appreciated Paw and Rae Rae letting them stay for the weekend.
When we got home Sunday afternoon, I checked on Waffles and thought I saw TWO crabs in the tank. (Syrup died recently, which Brooklyn was super sad about). Turns out that Waffles had molted and her shell was completely intact just lying in the tank. We were all so curious how she got out of it without it tearing into multiple pieces. We were going to throw it away, but then Travis read that crabs eat their shell for the nutrients. So interesting!
On June 5th, Travis turned 37! He never wants us to buy him anything, but we did make a special meal (peppered shrimp alfredo) for his birthday. Savannah had picked out a recipe from her cookbook that she wanted to make sometime this summer, so we thought it would be perfect for Travis’s birthday. It was a fruit tart with blackberries and peaches, and it was pretty involved but tasted great. We served it with vanilla ice cream, and Travis really liked it. The girls gave him homemade cards and gave him a back rub after dinner—his favorite!
Lots of love in these cards :)
SO much energy!
The girls thought it was funny to find Gabby hanging out under Savannah’s dresser :)
Savannah is in the 2nd/3rd grade class at church, and they were studying Life in Bible Times during the summer session. On June 7th, they learned about bible times clothing and got to try wearing head coverings!
We met some friends from church at the playground by Phillips Park on June 8th. Amanda Rivera and her kids were in town, and it was great to spend some time with them too.
This is one of my favorite pictures of the girls with Gabby. They called me into Brooklyn’s room to show me how they were pretending to be cats just like Gabby. It was too cute! :)
Brooklyn missed her 4th grade field trip to Montgomery in April because we were out of town. She was really sad to miss it, so when we were talking about it, I told her maybe we could take a family trip to Montgomery instead. She replied, “But it wouldn’t be the same without my friends!” So I asked, “If you could take a friend with you, who would you pick?” And she said, “Nathan!”…her best friend from church. He had also just finished 4th grade (at a different elementary school), but his school doesn’t do a 4th grade trip to Montgomery. I jokingly told his mom about what Brooklyn had said, and she said something like, “If we could find a good time to go, Nathan would love that.” So that’s how our Montgomery weekend was born and became a mother-child trip with friends.
Rather than do a one-day gauntlet like the school field trip, we decided to spend the night at a hotel in Montgomery and so we would have part of Friday (June 9) and most of the day on Saturday (June 10) to do “touristy” things. Brooklyn was really excited leading up to the trip, and I think Nathan was too. Caitlyn and Nathan got to our house around 8:30 on Friday morning, and we all rode together in our car. Brooklyn and Nathan ate Sour Patch Kids in the back seat, and it was obvious from the get-go why they get along so well. They have the same sense of humor and just love being silly and having a good time. The drive felt like it went by quickly, and when we got to Montgomery, we headed straight to eat lunch at Chris’s Hot Dogs downtown. It was a little hole in the wall type place that has been there for over 100 years! We enjoyed our food and then drove over to a parking lot near the capitol building for our second stop…
Caitlyn did a bunch of research ahead of our trip about places to go, restaurants to eat at, etc. which was so helpful! Anyone can enter the state capitol building and go on a self-guided tour—you just have to go through a metal detector and sign in. After signing in, we went up to the second floor and happened to pass a tour guide who was finishing up with another group. He was so nice, and he walked around the building with us and told us so many neat facts about the building and what had happened there in years prior. We weren’t expecting to get our own tour, so I honestly think we ended up having a better experience at the Capitol than we would have on the field trip. I didn’t know that the first capitol building in Montgomery burned down only a couple of years after it was built. He also showed us the doors that led to Governor Ivey’s office…pretty cool! We also saw the room where representatives from several states met and voted to secede from the Union—I think the first shots of the civil war were fired the very next day. There is a lot of history in that building—and on the steps outside. We saw the spot where Jefferson Davis was elected president of the confederacy. We also saw the area of the steps outside where MLK Jr. stood to deliver a speech after marching from Selma. Brooklyn wasn’t super pumped about the history stuff on the first day, but I think she still learned some stuff and was glad to see it ;)
Thankful for my girl and the time together!!
