Painting, Skating, Dog Walking, and Chocolate

We repainted our dining room, and we just love it! It's so soft and soothing. The color is "Seacliff Heights", which is a sort of seafoamy blue with green. Yay!

Our creative Beau using our Hess trucks from Didi as roller skates!

This week we're walking our neighbor's dog to help our, since she just had surgery. Beau is in heaven doing it, and it's much needed dog therapy for David, who is still quite terrified of dogs.

Finally, we spent a few hours yesterday with our dear friends from Singapore, the Eckbergs. We took the kids to a bounce house/ gym place, out for lunch, and to a great, local chocolate shop. The guy there gave the kids a ton of samples and was so lovely and friendly to them.

There's Beau with his friend, Annie, all chocolate faced!

Lemonade sales and cute boys

Beau mainly spearheaded a lemonade stand the other weekend, assisted by Lewis (until Lewis had to leave for his call time pre-show), and by David who sat at the table for part of the time ringing a bell to advertise their lemonade. They were adorable and very self directed about the whole thing. And, they made $30! Not bad for 3 hours of work!!!

Also pics of two of my lovely, sweet boys at church, all dressed up!

Lars the Lemur

Lewis had the best time performing as Lars the Lemur in Madagascar this summer! He declared to me at one point during the rehearsal process,
"Mom, I just love HVCT (Hopewell Valley children's theater). They make kids into heroes!"

Here he is with his stage foundation on and man bun going, ready to go and be costumed and made up for showtime!

And the final product after his final performance!

Summer moments

A couple months ago, we were at the temple, and I bumped into the sister of one of my best friends from growing up in Atlanta. She lives in Maryland, and she let me know that my friend Emily would be visiting in July. So one Saturday, we drove down to Wilmington to the children's museum there and met up with Emily and her 6 kids plus 3 of her sister's kids. It was so, so fun to see Emily again! It had been so long, and we loved connecting about life and family. Love her!

Beau decided to use his hard earned money to buy a Fitbit. Well, cheaper brand. He's absolutely loved it and is taking great care of it.

Beau wanted to make "pretend soup" for dessert one night. It's a favorite from a kids' cookbook Gogo gave the boys a few years ago. It was so good, we asked him to make it again a few nights later when we had the missionaries to dinner.

This was a recent drawing David did of a man. I think it's Daddy. It's amazing to me to all of a sudden see real form and control come into little ones' drawings. He asked Beau to help him add the tongue, but the rest was his!

Mummy Party

This was the best!
Lewis organized a Mummy party for the family. Here were the boys' costumes.

There were activity options we could choose from. We selected one game where we had to keep a big balloon up on the air. If someone in the group dropped it, it would wake the pharaoh. So cute.

The second game we played was a mummy wrap competition. I was partnered with Beau and Mike with Lewis. We had 3 minutes and a roll of toilet paper each. Whoever made the best mummy won.

Then there were decorations and homemade confetti to throw at the end.

I love when my kids have just a little bit more free time. Within days, it always brings out the most amazing creativity.

Frenchtown Park and NYC

We spent the most lovely afternoon with a music friend of mine and her kids at Frenchtown Park. It has a great zip line and play equipment, but also a low little stream to explore. The kids had tons of fun trying to catch fish and build a dam. It was an idyllic summer day!

After that, Mike and I scooted into the city for a work dinner. Walking from the dinner afterwards, we came upon a Tim Ho Wan, a Hong Kong based restaurant that's also famous in Singapore. We had a couple favorites for old times sake.

SG swim party, bubble gum, and pirate treasure

We got together with four other Singapore families for a bbq and swim party. It was really fun! So great to catch up!

Beau has been working on his bubble blowing skills.

And, our pirate treasure. Our summer incentive system is one of my favorites. Each boy has a treasure chest. They have a list of about 10 things they can do to earn pirate treasure each day including things like
- morning responsibilities
- piano practice
- reading time
- summer workbook time
- reading to David
- exercise
- time playing on own without disturbing mom
- service or kind acts to others

When I put them to bed every night, they report back on what they've done and earn a treasure or coin for each thing. When they reach 50, they get a prize. Lewis and Beau are both going to as many Harry Potter chocolate frogs as they can, although Beau has a system of intermittently choosing a squishy as a prize instead. It's been great!