Instagram June

Wow, can you believe it’s almost the Fourth of July?  Our June has just zipped by, thanks to swim/track practices,weekly swim meets, playdates galore, an art camp for Maddie, and just a general feeling of busy-ness.  Our summers are usually very lazy and there’s lots of sleeping in and lolling around like beached whales, but this June has felt rushed.

Here’s what’s been going on.

~Sooo I told you about the goldfish Jack won who promptly bit the dust, which then spurred a trip to That Fish Place down in Lancaster, and after a visit to the guinea pigs and snakes and chameleons, we headed to the fish tanks where Jack picked out some fish and a frog.  We brought them home, got them installed in our old tank, named them (Molly, Gibby, and Mr. Fishy Wishy, also Kermit the Frog), started to bond with them, but within two days Molly and Gibby joined our Lord in His great big fishtank in the sky.  So we headed to stinkin’ Wal-Mart where Jack picked out two Bala Sharks whom we named Christopher and Hagrid. 

Jack loves his fish and frog.  Above he has set up his iPod to play a Spongebob episode to entertain them.  If you look right in front of Patrick, you can see Mr. Fishy Wishy is actually watching the show!

~My friend Sue invited Jack over for some waterslide fun.  Jack had a great time sliding with Sue’s son Erik, and as a bonus, the Google Maps truck drove by while they were on the waterslide, so we are hoping that they will be on Google Maps someday!

~Grandma and Papa Wolfe went to Paris and brought us back a bunch of fahncy French chocolates!  Oooh la la!

~I attended my cousin Diane’s daughter Laura’s bridal shower.  (Say that three times fast!)  We greeted her with these little poppers that shot silver tinsel in the air!  Here’s the lovely Jamae throwing tinsel and sweet Laura cutting her very yummy cake.

The funniest part of the day was when my mom and her sister, my Aunt Betty, got together to pose for a picture.  I took a series of increasingly hilarious shots of them (mostly my mom) arguing as they posed.  Here are just three of them:

“Betty!  You are standing on my foot!  Just smile, you don’t need to kiss me!  OW!  Betty!  Your kiss hurt my ear!”

I finally got a good one of them though:

They love each other, but sometimes you wouldn’t think so.

~When we swim, the kids will always beg Dave, “Throw me, Daddy!”  And if they’re lucky, he will.

And if they’re not paying careful attention, Dave will hurl himself into the pool and make a gigantic splash right on them!

                                                                                             INCOMING!

~Ben signed up to be an altar server at church a few months ago, and he’s been getting pretty good at remembering when to do the different duties involved.  Here he is before mass with Maddie who is helping him tie his belt.  It’s weird the way they do it, and Father had to explain it to me several times before I gave up and handed the job over to Maddie.  Sometimes I worry about my brain.

~Our Ice Cream Tour has been going well.  Mostly.  Well, not really…we’ve been enjoying ice cream a lot, but we seem to be stuck at Rainbow Snow, which really is our favorite ice cream place in the world.  I always get this:

That’s peanut butter soft serve with hot fudge.  And it’s AWESOME.

~We finally went berry picking.  We missed sour cherries and the apricot crop was bad this year so we had to make do with black raspberries.

We ate so many raspberries while we picked we really should have paid extra (but we didn’t).  We made a black raspberry pie with them and it was delicious.  Notice it’s a lattice top pie!  I’ve always been fascinated by lattice top pies and have spent much time over my life gazing at them and trying to figure out how to do it.   I finally googled it and it was disappointingly easy to do.  Here’s where I got my pie recipe and here’s my lattice top link.

~See what I mean?  Busy, busy busy!  But trust me, we’ve still made time for this:

One month down, two to go.

Also, Happy Birthday, America!