Next, we went to the Alabama Department of Archives and History (also free) and walked through their Alabama Voices exhibit, which detailed the Alabama’s history from the 1700s to present day. It contained a lot of really neat artifacts and was very educational. I thought it was really well done. After we walked through that exhibit, we went to a hands-on area for kids. Brooklyn’s favorite part of the museum was getting to type on a real typewriter and taking home the paper she typed on. Pretty cool!
After we got back to our car, we also drove past the church where MLK Jr. preached, the house he lived at, the first White House of the Confederacy, and the Rosa Parks bus stop. We didn’t get out at any of those places, but at least got to see them from the car.
We drove to the hotel after that and got checked in. The kids ate some chocolate chip cookies in the lobby before we went up to our rooms. The first thing on the agenda after that was swimming. That’s what Brooklyn and Nathan had been most looking forward to all day…haha. Caitlyn and I didn’t swim, but the kids had the outdoor pool to themselves and enjoyed splashing each other and playing with a water gun/basketball goal.
We ate dinner at Cracker Barrel (Brooklyn is always up for pancakes, no matter what time of day), and then we watched a movie called Yes Day before calling it a night. It was a great first day! When we checked in with Travis and the girls back home, we were glad to hear they’d had a fun day too.
After breakfast at the hotel the next morning, we checked out and headed to the Montgomery Zoo. We got there a little after 9:30 AM. When we were making our original plans, as soon as Brooklyn heard there was a zoo in Montgomery, she automatically wanted to go there more than anything else. That girl loves her animals! I didn’t have high expectations for this zoo because the Cincinnati Zoo and St. Louis Zoo set the bar pretty high, but we were pleasantly surprised to see several animals we’d never seen before. My impression of the Montgomery Zoo is that it is definitely in need of some updating and maintenance, but it was still a really fun day! Brooklyn said at one point that it was the best zoo she’s ever been to, so she was having a blast no matter what. I love that about kids…they can teach us adults so much about attitude and perspective!!
One funny thing about the Montgomery Zoo was the peacocks just roaming free around the zoo. They were everywhere—including on a picnic table, roaming the pathways, on the roof of a pavilion, etc. Many of them weren’t very scared of humans, so we got to watch pretty closely as a male peacock strutted with his feathers spread in front of a female peacock who was doing her best to ignore him. We got a kick out of watching them for several minutes. She finally wandered off, and he finally lowered his feathers in rejection ;) It was pretty entertaining!
We went to see the lions first, and there were two male African lions snoozing in their habitat. We got to see them fairly close though!
One of our favorite parts of the day was seeing the jaguars. There was a spotted jaguar and a black jaguar in the same habitat, and they were both up and pacing in front of the glass. We even got to see them nudge each other playfully. Brooklyn didn’t think we’d ever seen a black jaguar before, so that was really neat!
We rode the sky lift and the train. The kids also got to feed a giraffe after we ate lunch. It was Brooklyn’s first time to feed a giraffe, and I think it was Nathan’s too. They both really enjoyed that. The giraffe must have been hungry because she ate very quickly ;)
One unexpected neat part of the zoo was touring the Mann Wildlife Learning Museum. Apparently the museum originally opened in Opelika, AL until it was purchased by and moved to the Montgomery Zoo in 2003. The collection of animals on display was taken with bow and arrow by trophy hunter George Mann. The animals are all in a three-sided displays so you can walk up close and see the animal and their habitat. All the displays all contained material and plants, rocks, trees, small critters, dirt and sand from the actual site where the animals lived. The museum also had a fish room with all kinds of mounted fish are on display, even stingrays, sharks, and a killer whale! Apparently the collection has complete families of North American bear, deer, fox, skunk and cat, which is pretty cool. It was really neat to see these animals, especially to see how big they were (like the polar bear!!). I didn’t take pictures of all the animals, but we spent longer than we thought we would just walking through and looking at everything.
