Ellie turned 12 and a half this summer!  

She continued our new birthday tradition that somehow started of having two birthday parties instead of one.

For her first party, she invited her neighborhood friends. Gabby (far left) moved to our neighborhood a few years ago and has been a wonderful addition.

The other four have been friends for almost their whole lives.

The girls came over for dinner and a movie ("Mamma Mia!")

and ice cream sundaes.

Both sets of grandparents only live here part time now, so Ellie took advantage of the fact that they were all in town and had a grandparent birthday dinner.

You've never seen someone so thrilled to get Nutella as a birthday present!

Ellie wanted cinnamon rolls for her birthday breakfast. She told me that even though her actual birthday is December 28, June 28 feels more like her real birthday. 

We had Ellie's annual pool party birthday with all of her school friends. It was unusually hot and sunny for the end of June so the pool was more packed than usual, but we still had room to set up a little party area.

These are her closest friends from school: Taylor, Lily, Kaylee, Gianna, Kenzie, Emily and Olivia.

They are a sweet bunch of girls.

Still not a cake girl, so birthday cookies it is!

It's been fun watching these girls grow into middle schoolers.

Before we know it, they'll be in high school taking prom pictures, and they are ready!

Last but not least, we drove through Chick-fil-A for Ellie's official birthday dinner and came home and watched "The Princess Bride" with the five of us. It was a great way to end her week of birthday festivities!

 

Joey and Hannah went to Hume Lake the very first week of summer. This was Joey's third and last year and Hannah's second year.

As usual the kids both had a lot of friends from school that went. 

We don't have any contact with the kids all week other than finding an occasional picture on the camp website or the youth group's Instagram page. We thought this random picture showed Joey helping put chairs away, but it turns out it was a game seeing how long you could hold a chair out straight in front of you.

These are the other pictures we snagged from online...

When the kids got back, they both had more pictures to share from their phones.

Having gone to Hume myself in middle school and high school, it's always fun seeing little glimpses of the camp that I loved so much. It brings back such good memories!

There's one night where the kids dress up and take a bunch of pictures with each other.

This was a siblings picture: the boys are all friends and the girls are all friends. I love how each sibling pair looks so much alike. 

Abigail and Hannah

All of "our kids." 

A big group of Hannah's friends.

Joey's cabin.

Joey and his friends seemed to have a LOT of fun taking pictures...

These are only a few of the pictures on his phone.

Caleb (on the left) is a friend that Joey met at Hume his first year at camp. Caleb was in the other couple of Joey's prom group. Micah (on the right) and Joey were best friends when they were in Bible study together as preschoolers. So funny that they are reunited every year at Hume.

The bus ride home. The kids came home tired but full of good memories!

At the beginning of June, I flew to Lubbock to go to the wedding of Cayley, the daughter of our good friends from Albuquerque.

Our four years in Albuquerque were so special mostly because of the amazing friends we made there. Our friends Brent and Edie had three adorable children that we all loved so much.  A year after we moved away, Brent unexpectedly passed away. It was a heartbreaking tragedy, but sixteen years later it's been wonderful to see how the Lord has been so faithful to Edie and her kids. Now the kids are all grown, and such lovely people. I didn't get to go to Aubrey's wedding, so I really wanted to make sure I could go to Cayley's wedding. That way I could meet Aubrey's husband, Edie's husband (she just got remarried last year), and Cayley's husband! I was extra thrilled to find out that many of our old friends from Albuquerque were coming too.

I got to Lubbock Thursday evening and had the hotel to myself for the night. Everyone else arrived sometime on Friday. The weekend was basically catching up, reminiscing about old times, and eating! Basically all of my favorite things.

By Friday evening, pretty much everyone was in town, so about twenty of us went out to dinner. 

At the end of dinner, the Guesses all stopped by from the rehearsal dinner. It was an unexpected surprise to get time to see all of them.

The kids are all grown up! Aubrey is expecting her second child in a couple of months.

Here was part of our big dinner group.

We also took the opportunity to recreate this picture from fourteenn years ago.

All of the out of town people stayed at the same hotel, so we had so much time to sit around and talk. Breakfasts were usually 1-2 hours. It filled my heart so much getting all of that time with some of my very favorite people. 

On Saturday, the wedding wasn't until 6:30, so we planned a big lunch out at a cute Mexican place near Texas Tech. We ended up basically having a private room, which was perfect.

Then it was time for the wedding!

The wedding was beautiful. Other than being sad that Brent wasn't there, everything was perfect.

One of my favorite details was that Cayley's former fourth grade student was the DJ. He was in 7th grade and did such a great job. 

Of course we had a fun Albuquerque table at the wedding. 

The beautiful bride!

The Albuquerque girls! Now we live in Detroit, Albuquerque, San Diego and Boston.

Florianne and Joanna are friends of Edie's from when the Guesses lived in LA before Albuquerque. I got to know them when we traveled out to Waco, Texas for Edie's 50th birthday together. They are the best travel buddies!

What a wonderful night and wonderful weekend! I'm SO thankful that I got to go.