The Carters

Grace did a fantastic job singing Shake It Off by Taylor Swift for the school talent show. She is a born performer I tell ya!

June started off with school ending and Rob heading out for a week of Scout Camp (boo!). He had a great time, until he sliced his finger open trying to move a log out of the river. Sounded like they had lots of fun, but we were even more glad to have him back home!

We LOVE playing games with Nana!

Emmi loves to get into Nana and Grandpa's recycling.

Ben figured out his magformers will stick to the garage door, so I find fun little surprises like this often :)

I love that the kids love to sleep together. Too sweet!

The hymn book snatcher strikes again

Ruby did our hair so we could be twins :)

Cute kids ready for church

Grace was so sad when school was over. She LOVED Mrs. Edwards and, as you can tell, missed her SO MUCH that she created this masterpiece dedicated to her in our back yard.

Thanks to my amazing niece Erin, I got the idea for this sumer chore challenge. Basically, I gave them a list of 15 things that I wanted them to do or learn over the summer, broken into small increments (i.e. Grace learned how to clean the toilet, so she had to watch me x number of times, then she had to do it with me watching x number of times, then she did it on her own x number of times before she achieves "mastery" of it). Once the kids had mastered an item on their list they got to list it and move their person one step closer to the end. There were prizes along the way with a grand prize at the end. It was fun motivation (for the most part) to do something positive over the summer!

Ben and Ruby took swiming lessons. They both did a great job!

Rob was really excited to get this bivy sack for camping with the scouts, he had to try it out at home first.

Emmi learned how to get into everything and make a big mess. She loved it!

The girls went to vacation bible school with some church friends at a local church. It was so fun. They were on the green team and had a blast!

While Rob was gone at scout camp, Emmi learned to climb up the stairs and would rush there every time my back was turned. It was exhausting, but our stairs have a really odd shape at the bottom, which doesn't allow for a normal baby gate. After lots of frustration, my parents came up with the idea to use their heavy food storage boxes to block off the stairs until Rob came home and we figured out a more permanent option. It actually worked well for the week or so we used it!