After we left the museum area, we also saw a rhino taking a bath (haha), visited the petting zoo area, stopped by the playground, saw a white tiger (Brooklyn loved that!), fed parakeets, and of course we stopped by the gift shop on the way out. Brooklyn decided she wanted to spend her money on a black jaguar stuffed animal, but I convinced her that we should order it off Amazon to save some money ;)
We left the zoo around 3:30 pm and headed home! There was heavy traffic for part of the drive (especially between Montgomery and Birmingham), but it wasn’t too bad. We spent part of the drive playing a Scattergories game that the Hoods play in the car sometimes. There were some funny moments, especially when Nathan shouted “outdoor snail” for his animal that started with the letter “O”. When we played the game with a food theme after finishing animals, Brooklyn said “fried stew” for the letter “F” and we all busted out laughing…until we googled it and discovered it is a very common Nigerian food. The joke was on us! We stopped at Subway in Gardendale for supper and finally made it home around 8 pm. Brooklyn said it was the best trip ever and she thought she probably had way more fun than she would have on the field trip, which made me happy. We were so thankful that Caitlyn and Nathan agreed to come with us…we had a fantastic time!
Savannah and Abigail had a good time with Travis at home while Brooklyn and I were gone. He took the girls fishing at the creek near our house on Saturday, and Abigail caught a fish (with help from Daddy…he caught it, and she reeled it in). Savannah also caught a crawdad (She was calling it a “crawl dad” later…haha), which they tried to use as bait. I was surprised when he told me they were out there for several hours even though it was a hot day!
I taught the K-1 class at church in June and July, and they were also learning about life in Bible times. They loved getting to dress up for class on June 11th.
Savannah’s class (2nd and 3rd grade) was pumped to try different bible times foods that day. Some foods were familiar, and others were not (like lentil stew)! Savannah tried at least a bite of everything in the spread!
The girls can’t get enough of soccer during the fall and spring, so they play a lot in the backyard year round, at least when the weather is nice.
We went to VBS at Capshaw a few nights during the week of June 12th. The girls enjoyed it, and we got to see several families we love including the Hesters, which was so special. Abigail was happy to see Audrey McKee there too, even though we see her on a regular basis :) The hallway/classroom decorations for the kids’ classes were amazing! Abigail prayed for “BBS” all week, which was so cute. The kids learned about Miriam, Daniel, Samuel, and Naaman and rotated to each of the 4 classrooms (we missed Wednesday night, but were there the other 3 nights). Brooklyn also met a girl named Della who would be at camp with her in a couple of weeks, so we were glad she would have a friend there when she arrived on Day 1!
We went to the splash pad at the Richard Showers Center on June 13th with some friends from church. We packed a picnic lunch, and the girls had fun playing. It was surprisingly not very warm that day, so I think it would have been even better if it had been hot out. The kids got cold fairly quickly!
We stopped by Publix on the way home, and Savannah was convinced she could still fit in the race car shopping cart. I think her legs have gotten a little too long though ;)
It was a busy week that wore Abigail out!
It was super special to see Mikayla so many times in one week, including at the hair salon. She was almost finished with cosmetology school at this point, and I made an appointment for her to cut the girls’ hair on June 15th. Savannah got several inches cut off her hair, and the other girls just wanted small trims. Mikayla did a fantastic job!!
On June 16th, we were supposed to have our small group dinner at our house (rescheduled from May when we had a stomach bug and had to cancel), but of course Abigail woke up that morning not feeling well and was running a high fever by lunchtime. We ended up moving our dinner to the clubhouse since we hated to cancel a second time, especially on such short notice. Travis grilled the burgers and hotdogs and we made homemade ice cream and just transported everything to the clubhouse. It was a lot of work, but we were glad we could still pull it off at least. Abigail felt much better on Saturday and was fever free, so I initially thought it was just a short lived fever virus. Travis and I started feeling a little under the weather by Sunday night, but not too bad. Neither of us ran a fever, so we didn’t think too much of it.
Father’s Day was on June 18th this year, and the girls are definitely blessed with one of the best. We celebrated Travis and Tyler at lunch after church and enjoyed being together.
