June 2016

All last school year I counted down the weeks and days until I could have Dawson home with us again every day and not at school.  SO this summer I really tried to spend every possible minute with all the kids together!  I'm so glad I did as we had a really great summer all being together...lots of fun, sun, and laughter.  But this also meant that I didn't spend a lot of time on updating our blog as well as I usually do.  I did take the time to sit down and type out what we did each month, but I didn't do the time consuming part of pairing the pictures with each post...until now.  So now that school is back in session, I'm attempting to catch up on the summer blogging during naptimes...so here's June!  (It was written back at the end of June, and I've added pictures now).

June was the perfect summer month! Lots of outside play time for our family and a little travel!

This month wrapped up baseball.  Dawson enjoyed playing this year.  He loved batting, running the bases, and his favorite position of pitcher.  While we all enjoyed watching him, it is so nice that it wrapped up in June because it was getting really hot for every, but especially Clayton!  Dawson was the happiest playing when he had an audience of more than just John, me, and his siblings.  He loved having grandparents watch.  His wonderful kindergarten teacher even came to watch his last game of the season on a hot, hot Saturday morning!

Some friends from church that live down the road invited us over to swim in June.  Dawson was being silly and walked there like this which made us all laugh...

Swimming at their house was the first time Clayton had been swimming, and he loved it water.  Here he is in the pool for the first time!

June 15th Mamaw was finally doing well enough and we were all healthy enough to go visit her.  I mentioned this in Clayton's 3 month update, but this was Clayton's first time to meet Mamaw.  On June 15th, Lolly, the kids, and I all went down to visit with Mamaw at her house.  She had had such a rough 9 previous months that it was great to get to visit with her at her house (not at the transitional care facility or the hospital) and her to be healthy enough to visit and talk with us.  (Since I'm behind in posting this, I will add that since Mamaw was doing so well compared to the previous months, I didn't realize at the time how quickly thing would change between June 15-the day we visited-and July 15 when Mamaw passed away.) I am thankful that I got a picture of each of the children with her that day.

John had the camera outside one evening and captured these sweet pictures...

Father's Day weekend, John and I took the kids to Atlanta to celebrate our wedding anniversary, so we celebrated Father's Day early with Pop.  Here we are celebrating.

And here's Clayton and Grandad when we celebrated with Nana and Grandad.

On June 16th, John and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary.  We celebrated by taking everyone to Atlanta for the weekend.  We had a GREAT time, and it was the perfect way to celebrate 9 years! 

John's mom baked his this wedding topper size anniversary cake.  It was yummy and a special treat!

Our first stop in Atlanta was Top Golf.  John had been a few times, but wanted to take the big boys who have both really gotten into golf even more this summer!  This is an amazing driving range with a restaurant.  It's three stories tall, but for since we had kids with us we were on the bottom level.  The kids-but especially the boys thought this place was AWESOME!  They cannot wait to go back.

I even hit a few.

Dawson and Carter LOVED it!

Nora Kate got lessons from Daddy.

Our next stop was the Georgia Aquarium.  We have visited the Chattanooga Tennessee Aquarium, Ripleys Aquarium in the Smokies, and Ripleys Aquarium in Myrtle Beach, but this was by far the best aquarium we have ever seen.  They had EVERYTHING!  Our first stop inside was the see the sea lion show.  Not only had none of us ever seen a sea lion, we had most definitely never seen several sea lions doing tricks.  We couldn't take any pictures during the show, but it was very memorable anyway.  The kids all agreed that the biggest sea lion named Nav was their favorite. 

Other favorites at the aquarium included touching HUGE starfish, sea urchins, and sea anemone, the beluga whales, and penguins. 

Just for perspective I didn't crop the people out of the picture...look how huge it is compared to the people!

Nora Kate touching the star fish.

We all decided the sea urchin felt like tooth picks.

The Beluga Whales were very active!

More beluga whales.

(also Clayton's first aquarium)

Outside the aquarium (obviously after visiting the gift shop...the kids have their goodies).

