Celebrations!

The last few weeks have been full of celebrations.

June 17th the group that organized the ballroom dancing classes a few years back, held an "English Country Dance".  Lance and Jared were thrilled to have more opportunities to dance.  The weather was rather crazy that night.  At home Chris and I were out for a walk with the dogs when this terrible wind storm kicked up.  We were of course at the opposite end of the neighborhood, trees were swaying dangerously and by the time we got back to our end of the neighborhood we saw our neighbor had a big tree down over the road and Amber and Titus were running toward us telling us the power was out.  We hoped the storm had missed the boys.  We would later learn, it hit them as well and they lost power too.  However, they just took off their cowboy hats and jackets, moved the dance outside and still had a marvelous time.

This storm was a short doozy, power was still out come morning and the contents of the fridge were in danger so we started up our generator for the very first time (with the help of Grandpa Frank who always has extra gasoline around, we found out the hard way the siphon we bought for this emergency wouldn't work on Bruce because it has anti-siphon technology.....UGH).  Once we got the generator running and food was secure, we headed over to clear up the trees for our neighbors.  They had the one down in the road and another was across their front porch blocking the entrance to their home.  A chainsaw and six able bodies with big clippers made quick work of the mess.  Then Lance and Jared cleaned up and went to their friend Nathan's last ballet performance.  Not to be left out of getting into air conditioning, Chris and I took Amber and Titus to their favorite restaurant, Alpaca for lunch. Power finally came back at 2:30pm.

June 24th was Emma's Graduation Party.  As a gift we printed out all the pictures we could find of Emma with our family over the last eight years, what a walk down memory lane that was for everyone that night.  Ironically, Amanda had decorated with pictures as well. Emma had an actual record player with old big band music to add to the reminiscent atmosphere.  Finally, to top the night off her brother Connor made a surprise visit, getting leave from the Army to come home for the week.  After the official festivities were over and things were calming down I took Emma and Amanda for a ride in Big Red.  They both like "Vroom" very much.  Then Chris took Tim for spin (or at least a fast straight). 

June 26th we spent the morning working on the backyard project.  The ponds were leveled and a lot of the rock was placed (We have literally 3 tons to put down).  Chris used some of the rock to fix his french drain up front (its looks and works much better now).  In the evening, we went to Sofia's Graduation party.  It was our first time out at their new house.  What a charming group of people, some were even old friends we forgot we had in common, everyone (kids and adults) had a marvelous time late into the night.

July 1st was the last graduation party of the season, Will's.  It was across the street at TCC and Jared had a blast, playing games and eventually marching home in formation with Will and some of his friends. The rest of us stayed home while Lance checked out Sofia's car for her.  Amber was enjoyed the girl time with Sofia.

In between all this celebrating...

our family joined a new community pool,

Amber continued to advance in her riding,

Titus flourished at TaeKwonDo, 

Lance had fun learning at Hendrick and playing baseball.

Jared had a huge reason to celebrate....one long awaited.....after five years of work!!!!