Monday, June 19th was the first day of basketball camp at Madison Academy. Brooklyn and Savannah both had a great time! Savannah was really excited to do camp with her good friend and soccer teammate, Gabriella. Abigail was excited to do some fun stuff with Mommy during the week while the big girls were at camp each morning…
After lunch that day, we went over to the Reynolds’ house for the girls to go swimming together. Adam and Jennilyn also have 3 girls that almost the same age as our girls, and they had a fun time playing together. They are a really sweet family!
We love catching a glimpse of a rainbow after a storm :)
Unfortunately, Savannah woke up Tuesday morning (June 20th) with a high fever. Brooklyn continued to go to camp, but Savannah ended up missing every day after the first day. By Tuesday and Wednesday, Travis and I were having a lot of congestion. I finally took a covid test Wednesday night, and it was positive. I guess we were just getting it out of the way before we were supposed to travel the first week of July ;) I am now assuming that Abigail had covid when she had the high fever at the end of the previous week. It’s interesting that the girls both had high fevers but no congestion at all. Travis and I had no fevers but congestion and achiness/fatigue. Weird how it manifests differently in different people.
Brooklyn really enjoyed each day of basketball camp and made two friends, Addie and Kaylee, on the first day. She was selected as one of the “campers of the day” on the last day and got to pick out a prize. She says she wants to do basketball camp again next summer and was thinking she might want to try playing on a team this winter! Spoiler alert: she did sign up ;) I think she enjoyed basketball camp much more than tennis camp last summer. I’m sure it helped that they were in the A/C and could visit the concession stand during breaks to purchase candy…haha! Travis and I were feeling better over the next few days and by Sunday, I felt pretty much 100% again. Glad to get Covid out of the way before our trip to Oregon!!
Other highlights from the week besides basketball camp: Abigail played with Gabby and enjoyed having Savannah home while Brooklyn was off at camp. Brooklyn lost a tooth! The girls had been asking to play in the sprinklers, so they had fun with that one afternoon. And they had a sister sleepover in Brooklyn’s room on Friday night (June 23rd). Strangely enough, Brooklyn never got sick or showed any symptoms at least. She was the only one of us who had had Covid previously (that we know of). Maybe she had some built-in immunity!
It was great to be out and about again on Sunday, June 25th once everyone was feeling better. We had a Bible times food tasting in the K-1 class that morning, and the kids did a good job new and familiar foods. We were missing Luke and Donovan, so it was a small group that day.
We were a few weeks late, but we finally celebrated Travis’s birthday at Cici’s house that day for lunch. His family has a joke that if it rains on your birthday, you must have been bad the previous year. Well, this wasn’t Travis’s actual birthday, but it did HAIL that afternoon after his birthday celebration, so maybe that means he was really bad last year ;)
Swim Lessons Day 1 (June 26) – This summer we did abbreviated lessons with Ashleigh…only 4 days total. I felt like Abigail was definitely ready to move on to the beginner refresher classes, which are only 4 days. The way Ashleigh does her schedule, it would have meant almost 3 full weeks of swim lessons if I had signed the big girls up for beginner strokes (the full 2 weeks of lessons), and we just couldn’t fit that into our summer this year. Too much else going on. So Brooklyn & Savannah did a mini strokes class that was also only 4 days, which worked out well. We were there from 8 AM to 9:40 every morning before it got too hot outside. Day 1 went well. Brooklyn and Savannah only had one other girl (Bethany) in their class on the first day, and she was new to beginner strokes and only 6. So Brooklyn and Savannah just worked on proper form with their arms when doing freestyle and enjoyed jumping off the diving board. They also practiced treading, and I was amazed and how calmly and easily Brooklyn can tread water this year!!
Abigail’s class was next, and she had 3 other kids in her class. She did so well, was very brave, and did everything Ashleigh asked her to do. They reviewed a lot of the stuff from the regular beginner classes (fall in practice, grabbing hold of the side of the pool if you fall in the deep end, floating, etc.) It was a great first day!