After the aquarium we went to eat dinner at the Varsity!  The kids chose to sit in the room with all the school desks which they thought was really neat!  It was delicious!

Then we headed to our hotel. 

This was Clayton's first time in a hotel.

The next morning the kids went for a morning swim with John (Clayton and I just watched...The pool was on the second floor and even though it turned out to be a hot day, being wet and having wind blowing around him would have made Clayton too cold.  The kids loved swimming though because of the "little tunnel", as they called it, where they could swim from the indoor pool to the outdoor pool.

After the swim, we headed to do some shopping downtown.  The highlight for the kids of shopping was the three story Dicks Sportingoods store.  They're STILL talking about this haha! And the multi-level Target.  Carter thought it was nothing short of amazing to have to put your shopping cart on an elevator...seriously, we have a video of this-he thought it was so cool. 

this was in Dick's

For lunch we stopped at Jock and Jills (a restaurant where John and his friends always eat on their September golf trip).  Next up-Lego Land!  We spent a few hours here.  The kids thought it was great!!  They did both of the indoor rides a few times, took a lego class to learn how to build a Lego clock, played in the water lego area, did the lego ramp, and lots of other lego construction.  LOTS of Lego fun!!

We had a great trip to Atlanta, but by the time we got home LATE Saturday night we were all beyond exhausted!  We were just sure of it that all the kids would go to sleep driving home late at night on Saturday, but nope...no one, until about 20 minutes away then Dawson was the only one who fell asleep in the car!  So sweet, he never falls asleep in the car anymore, so I had to get a picture.

It was such a fun time that it was worth being exhausted though.  The kids have all been asking to go back to Atlanta so we are trying to pick a good time to plan to go back to hit a few of the things we didn't do this trip.

The kids have done a lot of water play in our kiddie pool this summer...

Caught Dawson being mischievous...look at how he's sneakily kinking the hose.  Next Carter will look at it, Dawson will unkink it, and it will spray in Carter's face.  BOYS!

The day after we got home from Atlanta, VBS started at our church.  This is the first year in 6 years I think that I have not volunteered with VBS, but with Clayton being so little I knew I just couldn't this year.  But VBS was awesome!  All three kids absolutely LOVED it this year!  They were exhausted by the end of the week, but it was so, so good.  We are STILL listening to the VBS cd every time we are in the van.

This was during the opening of VBS each night.  Dawson is on the front row watching in the blue shirt.

These three LOVED VBS this year.  I think it was their favorite year ever so far!

And just for fun...a couple pictures of Clayton...

Also in June, we made several trips to the Blount County Library and took advantage of the weekly story times at Dawson's school library too.  At school Dawson could check out books and take AR tests too. 

We met friends at Carl Cowan Splash Pad a couple of times to play. This is always a hit!

The girls side of the table at the splash pad for lunch.

Boys!

This is Carter and his friend Harper.  We told them to start drying off and they laid their towels out in the sun.  Love these sweet friends!

Nana and Grandad too the kids to see Finding Dory in June! The kids were thrilled to get to go see a movie in the theater as we do not go very frequently. 

And, this isn't very exciting...but all three kids had dentist appointments in June.  Luckily our dentist office can see all three at the exact same time.  Dawson had had a straggler of a front tooth barely hanging in there since NOVEMBER!  It was driving us all crazy.  Dawson does not like wiggling it though! So the dentist asked me my thoughts and after I gave him the go ahead, he gave it a little wiggle and pop!  It was out! Dawson has no front teeth!  But his permanent teeth are coming in so quickly, he won't be toothless long!  Carter did great as expected.  This was NK's first dentist visit, and the hygienist said she had never had a 2 year old do so well!  Honneslty, Nora Kate was thrilled to get to be in the dentist chair!  She has gone with her brothers to all of their cleanings, so she was excited it was finally her turn!

We made two Dollywood trips in June too!  Dollywood is always a lot of fun and these two trips did not disappoint!

And Clayton is the age this month that he got to wear the Tennessee pajamas that all of his older siblings have worn...check them out!

June did feel as if it flew by, and before we knew it summer break was halfway over!