I'm a year and a half behind so I don't have any fun stories or videos from Noah's cross country meets, but I know he improved...maybe because he grew so much? Look at those legs!
I do know this was his first meet which is always at Douglas. August 30th.
I think this one was away. In Spearfish? September 6th.
Custer on September 19th. I love going up there. The weather is always so nice and it's such a beautiful drive and location.
Cheerleader Evie always encourages Noah.
This one is tough because there are lots of big hills.
Two days after Evie got baptized, Abigail and her family invited us out to Hart Ranch with them. Thumbs up with right Evie.
We had so much fun. Naomi, Julia, and Ezra are behind Samuel.
Ezra really took to falling in sideways after Evie taught them all how to do it.
She choreographed them all falling one by one into the pool. 😮😅
A couple days later we discovered a random present at our house. It was a Lego Bible (a kids Bible animated with Lego people and bricks)! Prae gave it to the kids who she rightly knew would love it. So sweet of her.
Now that July was ending, August and the Sturgis Rally were right around the corner. We had to be out of our house by August 2nd for our first set of renters. There were many jobs to do.
I worked in the middle of all that cleaning and organizing and left the kids a list of things to accomplish.
I worked a fair amount last summer due to one of the ladies being gone for maternity leave. It was rough filling in sometimes...just because I'm not there often enough.
We sold our Bowflex, thank the Lord. I really never wanted it to begin with and after a year and a half of mostly gathering dust I was only too glad to have it gone.
I also washed the dust from all the hutch dishes (and untold number of many other tasks).
I made enough breakfast burritos to last us on our upcoming five-fish day vacation to Colorado. I did the same thing for breakfasts on our sabbatical trip. And apparently two years was not enough of a break from them because the kids whined incessantly about eating them. 😤
We put an extra bed where the Bowflex had been. Trouncie enjoyed it.
Upside down he looks like he's smiling. 😂 That's certainly a new look for him.
Just one day later we went back to Hart Ranch for the youth group closing event of the summer. The littles played mini-golf, which they love.
It was unseasonably cold (like it had been all summer), and though it looked like it was going to pour all evening, the littles still had a lot of fun in the pool.
The hot tub was more like it though. I think it did rain on our way home.
Noah is in there with the big boys at the bottom right. Two days later we went to Shari's to house-sit while our place was being rented and Shari and Jesse went to Washington D.C. for a vacation.
Two summers ago Terry got the 1977 Chrysler New Yorker fixed up well enough to drive safely around town. We don't actually drive it much so he entered it into two local classic car shows. He actually won the first one he entered!
Terry drove downtown to the Police Department's Cruiser Car Show early in the day, July 13th, and registered, luckily finding a spot to park the old girl. Our friend Eli, a policeman, encouraged Terry to enter, otherwise we probably wouldn't have known about it.
The kids and I joined him a couple hours later. It was quiet fun to walk around and take it all in. The kids especially enjoyed this beach buggy. We had just seen a show about them not long before.
Who would've thought that after an entire childhood of despising our old station wagon I could ever possibly think they were cool. But it happened.
Art Alley.
The police put on a presentation about their K9 dogs. I vividly remember sweating down my back it was so hot.
We decided to let the car sit until the end of the show and went home to have pizza movie night. After finishing our pizza Terry got a phone call informing him that he'd won an award! We booked it down there.
They gave away awards for the best-of cars of their specific decade. Terry was passed over for the 70's but won the orphan award for the car that's cool but doesn't quite fit anywhere. The reason he ran to the stage was because the announcer kept encouraging all the winners to "rush the stage," but they were all so old that they just took their sweet time getting up there while we all clapped for them. Terry finally rushed the stage, the young buck.
The trophy is on top of the car.
Our Mexico mission trip bus driver Jerry happened to be walking by so we visited for a bit.
The car had been running enough to drive but actually not running well. Terry described the problem as a chugging. Turned out two or three of the cylinders weren't hooked up! Once he fixed that, it ran so much smoother and was more reliable. So we went for a little joy ride that night.
Trouncie needed to check it out when we got home.
The very next weekend, July 20, Terry entered into a very small show at Hardware Hank. No awards were given but it was kind of fun him.
He put the car to work giving out gospel tracts. People seemed intrigued by the car so he had lots of conversations.
The kids all got free root beer floats and we enjoyed walking around the parking lot to look at the all the cars.
Earlier that day Evie was playing Never Enough from the Greatest Showman over and over again. I caught her intentionally (?) singing super off key. Then she and Terry proceeded to put on a show for me. We love this video.
A week or so later, on July 12, we made our annual trip to Sioux Park pool.
Little Dwidge
Samuel
Evie
Haircuts were had before we went to the pool. Although they look so cute with their long hair, they sweat like their daddy, and it gets all wet.
Who is that child?
In lieu of a summer job, we just tried to keep Noah busy with odd jobs (It wasn't enough. He needs a job next summer.). This day, July 13, he and Terry got up crazy early and helped Ed and Sue load up a trailer and truck of hay for their horses. Twice.
After moving away from home in 2007, I became weary of emailing recent photos of our kids to the grandparents. So I started a blog. And even though we moved back home in 2012, I still really enjoy keeping track of our lives!
