Greenville Zoo

Another day using our StayCation package tickets!

This time, to the zoo we went!

It was a cooler(still high 80s) morning and with the shade the zoo provides, it was really quite comfortable!  The kids were so excited and we stayed there much, much longer than I thought we would!  They were totally enthralled and ate up every single exhibit!

What a fun morning!!

This picture cracks me up!  Kids whose parents won't pay for
food to feed the animals know how to find it for themselves!

Thus, they fed the goats from the salvaged animal food!

Breezing Through Summer

It's really amazing to me how quickly(and slowly on some days!!) time slips by!  The summer is half over, and I'm not sure I'm totally ready for that yet(except on those aforementioned "some days"...HAHA!)!

We've kept it pretty low key the past week or so and haven't done anything news-worthy!  But, we have taken advantage of the sunny days and the lack of a schedule!

Remember that pile of sand from an earlier post!!?!?  Yeah,
so this is what it looks like now... I have no words!!

The kids trying to explain MineCraft to M!

A unique use of the grilling gloves we gave M for Fathers Day!

We ordered this furniture for the patio and it ended up being midget sized,
but we didn't realize that until after we'd broken down the boxes and put them
in the dumpster!  HAHAHA!!  So getting them back out and
loading them up was quite the event!  We were in hysterics!!

End of swim season gifts for the kids - they can hang their
ribbons on them!  Cute!!

Pool-side lunch picnic:)

We watched the Evette kids one night and the boys were put
in charge of making the cookies...

And the girls were happy to help eat them:)

C and Caris... twinsies!

We visited our old street and the kids played with Mallory
and Miley!  Mallory and S are still such good friends and
miss each other!

I truly despise water guns!!  This kid just can NOT keep from
spraying anyone and everyone!

1 - 2 - 3 - JUMP!

Morning Legos

Gigi visited bringing Munchkin goodies with her!!  This box
was completely gone before they even made it through the door!

We've had this ball sprinkler for years but I've never remembered
to get it out of the box!  It was quite the feat getting it blown up!

S doing a cartwheel - blue shorts towards the back!

C hanging from the bars!

Beth Moore!!!

I have done so so so many Beth Moore bible studies and have never been disappointed!  Each time I do one, I always say "She is sooo good!  I love her!"!  And each time, M just rolls his eyes because he's heard me say it no less than 1,000 times!

Well, this weekend I was able to go and listen to her live!  Oh it was amazing and was absolutely perfect!! There were 11,000 people there, probably 99.9% of them women, and I was with my two sweet friends and we soaked every minute of it up!

We were there last night until late and back again early this morning!  She spoke on Divine Gravity and, as always, brought up things I'd never considered before!  I think I could listen to her every day and not get tired of hearing her speak!  In addition to the great job that she did, the guy who travels with her and does the praise music portion of the weekend, Travis Cottrell, had the whole arena on our feet!  He's such an amazing artist!

It was truly a rejuvenating weekend that I needed so very much!!

Praise music Friday night

Beth Friday night

Terrible picture, but now we can prove we were there!:)

Beth Saturday morning

Praise music Saturday morning

Tyger River Park

Maybe a month or so ago I had seen something on Facebook about a park I'd never heard of before.  But, since then, I completely forgot about it until I saw a friend's blog post about when they went last week!  We had some time today, so we tried it out!  It did NOT disappoint!  Even with a huge softball tournament taking place on every single ball field, there was enough parking and it didn't feel overwhelmingly crowded!  The kids had a blast and probably could have stayed there all afternoon, but I had to get back so I promised them we'd come back again soon and also give them a chance to play on what looked to be a really great playground as well!  I love finding new fun places!!!

*I got to use my new camera and play around with some of the settings, so this is your warning now for picture overload!!!:)

Just Random

Killin' time at S's piano lessons!

Wearing his shark shirt in honor of Shark Week!:)

We saw this beetle in the gym parking lot - HUGE!!

Stretching at gymnastics - C is on the right in the blue shirt!

And S stretching at gymnastics - she is on the right in the blue shorts!

We had S's Pasta Pump Up to get the kids psyched for divisionals
on Saturday and all the kids got these super nice sweater
blankets with "Barracudas" written on them!  Such a sweet gift!

We got home from the Pasta Pump Up and M was cutting the grass
and C couldn't have been more excited to go get on the lawn
mower with him!  *Side note - I think C has worn a blue shirt
every day this week!!!

Our poor yard, M just can't leave well enough alone!!  Now aerated
and soon to be sanded... sigh!

Between vacations for us and for her piano teacher, we don't have
much in the way of lessons, so S was given LOTS of homework to
work on over the next few weeks!!

Little Brother just can't seem to let her practice in peace!
*I made sure today that he did not wear a blue shirt!!:)

I got a new lens that zooms for my camera so I tested it out at the pool this morning:)  So fun!!