July in review

Summer is flying by. We've been busy but not much of our doing has been documented. Here's some highlights, I'll be brief...

JULY 4th - Our Nation's birthday

It was dreary and wet and downright cold. Jerry and I did the Alliant 8K in the morning on a fast course with near perfect running conditions. I was happy with my time. Gaby and Lydia did the kid's fun run and got medals for participating. They both beg me to take the running with me when I go. I took them once last week. If there is a next time, we'll go to the track.

Following the race/parade we headed to Coralville for naps and dinner with Monka and Nana. It stopped raining, but never warmed up. I can't remember any 4th of July spent in jeans and sweatshirts bundled in fleece blankets during the day. Then we headed to the Iowa City Jazz Festival.

This is Trombone Shorty and his band Orleans Avenue (I think). They were crack-a-lackin.' I've never listened to much jazz, but one of our lanemates is the director of the local jazz radio station and he was the MC for this event. We passed the time listening to great music, eating funnel cakes & ice cream and then watched fireworks.

 

 

JULY 11th - Another National Holiday (aka Jerry's birthday)

The boy finally got a new bike, so he put in a long ride and met us at this state park in the afternoon. Once Lydia got over her fear of water snakes (thank you Taylor), she and Gaby had a blast in the water. We picnicked on fried chicken and watermelon. Taylor and Jerry napped in the sun trying to recover from youth conference and biking.

JULY 25th - Gaby's pre-birthday Birthday celebration

Today we went to Lost Island in Waterloo, IA. We've only been once before with Matt, Deb, Mason and Chase in '06. The kids are old enough to do most everything. Owen is still too short for a lot of the big slides, but he wanted to go on everything. He could hear everyone screaming when they come down the slides, so when we would take him, he'd would say "Ahhhhh!" but it didn't quite come out as a scream, he sounded more like a goat.

 

 

Taylor thought this dummy was a real person. It was pretty funny.

 

 

 

Video clip is Jerry, Gaby, Taylor and Lydia on the funnel slide. Lydia was scared out of her mind.

Monka and Lydia took a spill on this slide. Might have had something to do with weight proportions.

 

My fearless kids even went on the super fast speed slide, the one that is a vertical drop. Never liked them myself, but Gaby and Lydi couldn't get enough.

 

And just because all summer-themed blog posts should have bugs...

I got a Topsy Turvy tomato planter for my birthday. Every year we've lived here I've tried to do tomatoes in containers and have yet to produce one edible piece of fruit. This year the plants were huge and growing beautifully until a couple weeks ago. I think I figured out that there is some kind of fungus in the soil that can't be remedied, so we'll likely destroy the plants. So much for that bumper crop. Anyway, we were inspecting the plant tonight and found these lovelies. Ewwww! Tomato Hornworms. They are huge. They aren't killing my plants, just eating them.