Deagan's Imagination

Deagan is a very smart young man, and is always thinking of ways to have fun.  In fact, in every single prayer that he says, he prays that we will have fun.  Having fun is important to him!

He got on a dragon and viking kick over the summer after watching "How To Train Your Dragons 2," and wanted to be a viking for many days after that.  One evening, he made a viking costume out of paper and wanted to were it to a local baseball game that we went to.  I love that he is at an age still where he doesn't care what other people think of him, and I love how creative he is!  What a joy it is to see him use his imagination for good.

I love how his "sword" reflects the light in the back so it looks like a magical sword almost here!

Swimming Lessons

It is a mandatory thing for our kids to take swimming lessons every summer.  Knowing how to swim is a necessary life skill in my opinion, so our kids take lessons.  For Deagan, this is great.  For Kayden, however, this is pure torture.  It is so funny how different their opinions are on swimming! Deagan is a fish, and Kayden is terrified of it.

We had some friends recommend a local pool to take lessons at, so we signed up.  The classes were small, and the pool was shallow which is great for lessons.  The kids could touch the whole way.  Kayden had a great teacher.  She was kind and patient.  Deagan had a pretty intense teacher, but he seemed to respond well to him and his way of teaching.  This teacher was intense though! People called him "Coach Chris," and he was the most intense swimming teacher I have ever met.  He was very strict with the kids and was very loud.  It was a little over bored in my opinion, but everyone else seemed to think he was the greatest thing.

As I mentioned Kayden does not like swimming, so even though he had a very kind teacher, he was terrified.  He would scream and cry when his teacher tried to get him to swim and to put his head near the water.  It got to the point where Coach Chris had had enough so he pulled Kayden out of the other teacher's arms and put him on his back and swam to the deep end with him! I was in shock! I didn't really think he was going to put Kayden in any danger, but this was just weird and kind of scary!  He had Kayden swim with him and told him he wouldn't take him back until he stopped screaming.  He then continued to swim around with Kayden on his back and went under water!  He was being careful to not let Kayden fall off, but it was crazy.  Looking back on it now, I should have said something, but the swim teacher was so intense that I thought he was going to pull me in too!

Kayden finally calmed down, and Coach Chris brought him back and warned Kayden that if he continued to cry during lessons that he would bring him back out into the deep end.  Kayden never cried during lessons again.  He didn't like them any more though, and HATED going! I contemplated just pulling him out, but I really feel its important for him to know how to swim, and we paid the money.  Deagan was so kind and offered to sit with Kayden during lessons.  Kayden's swim teacher was kind enough to say yes, and that how he finished his two weeks of lessons.  By the last day or two, Kayden gained some courage and got into the pool without being asked too.  He even went under water on his own!  It was so neat to see the change in him.

Deagan had a great summer of swimming lessons, and became quite the little swimmer! After two sessions of lessons though, he decided that he knew how to swim and did not want to take lessons every again. He is so funny in that way because once he knows how to do something even a little bit, he doesn't want  to do it anymore.  Rest assured, he will be in lessons again next summer! :)

Deagan sitting with Kayden during lessons

Dog Sitting

As a way to make some cash on the side, we watch dogs from time to time using an online service.  We had the chance to watch a number of dogs over the summer, and the boys loved it! Greg is not the most dog loving person, so after we got rid of our old dog Fiona, we decided dog sitting was a pretty good deal; the kids get their dog fix without the hassle of actually owning a dog.

Every dog we watched this summer were great dogs, which I know was a blessing since not all dogs are good dog.

Here are a few fun pictures of our boys with the dogs:

The boys and Thor.  They were eating lunch and he wanted to eat their lunch.

Bailey and Deagan

Bentley and Deagan.  We were given instructions not to walk this dog in the neighborhood because he was not a good walking dog, so this was the next best thing for the boys; walking him in our backyard.

Kayden and Bailee

Beautiful Parks

One of my favorite things to do during the summer is to take the kids to a park.  I love having a place for my kids to play and to make friends.  

We have been blessed to live by some pretty cool parks, and I'm so grateful that there are so many great ones by us!

One summer afternoon we ventured over to this park, and I was stunned by how beautiful it was!  Look at that lake view!  We had some friends meet us there that day, and it was a great day for the kids to play with some friends and for me to catch up with some friends.

Visiting Friends

We have some great friends that moved away over a year ago from Waldorf to Virginia.  This family is seriously the greatest family, and they have the greatest kids!  We got a bunch of moms and their kids together this summer to go visit them in Virginia, and it was an afternoon full of fun and food.

Look at all those cute kids!!

Morning Picture

This picture was taken the morning after 4th of July.  Everyone was up late and got up kind of early, so it was a "snuggle in bed and don't get out until people are starving" kind of morning. 

I got this cute picture of the boys that morning, and I love it! 

4th of July

I have memories of past 4th of July celebrations being very hot and humid. This year, however, the weather was very mild and cool.  I think most of us even wore pants that day! Pants in July in Maryland?! :)

In the morning, we went to lunch in a near by town called La Plata, and then went mini golfing.  We had not been mini golfing in years, so it was fun to take the kids!  It was an 18 hole mini golf course, which honestly was just 9 holes too many with little kids, so we stopped at 9 and called the outing a success.  Easton slept through most of the first 9 holes, but then woke up hungry at hole 9. The timing worked out great!

We went home after that and got some food ready for a friend's BBQ that we were attending that night.  I was in charge of pico de gallo, and thinking that it would be eaten up, made a TON! We had pico coming out of our ears for days after that though, and everything in the fridge took on the smell it seemed. :)

We had talked about going down town to see the fireworks, but decided that might be a bit of an undertaking with a small baby, so we opted to see the fireworks from Bolling Air Force base which is straight across the river from downtown.  It seemed like a lot of people had the same idea because the place was packed!  We found a nice spot on the grass overlooking the river and sat down and awaited the fireworks.  They were pretty neat, from what we would see.  That building with the smoke stacks in the first picture below actually blocked the majority of them.  It was still neat though.  A lot of people in surrounding areas were shooting off fireworks as well, so I don't feel like we were cheated in seeing good fireworks.  It was kind of chilly, so we wrapped the kids in a blanket and hoped they stayed warm. Easton was a happy camper the whole time. I fed him once and then he was good until we got home that night.

As we were driving back that night to Waldorf, we noticed there were a TON of people parked off of 495 watching fireworks which seems really dangerous! Watching fireworks on the side of a major highway that has millions of travelers on it in one day does not seem like the best idea, but maybe that is just me. There were even lots of kids there! It was really unsettling to me I guess since I still remember that detail.

This photo collage was from earlier in the day I guess.  It was listed being taken on July 4th, so it makes the cut :)  Deagan has always enjoyed holding his brother!