As if that wasn’t enough pool time for one day, we met Sarah and her girls at our neighborhood pool that afternoon for more fun :)
Swim Lessons Day 2 (June 27) – There were 2 boys in class with Brooklyn and Savannah today that had been at a baseball tournament yesterday. They seemed several years younger and also hadn’t ever done a strokes class before. Because they’d missed the first day, it was pretty obvious from the start that it wasn’t going to work to have them in the same class with the girls and Bethany because they were on such different levels. So Ashleigh asked them to leave mid-class and join a beginner refresher class later that morning. Brooklyn and Savannah worked on side breathing today during the freestyle stroke. I am amazed at how much they have improved since last summer, especially Savannah. I guess just being a year older and more coordinated plays a big role in that. She is doing much better with her side breathing. They also did stingrays, treading, and plenty of jumps off the diving board.
Abigail had a great class too! She started using her arms today when swimming all on her own! She said she watched Brooklyn and Savannah and one boy in her class and decided to try it. She also ran to jump off the diving board for the first time that I can remember. Normally she just stands at the end and jumps. She did such a great job!!
Swim Lessons Day 3 (June 28) – Brooklyn and Savannah practiced diving in their class today. This is the first year that Savannah has been able to dive in head first. She did her best dive ever today! She was really proud and wanted to make sure I’d gotten a video. It has been neat only having 3 kids in their class because they get lots of turns to practice.
Abigail is continuing to do well too. I’ve been proud of her this week for being so excited to swim every day and how she has listened and followed directions.
That afternoon, the girls and I met Josanne and her boys at Chick-fil-A to go over some PTA stuff. Those ice cream cones are always a special treat.
Swim Lessons Day 4 (June 29) – Savannah worked on her backstroke today, and Brooklyn practiced breaststroke. They both prefer one over the other because it comes more naturally to them, so Ashleigh let them practice different ones. They also practiced more diving, freestyle, and treading. I think this is the first year I can remember that Savannah wasn’t ready for lessons to be over. Maybe just because we only did 4 days vs. 10 days like usual? She wished she could keep going though! Brooklyn always enjoys lessons too.
Abigail had another good day today and did a good job of using her arms while kicking. She tried to do a cannonball off the diving board but couldn’t hold her legs the whole time. It was cute to see her try!
After we got home from swim lessons, we met up with Emily and her kids to deliver the latest edition of the Millstone News. It was already blazing hot outside, and it wasn’t even lunch time yet.
I loved this acrostic poster that Savannah made with her name. It says she is: Smart, Amazing, Victorious, Athletic, Nice, Non-naughty, Awesome, and Honest :)
On June 30th, I took the girls to Once Upon a Child to see if we could find some clothes for Brooklyn to wear to camp. It was a success because we found several shirts and pairs of shorts that would work. Savannah and Abigail also got out a dentist Playdoh kit and had fun with that!
June 2023 Notes and Quotes
- 6/12/23 – Abigail: “I’m going to eat my bean greens first since they are my favorite.” :) She knows they are called green beans, but it came out wrong and made us smile.
- 6/28/23 – Abigail randomly asked me in the car today if the tooth fairy was really just Mommy and Daddy putting money under the pillow. I explained to her who the tooth fairy really is and asked her why she was asking. She said some kids had been talking about it in bible class. I wasn’t sure if Savannah had overheard our conversation since she was in the car (reading), but figured I needed to explain the tooth fairy to her anyway that she wouldn’t be only one in the dark. I went to her room later after we got home and talked to her about the tooth fairy. She was initially upset and cried some. It didn’t take her more than a few minutes to start asking about Santa and the Easter Bunny too. I explained to her that she could play along and help eat Santa’s cookies that we put out each year. That helped her feel a little better.
- 6/30/23 – Abigail: “I had a nightmare about a potty, and people were getting flushed down the potty…but there was a hole for them to swoosh out of it!” :)
Thanks for reading! Next up is our trip review of the Oregon Coast…I can’t wait to tell you all about it!
