July

July has been a full month! Rachel headed back to high school today, beginning her sophomore year. In some ways, that means summer is over. At least the rest of us have one more week before we start our schooling.

The month began with a trip to the Indianapolis Museum of Art with some of the high schoolers from church for a picnic and tour.

Mom came along and, as always, got the young kids going on fairy houses:

The gardens always help me to feel a million miles away:

This was a new flower to me:

Everywhere you look there is beauty:

Then came the Fourth of July and the town's parade:

And a picnic in our backyard:

 The kids had a fabulous time and had some sort of game involving shields going on:

Andrew and Michael made it up to the roof to make some repairs. This was a fun adventure for Andrew:

Laura is my little tag-along. She loves to be out in the garden with me. Here's the garden at the beginning of the month:

James had the privilege of taking a week-long art camp. Every morning I got to drive him through adorable Zionsville, oohing and aahing at these houses all the way. James made pottery and used all kinds of mediums to make art creations throughout the week. Definitely a highlight of the summer for him.

We had lots and lots and lots of rain! We tried to visit our secret beach and instead found this: (and the kids couldn't understand why I wouldn't let them go in!!)

College Park VBS is a family tradition. Like last year, I spent most of that time shopping at Goodwill Outlet. It's the best chance of the year for me to do that. More on my finds in another post.....

Andrew and I spent hours and hours on genealogy, getting ready for 4h. This is our fourth year to do this and, of course, each year gets more and more involved. This year we made the surprising discovery that Michael and I are seventh cousins once removed!!! Who could have guessed! Our mother's both descend from the same set of Cady grandparents in Connecticut in the late 1600's! (This is a picture of Gen. William T. Clark):

VBS:

Cousin John went to VBS too and at the end of the week we went up the street to mom's for lunch!

We also ended VBS week with 4h project turn in:

This was David's first year in 4h proper:

James entered his adorable muskrat painting:

And that same day Michael and I celebrated our 16th anniversary:

The next morning we were back to 4h to turn in James' medieval knight:

The following week we celebrated mom and Davids' birthdays with a picnic at Eagle Creek:

Laura had her yearly MRI and the report looks good! She can repeat it again next year.

James cleaned up the boys' room. Too bad I don't have a before picture. It was epic. This room is where all their creating takes place.

One evening we headed out to the 4h fair to have a look at all the kids' projects and to be amazed by Galaxy Girl who climbed up 127 feet without any safety devices.

Oh yes, we were all amazed and quite scared.

Andrew was excited to win Reserve Champion on his genealogy

Milkshakes at the fair:

And the horse pull -- we never cease to be amazed at these incredibly powerful horses:

And we made it back to our secret beach. Quite a transformation from two weeks previous.

Our last week was spent at Covfamikoi, our church presbytery's family conference, held in Kentucky. It's a great week of fellowship (without having to cook!), good teaching, classes for the kids, and lots of sports activities.

We always love the talent night and the funny little extras that get added in, like the "churches challenge":

The best part of all is forging friendships for the children which will hopefully continue on into adulthood. This volleyball court is one of the favorite activities for the kids!

Here is Laura with her class:

And this is how everyone feels at the end of camp week:

And now that July is nearly over, you can see the amazing progress the garden has made! I think I better get out and pick beans!

Enjoy your weekend!

Church Family Camp

We just got back from church family camp in Campbellsville, Kentucky!!! People from all over our geographical area in our denomination (Reformed Presbyterian) gathered for five days of classes, worship, sports, eating, and visiting together. It certainly was a highlight of our summer!!!

The camp rented Campbellsville University and the building below is where all the adult sessions and worship services was held.

We had perfect weather!!!! (FYI, 2 summers ago we had the hottest on record, this past winter was our worst on record, and this summer is now the coolest on record!!!)

Many of the families with young children stayed in dorm-type condos like this -- each with a kitchenette and sitting room as well as bedrooms and bathrooms. The nicest part was that in the evenings the parents could congregate with all the baby monitors in the courtyard and the kids could all be asleep in their beds!!

Not very exotic accommodations, but they were quite decent college rooms. :)



I found it a very low-stress week -- there was no laundry, cleaning, food planning, cooking, or hounding of the children to do their chores. Wow! The kids were delighted with all the cafeteria food -- including ice-cream on demand.

Outside of the dorm rooms was a huge beach volleyball court with mounds of yellow sand (dyed yellow sand -- ugh!). This entertained all the children for hours and hours and gave the adults even more time to relax.

The afternoons were free unless you wanted to participate in the various sports activities. It was a good chance for me to rest or read!

All around campus were these beautiful bushes! I finally got a friend to identify them as "Crepe Myrtle". I would love to grow one -- but I've never seen them in Indiana and wonder if our climate is not so great for them.

Did I say cafeteria food?

A friend celebrated his birthday and there were lots of kids to help!

Talent night is always a favorite night for us!!! We had music from India, "synchronized swimming", hilarious skits, soak the pastor, and other lovely music performances.

Yes, the sandpit was pretty tempting!!!

The kids LOVE family camp. They love their friends, they love the classes, they love the freedom to run around and do things. These are the kinds of times that will inform their lives in the future and perhaps these will be the very same people that they continue on being friends with as adults.

I spotted these pygmy zinnias on the campus -- they were very short but with such beautiful, variegated flowers! Another flower I need to find!

Here is Laura's preschool class at the closing program. She LOVED her teachers and her class. :)

Another view of campus and our walk back to the condos.

Michael and Rachel left early to get back for the first day of school so the rest of us traveled home on our own. We did make a stop at Lincoln's Birthplace since I couldn't resist the sign that said we were only 1 mile from it!!!! We walked into the memorial pictured below to see the log cabin originally thought to be his. It has since been proved to be not "the" cabin but it gave us an idea and it is sitting on the very farm where Lincoln was born. Another piece of history....

And now we are settling back in at home and Rachel has made a good start to high school. Next week is the State Fair and then the rest of us will start back to school too.