Wrapping Up Summer

Our summer ended with a bang - from water fun to sports to a history lesson, we had a bit of everything going on in our family life!  First pictures are of the kids tubing on Lake Springfield.  Family friends invited us to join them in some fun with boating, tubing, and stand up paddle boards.  The kids had never been tubing before, but both really enjoyed it (once we convinced them to try it!).

Ethan wrapped up his kid-pitch baseball and soccer seasons with a bang.  We noticed improvements in both sports.  He enjoys batting the most in baseball, but prefers defense in soccer.

We made time for our annual apple picking at Brooms apple orchard in Carlinville.  We love this place since they allow you to pick your own apples, eat as many as you want while picking, climb the trees (okay, they don't actually "allow" that, but...), and they have good small town fun with their creative playground and corn maze.

After apple picking, the kids then helped out at grandma and grandpa's with picking vegetable, feeding the fish, and mowing the field.  And the sweet potato that Ethan is holding isn't even the biggest that grandpa grew this year!

Finally, Olivia competed on her school's 7th grade Gettysburg Address puzzle team.  The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum invited schools to recreate the address from memory using oversized words in the shortest amount of time.  Olivia's team finished in 20 minutes, but her school's 8th grade team smashed the previous record with a time of 14 1/2 minutes.  It was fun to watch and was a really good lesson on teamwork.