Summertime!

We wrapped up the school year with Claire finishing third grade and Paul finishing first. Both kids recieved so many awards at the awards ceremony that they couldn't all be announced.

Paul laughing with his buddies after receiving his awards.

Claire reading the giant list of her awards.

The next week, we started summer. The first day of summer, the kids were completely spastic, and of course, that was also the day I had to take them to work with me. With two kids bouncing (literally) off the walls while I tried to get work done, I was worried about the long summer stretched ahead of us. By the end of the week we had caught our breath and started a new rhythm, so the kids and I both calmed down and breathed a sigh of relief.

We were able to get up close and personal with one of the elephants.

Our first big field trip of the summer was to Cameron Park Zoo in Waco. I have made a friend who is also in UMC ordination process and we decided to meet halfway between our houses, in Waco. The zoo is much smaller than the FW Zoo, but there were no crowds and the zoo featured tons of shade and several spots with air-conditioning. We had a great time and even brought our niece, Morgan.

I have no idea where the boy gets his goofiness from.

We've taken other field trips this summer to use our memberships to fabulous places in DFW. The kids spent 45 minutes programming robots at the Perot Museum. We've been to the library twice already. We celebrated Adam's birthday at Six Flags. Paul had a pool party for his birthday and has played about six baseball games. Some days we have been very extravagant and just stayed home.

By far the most hilarious event of the summer so far has been the animal masks. I was alerted to Amazon's abundance of latex animal masks by my friend, Stacy. Adam and I decided they were a must to keep us entertained on our vacation road trip. They were so hilarious that we couldn't wait to wear them, though.

Yesterday we went to the FW Zoo and both kids took their masks.

At first I said, "Paul, get down from there!" But then I realized he was being a squirrel by crawling up on a fence like real squirrels.

It's a bird feeding a bird. It's Claire hilarity!