Oh Mother Nature!

It is the middle of July and we have the windows WIDE open with wonderful temperatures outside.  This is unheard of in Iowa during the summer.  I will take it!

My flowers are loving it too.  I thought I would show you how well they have done this year.

As you can see, Joe has been working on laying down new weed blocker material and are getting a load of rock in a few weeks.  Taylor likes to eat the mulch and it blows all over the place when it storms.  He also got some nice boulders to put around the edge of each flower bed.

And of course thought I would show our fairy gardens for this summer.  This is the largest one, from an ariel view.

As you can see, we have a LOT of fairies in our garden.  I never know where I am going to find them.  The kids like to play with them and move them around.  :)

This is the smaller fairy harder we created for the first time this year.  She got several of the pieces for Christmas this past year.  This is the first year we added a succulent to the garden.  I am anxious to see what it is going to do when it blooms.  :)

We had a VERY fun, but busy weekend.  My friend Kristi, Chris and her son Owen came to visit.  We had a great time at the Farmer's Market and then after we rested a bit decided to go to a Flea Market that advertised Vintage and repurposed items too.  Well, it was definitely more flea than repurposed, but Hope had a great time bargaining for some treasures.

We also went to West End Salvage.  I found this...

...but didn't purchase.  I think it is cool, but have no clue what I would do with it.  LOL!

After our visitors headed home we went to a company picnic for my work.  Had a great time and Hope had fun playing with some of the other kids.

Later she was perfecting her skills building with dominos!

She was pretty pumped when she used all of them without it falling over. 

I made cupcakes tonight to take to work.  I hear there is a special birthday we might be celebrating tomorrow.  Happy birthday to Rich Barrent!

In honor of his birthday...here are some fun birthday cards.

Darla

Bubbles!

We had a great 4th of July!  Hope and I met my sister and twins for the parade.  All three girls were lucky enough to get a popsicle from one of the floats.

Then we had the neighbors over to grill, drinks, sparklers and fireworks from their back deck.

And we are never too old for sparklers!

Hope found the giant bubble wand this morning, so we made up a batch of bubble solution.  Here is the recipe (from the bubble wand box):

12 cups of water

1 cup liquid dish soap

1 cup cornstarch

2 tbsp. baking powder

Stir well trying not to make suds.  For best results, allow solution to sit for an hour or more.

I think it was a success, so I am sure we will do this again soon.  In case you are wondering, I found the bubble wand on clearance at Michael's last week.

Hope had a great time in KC last week.  Here are a few of the shots mom got on her camera.

They picked the right day to go to Ocean's of Fun, because the rest of the week it was too cold.

Hope called me and was all excited because she was just tall enough to ride the Mamba roller coaster.

THIS is the Mamba!  She rode with Lauren and squeezed her had so hard and had a look of terror the whole ride, but when they got off she was ready to ride again.  LOL!

They rode the Fury of the Nile multiple times too.  The park wasn't busy at all, so they didn't even have to get out of the boat to go again if there wasn't a line.  AWESOME!

Of course, they made a trip to the American Girl doll store.  Let's just say they made a fortune off our family that day.  :)

They ate lunch at T-REX...

...and dug for fossils too.

This was the second day at World's of Fun!  Oh my crazy sisters!  LOL!  I think this is my favorite picture of the week.

Kendal and Hope were like two peas in a pod the second day.

All the girls also made lots of beaded necklaces, bracelets and anklets.

The night they got down there was eventful too.  A storm rolled through with some wind and the tree in their front yard was blown over.  Hope was convinced it was an instant tornado.  Luckily there was no other damage.

Wow, if you made it this far just a few more shares...

Joe and Hope were busy earlier making a domino stack...

...and then they played Skipbo.  Hope didn't want me to play, so I sat down to work on this blog post. She turned on a movie she recorded earlier today and was watching it while trying to play cards.  So Joe kept turning off her show by using his DirectTV ap on his phone.  She would turn it back on and he would turn it off.  It took her FOREVER to figure it out, but she finally caught him and thought it was pretty funny.

Joe also put his father's day gift to use again today and made some tasty beef jerky.  YUM!

Alright, I am out of material, so will just share some cards (in honor of some exciting news we heard about this morning).  Congrats!  I am not sure if it is public yet, so I won't say anymore than that!  

Several of these cards are leftover supplies I had from when Hope was a baby.

This was a card idea I had seen on Pinterest and had an older pack of Jolee's stickers that was perfect for it.

I hope everyone had a safe 4th of July!  

Darla