Our Summer Fun Begins

MaryLynn has been asking to get her haircut for a while. We took her on the last day of school to get it cut. Here is the before picture.

And the after picture. She looks so different. I can't decide which one I like better. It is definitely easier to wash and brush when it is shorter, but I think both cuts look nice on her.

We also had another fun surprise right before school got out. JJ lost her first tooth!

She was very excited to take her tooth to show and tell before school ended. Brad was happy that he finally got a child who would let him pull their tooth out. And not a week later, JJ let Daddy pull another tooth out. The picture above shows JJ with her front two teeth missing. Then we had an emergency when the tooth got dumped into the sink (Ok, I'm sorry, it was an accident!). Poor JJ started to cry, she was afraid the Tooth Fairy wouldn't leave her any money because she didn't have a tooth. We talked her into writing a note and explaining it, but she was still pretty upset. We called a friend who had a similar experience and she calmed down when she knew this friend had corresponded with The Tooth Fairy via notes. The downside was, this friend told her the that Tooth Fairy left her a note written in glitter. Yeah for me! Guess what kind of note JJ got in the morning from the Tooth Fairy, yup, glitter! Oh, and she got her dollar!

I felt like our summer officially began this weekend with a fun camping trip! Unfortunately, I brought two cameras along--one with no memory card and the other with almost no battery. Oh, brother. So here are the limited photos I got:

We arrived at our all time favorite camping spot on Thursday evening and the kids couldn't wait for us to even park the car before they jumped out and began playing. It was a joy to watch them run and play. Then, as always happens, they got closer and closer to the water. I gave them permission to take off their shoes and roll up their pants to wade in it. Then they started going farther and farther into the lake until they were swimming, fully clothed. It was so funny to watch that I couldn't even get mad.

Here is a picture of MaryLynn and JJ in their secret place. This is right next to our camp site and all the kids think it is a fabulous place to hide.

We have started to get braver from our hotdogs over the campfire cooking that we did last year. This trip we made pita pizzas in the fire (thanks to some friends introducing us to them last year) and then we tried cooking our breakfast over the fire.

I don't have the most exciting pictures, but lets just say cooking bacon and eggs in a paper bag over the fire was not as easy as the webpage made it seem.

However, the muffins cooked inside the orange peel worked just fine. We enjoyed chocolate chip muffins with the flavor of orange (and a little hickory smoke) mixed in. We will just know for next time to start the muffins way before we are ready to eat.

Another exciting adventure was when MaryLynn caught a frog that was hopping through their secret place. She handed the poor scared thing to each child in turn and I tried to get pictures of them all holding it. I'm sure he was happy to be let go at the end of that fun.

Today we are off with our Camp Liberty crew to pick berries and have some more summer adventures!