Instagram July

Do you want to know what a dingbat I am?  Of course you do.  I’ve been on Instagram since May a year ago and I only realized that it was a social network about 3 months ago when someone (Pam A. , I’m looking at you) “liked” my photo.  I thought, “How the heck did she see my photo?  And then I realized that because I had hooked up with Facebook for photo sharing there, any of my FB friends could “follow” me and also I could “follow” them back.  Once I realized this, I Followed a small number of FB friends and I love checking into the News Feed daily to see what people are up to (through photographs only… no status updates). 

And then, imagine my excitement when a few weeks ago I realized you could search for celebrities and Follow them too!  I am now Following Melissa Gilbert (my favorite), Oprah, Barack Obama (which is mostly campaign stuff, not pics of Michelle and the kids hanging out roasting s’mores, boo), Ashton Kutcher, Zach Galifianakis, and Hoda Kotb.  I’m sure there are celebrity fakes out there, but the ones I found are definitely the person.

I really love Instagram!  Won’t you get on it too so I can Follow you too, please?  If you want to look me up, my username is Bethpix.   So…

I guess I should start with July 4th.  Here are some pics from ours:

Please note:  I did not make those layered jello squares, this person did, and they were awesome. 

Moving on.  We found a bargain the last day of our church’s flea market!

                                        Also a mini guinea pig cage and cute plate!

The bike is for Jack who had outgrown his old bike by a lot.  He was so excited!  And the best part is the bike has pegs, so whenever we see him riding we can quote Napolean!

                                           “You got shocks…pegs… lucky!”                                                                    “Whoa, you got like three feet of air that time!”

July was a really, super dry month wasn’t it?  Maddie took this picture of our neighbor cows and they are surrounded by brown, dried out landscape.  I love the Queen Anne’s Lace in the photo.  A few days after the cow pic, Jack brought me a bunch of Queen Anne’s Lace he had picked, so I put it in a vase with pink food coloring in it to turn them pink.  Unfortunately, they turned kind of brownish pink and then dropped a whole bunch of dead crap all over my table, so boo to you Queen Anne’s Lace.

I’m not kidding you, school supplies were in Wal-Mart in early July.  Boo to Wal-Mart, from Ben.  (And thanks for giving me hope, Walmart!  Kisses!)

                                         This is not a happy customer, people.

Dave and I went to a wedding without the kids!  My cousin Marjorie married a very nice guy, Shawn.  The wedding was beautiful, and we had a lot of fun hanging out with my bratty brother Dave and the lovely Jamae at the reception.

                        I had better shoes and they were totally cute but new and gave me blisters about 5 min. after I put them on.  Boo dumb, cute shoes.

The reception was within walking distance from our hotel, and so we walked home quite happily (if you get my drift) and as we got into our hotel we heard the sound of music.  No.  Not just music. Karaoke, baby!  So we crashed a 40th birthday party with the hopes of getting in on some good Karaoke action.  Unfortunately, a slow song came on.  Fortunately, we were in the mood to slow dance!  Unfortunately, that song was “I’m Proud to Be an American”, which is true, we are proud to be Americans, but it wasn’t the best slow dancing music ever.  So we said goodbye to our new friends and reluctantly left.

We had a super time, Nuner!  Thanks for the hospitality and goodie bags and we’ll see you this fall at Uncle Rico and Aunt Barb’s anniversary party!

We Went to Indian Echo Caverns and saw a salamader!

Bible School happened in July.  Maddie helped with the pre-k class and loved it.  Jack said Bible School was the second best thing he did all summer (second to Tiger Scout Camp) and Ben only went because I made him.   Here is Ben at the Last Day Show refusing to do the hand motions.

I know it’s a terrible picture but I want this documented so when he has children and they are sometimes grumpy little buggers I can pull this up and say, “Your turn, mister” or maybe “God remembers how you didn’t sing His special songs so He gave you naughty children” or perhaps just, “HAhahaha!!”

We went out to breakfast with good friends.  The kids were very well behaved, but I felt for our waitress because the order taking was a little crazy (“Can I have waffles?  No make that pancakes, but can I have jelly not syrup and can I have hot chocolate with no whipped cream?  Oh, instead, could I have orange juice?  And can I have bacon?  No… sausage.  Ummm, can I make it bacon? ”  Repeat 8 times.)

We saw a kitten in the clouds! Do you see him lying on his back like he’s playing with a ball of yarn?

We went to a lot of swim meets!  Maddie made All-Stars and then Mid-Caps so that extended our swim season by two weeks, but luckily swim meets are pretty fun.  Well.  They’re fun if you like waiting for a four hour stretch for your daughter to swim three 1 minute races and the rest of the time you try to keep your seven year old entertained and stay cool and use port-a-potties and slap bugs away.  Which I totally do!

              Maddie is the one smack dab in the middle in the black suit.

Lots of plain old swimming for fun has been happening too.

                                   Or maybe I should say “lots of fancy jumping” has been happening.

Jack found this cornstalk in the “alley” (as he calls it) between our fence and our neighbor’s fence.  He has staked his claim on it as ours because he measured (with a ruler, seriously!) and the corn stalk is closer to our fence than theirs.   You can see he has fenced it in and checks on it every few days, anxious that the neighbors will discover it and counter–claim.

                      So far we’ve been lucky.  But Jack is prepared to go to court if necessary. 

In related news, Farmer Smith’s corn is in his stand and it is particularly sweet and delicious this year!

Goodbye July, and a great big Welcome to August from Big D!