Summer Camera Dump

 Now that summer is officially over, I thought it would be a good time to post all of our random pictures from the summer.

One Saturday in early June, Andy took our kids and the Meisters to play some basketball for fun. It's not much of a picture, but that day becomes important towards the end of the summer...

These girls never miss a chance to pose for the camera.

We had a beach day with some of Ellie's friends. This was finally the summer that Ellie decided she loved the beach.

While Joey and Hannah were at Hume Lake and I was at a meeting for church, Andy and Ellie went on a date to IHOP. That feels like a ridiculous amount of pancakes for two people!

My aunt, uncle and cousin were in town camping at the beach, so the girls and I went down to spend the day with them. 

Although Brynn is my cousin, age-wise, she is in between Hannah and Ellie.

This summer we had an unexpected treat in that Joey and Hannah played on the same basketball team in a co-ed league.

We never expected to see the two of them play together, and it was so fun.

Even Ellie got in on the action and was invited to practice with the team with all of the high schoolers, which she really enjoyed.

Joey and Hannah's team was mostly girls from the high school team, and they recruited a few boys (like Joey) to play.

Unfortunately the rest of the league didn't have many girls, so it wasn't quite the co-ed experience we were hoping for.

But having these two playing together was so great!

The girls love going to have lunch with Andy and then shopping at the Irvine Forum. 

This time we invited Abigail to go with us.

Lovely girls at a lovely shopping mall.

At one point during the summer, Ellie decided that she wanted to make a reading nook/fort. The cats were totally on board!

Remember that first picture when Andy took the kids to play basketball at the beginning of June? Joey got his hand caught on the rim and sprained his thumb. Eight weeks later it still hadn't healed so I took him to the orthopedic specialist. He recommended casting it for three weeks to keep it completely immobile. It's the first cast any of my kids have had. It was quite a dramatic cast for a small injury, but we're hoping it finally does the trick.

The cats enjoyed a lazy summer.

Millie seemed to appreciate that I redid my recipe books this summer.

The girls wanted to do one more Google/Irvine Forum trip before the summer was over so this time we went for breakfast and then shopping. Between our amazing vacations and a lot of relaxing down time, it was one of my favorite summers ever!