Friday, August 2, 2013

The last few weeks...

 Summer is in full swing here.  Lots and lots and lots of pool days, beach days and days spent with friends are what our summer has been all about!
Summer=Pool time :)

Jason and I knocked something off our Bucket List.  We FINALLY watched Gandhi.  This is something we have wanted to do and talked about doing since college...but we never did it...until now. The girls and I are reading Story of the World Volume 4: Modern Times and we learned about Gandhi and decided to watch the movie.  It was as amazing and awesome and inspiring as I thought it would be!
We FINALLY watched Gandhi

Allie is such a good gerbil mama!  She is all about those little critters!  Seriously, the girl does so much research on Gerbil Life.  She is always making them treats and toys.  She came across this idea for a cage and knew we had some old storage shelves and asked Jason to help her build this new cage!  She is hoping to rescue two more gerbils when we get back from vacation and will be home for a while to care for them.
Jason and Allie built a gerbil cage out of closet organizers and IKEA toy bins

My aunt and uncle are up from Florida.  We figured out that they moved away 36 years ago!  They come up a couple of times a year now that my uncle is retired.  My aunt and I have always gotten along so well, we have so much in common and can spend hours and hours talking.  My girls are getting older and they are at the point where they want to be part of the adult conversation.  I was so proud of them and felt so blessed that my girls get to KNOW their family.  It's so important to me that my girls appreciate family and spend time with family and really get to KNOW their family.
While my aunt was here, my grandma dug out old photos....the guy in b&w is my dad at about Allie's age and that's my First Holy Communion photo

We made a day trip to Ringing Rocks.  It's a beautiful hike through the woods to this clearing where there are several ACRES of rocks.  I had the girls research it before we went.  All of the rocks were there naturally, they are glacial deposits.  They contain iron and when they are all together like that, if you tap on them with a hammer they ring.  It's very cool.  They have to be together to ring, if you took a few home, they wouldn't ring.
Ringing Rocks was super cool!