Why I'm Mean

I was starting to think to myself "wow, summer hasn't been so bad, maybe in the past I imagined it, or it was just because I was pregnant and it felt hotter."  It's been hot, sure, but bearable.  We tried to play outside some...

 

 Lily and Paige rode bikes back and forth to each other's houses, or talked to each other by walkie talkie.  The younger kids get jealous sometimes and want to walk to the cousins' houses too.  One day Cason and Neely thought they were getting to walk all by themselves.  They didn't realize Reed and I were following.  Haha.

Veronica and the girls walked down to play some days.

We went bowling with the Stout family one day.

 

Cason read books to us.  He's doing so well.  

 Neely's been asking to learn too, so Jess finally decided to start with her recently.  She seems to be picking it up really well too.  She's already on lesson 18, and gets so excited when she reads a word and realizes what it is.  She'll use it in a sentence for us and giggle every time.  She lasts about 1 lesson, sometimes another half lesson, and then starts getting distracted and Jess will stop there until she asks again.

I've also been on dates with Alex and Faith.  I took them separately to get ice cream.  It was nice getting to talk with them.  Usually the kids are so excited to be with their cousins that I can't really spend time with them.

 

When July started, and it got humid, I remembered why I'm always so ready for fall by this time.   We started spending more time inside, other than the occasional hour or so in the little pool.  Paige has done a ton of reading.  She read all 13 A Series of Unfortunate Events books in just a few short weeks.

There was plenty of Lego building, by me AND them.

Lots of cuddling...

Drawing, mostly by Neely and Cason.  

Cason has been drawing TONS of dragons, ever since seeing How to Train Your Dragon II.  We all loved it, but he can think only of it.  In typical Cason fashion, he loves it for the adventure and the awesome vikings RIDING dragons, but also because he thinks Toothless is SO cute and sweet.  It's funny because he was pretty much a baby when the first movie was in theaters, but we own it and he's hardly watched it.  He didn't realize how good it was until seeing the second movie.  Now he's watched the first one several times in just a week.  He spent days perfecting his drawings of all the different types of dragons, and the vikings that ride each of them.  

He's decided he wants a How to Train Your Dragon birthday party.   I love this, because I'm almost as obsessed with Toothless as he is.  I love when I get to plan their parties and it's something I love too.  It's so much fun.  I'm working on a stuffed Toothless toy for him, which I have to somehow do without him realizing what it is.  

Anyway, back to their art...Neely's drawings are very cute, and are of a wide variety of subjects, from robots and aliens...

 

...to our family riding horses and zebras.

She also recently started writing letters to people.

This specific one was written to me after we got the mail one day, and there was a package containing birthday presents for Cason.  I wanted her to keep it secret, since his birthday is still a month and a half away.  Anyway, the letter says "you are mean because you will not let me tell Cason his birthday presents."