June 2015

Whew, it's the middle of July and I think we have just recovered from our busy (yet fun) June!!  

The month started with Carter's swim lessons!  Two year ago Dawson took lessons through Parks and Rec at John Sevier Pool and they were great.  It's one on one and they swim with an instructor for 25 minutes then parents for 25 minutes to practice.  Carter is such a little water lover anyway that I knew he would really enjoy lessons.  We signed up for the first session of summer, and Carter had 8 lessons over the course of 2 weeks.  He made HUGE improvements, and he's a pretty good little swimmer now!  Not to mention it was fun!

Ready for swim lessons day 1!

Carter being silly with his swim teacher Miss Carla!

June meant more time at the baseball field.  Carter was enjoying some Grandad time while watching Dawson's game!

RUN!

(This game was nice because it was an even game and not nearly as hot as some of his games!)

We put together an ant farm!  

The kids loved watching the ants walk around and build tunnels.

We continued going to all the fun storytimes at Dawson's new school in June.  Every Tuesday morning we were there!

This day's theme was a pirate theme.

Walk the plank!

More swim lessons

Mom came with us to Carter's swim lessons 6 of the 8 days which meant Dawson and Nora Kate got to play in the kid pool with Lolly which Carter and I had lessons in the big pool.  This was perfect because everyone had something entertaining to do every morning!

Random picture, but he keeps me smiling!

Last baseball game of the season.

John had fun coaching, and Dawson had fun playing!

Backyard kid pool.

One Saturday evening John and Pop took Carter and Dawson fishing on the Dove's dock.  This was Carter's first fishing trip, and he LOVED it!

Dawson loved it too!

Dawson waiting on Dr. Booher to come in for his kindergarten check up.

Dawson had to get 3 shots and a finger stick...and he didn't even cry!

I asked him what would be a good treat to eat as a reward.  His request was a red Weigles Icee!

These storytimes this summer at Dawson's school have been fantastic.  One Tuesday the theme was farm which Dawson was really in to, of course.  There was even a pig there that did tricks for carrots.  The kids LOVED this!

...and the pig had a hairbow! Hah!

We have lived outside this summer!

Dollywood visit with Lolly.

It's hot at Dollywood...gotta stay cool!

Welcome to the Busy Bees!

Dawson is now tall enough to ride the elephants ALONE?!

The kids good friend, Harper, turned 3 this month so we helped celebrate at her cute party!

Friends at the party!

Another storytime at Dawson's school.

John and I celebrated our anniversary this month.

The actual day of our anniversary I had VBS in the evening and John and a United Way Board meeting so we agreed to wait and celebrate the next Saturday, but John still had these flowers delivered to the house on the day of our anniversary! So pretty!

And John's mom made us this beautiful cake!

One of Dawson's requests when asked what he wanted to do and what he wanted to learn this summer was to learn to wash dishes.  Seriously! Of course, I was happy to teach him! AND now he loves helping wash!

VBS  This day Carter's class talked about lepers.  He was so proud to get to wear "leper spots" on his legs to remind him to tell me the story.

Here we are ready for VBS night one!

VBS

VBS

One Friday morning we met up with our friends the Whites.  They drove over from Asheville that morning and met us at the zoo.  Here are Marshall and Nora Kate.

All 6 kids!

It was so hot on our zoo day we took full advantage of the zoo's wonderful splash pad.  This was Nora Kate's first splash pad experience!

loved it!

Dawson had fun at the splash pad too!

I don't think I've ever seen a kid enjoy water or the splash pad as much as Carter!

Carter got really close to the camera and asked me to take his picture one afternoon.  Just look at that face!

June meant celebrating Father's Day!

Here's our Father's Day dessert.

We took poppers over to Pop's to celebrate Father's Day

Nora Kate finally got the boys off the tractor long enough for a turn!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day!

Reading books at storytime at Dawson's school.

Fun swimming at Colts pool always means these kids area hungry for lunch!

While eating a grape at Colt's pool, Dawson lost his THIRD tooth!

A couple days later his lost his 4th!

Later that week we got to swim with Bailey at her grandparents pool.

The kids had a blast!

1-2-3 JUMP!

Then later that week we got to swim at our friends' the Shanks pool, but I didn't get any pictures unfortunately.

Nora Kate finally has enough hair for piggie tails!

And she's very proud of them!

Brothers had to give kisses.

Carter getting a haircut in the fire truck chair!

We bought (very tame) fireworks.  Their favorite were the smoke bombs.  Dawson's mid-jump...he was so excited.  Carter, I think, loved the fireworks more than anyone.

These two sweet friends matched at church one Sunday!

I had the pleasure of helping throw a baby shower for Emily and Baby Zoe this month!

The last week of June was the week Dawson had been waiting for all summer! We signed him up for Upward Basketball Camp at church, and he talked about it all summer.  He was so excited.  It ended up being perfect because not only did he absolutely love camp, but it rained every day the week he had camp so it was nice for him to have something inside to do that week.

One evening we took Dawson over to his school and checked out the kindergarten playground.  Nora Kate and Carter had fun too! 

Dawson thought it was fun!

The playground has a great view of the mountains too!

Can't believe he will be in kindergarten and playing on this playground very soon!  He said his favorite thing there was the "zip line" and he's going to do it "every day!"