Beginning of July

The missionaries came over for dinner and one of them is deathly afraid of snakes. James decided to hold one of our snakes to show him how tame they are. The snake promptly decided to crawl up James's shirt!

James got to touch the ball at his basketball game:

We replaced our bed frame with one that is lower to the ground so that Baymax can't hide under our bed anymore. He loved to take things he knew he wasn't supposed to have and chew them under there. Now he has to find a new place to lounge around and he decided on his kennel!! I couldn't believe that he voluntarily went in there but he sleeps in there all the time now.

Anthony fixed the misters on the trampoline so the boys could bounce in the heat. They convinced Anthony to try it out with them.

James had a friend over for the day and we had a busy day of fun. First we went to the kid movie at the movie theater, then to a picnic lunch at the park/splash pad.

After the splash pad, we headed over to the library for a balloon animal workshop taught by a magician. We all learned how to make 4 different things: a belt, a dog, a sword, and a hat.

We met a few friends there, here we all are with our creations. So many balloons!

The turkeys roost in the trees at night, so they are out in the yard early every morning. Since their food is closed up in the chicken coop at night, if we haven't opened up the coop they come right to the back door to beg for scraps.

The morning of the 4th of July, Anthony, James, Daniel and I went out fishing and snorkeling on our friend's boat. The water was so crystal clear, we felt like we were in the Keys!

We swam right next to a manatee, a pod of dolphins, a sea turtle, and multiple schools of fish.

Look at how beautiful that water is!!

We had friends over for dinner that night and then went to the city fireworks. Rett still can't stand the sound of the fireworks, but at least he watched them this time.

We were right in front of where they were shooting them off. It looked like a war zone!

One of James's classmates invited us to her house to play in her new slip and slide. The boys discovered earthworms under the slide and played with them for awhile.

We've been working on getting rid of the squirrels that keep getting into the chicken coop and eating all the feed. James and Anthony were able to shoot two in one afternoon! They cleaned them and cooked them just to see what they taste like. I refused to try it, but James liked it and Anthony said it was not bad tasting, just tough and gamey.

While we were in Lake Mary for James's OT appointment, we decided to stop by Big Tree Park. It is famous for these 3,000 year old bald cypress trees and we wanted to check them out. Unfortunately the main one, a 3.500 year old tree called "The Senator" was burned down by an arsonist in 2012. This tree was propagated from some of the remains and planted soon after. It is called "The Phoenix".

The charred remains of The Senator. It was soooo wide at the base, it must have been a massive tree!

This is a nearby sister tree called "Lady Liberty". They estimate she is only 2,000 years old. A baby :)

Cub Scout Day Camp 2019

James attended his very first cub scout day camp this summer! I decided to volunteer the entire week and do it with him so that Rett could participate in the sibling den. So they put me in charge of his den of rambunctious 8 year olds! (I was sooooo hoping that they would put me in charge of lunch duty or something less stressful)

These are all of the cubs who attended from our ward. The camp ended up being held at our stake building, so it was nice to know where everything was.

The theme this year was "Under the Sea", so James's den decided that they wanted to be the Turtle Sharks. Half of them wanted to be turtles and the other half wanted to be sharks....so that was the compromise.

James's favorite activity all week, by far, was archery. Any free time he had in the schedule he would beg to go do extra shooting. He even got into an argument with the archery leader the first day because she thought he was too good to be a beginner and wouldn't let him do extra practice with the other beginners (why a full grown woman would argue with an 8 year old is a whole other story (!)

Each day they would rotate through 6 classes, 3 before lunch and 3 after lunch. They had 40 minutes each of archery, bb guns, crafts, science, sports, and scout skills. Crafts was usually the least favorite. I have yet to find a boy that loves crafts!

After the first day, the sports class got moved indoors to the gym, thank goodness!! Multiple days had heat indexes of over 102!

During scout skills the boys got to practice casting fishing poles with this magnetic fishing game. I stayed safely under the shade of the trees while they baked in the parking lot.

James liked doing BB guns, but thought that his BB gun at home was far superior in quality to the ones they were allowed to shoot. At least that was what he said when he missed the target lol.

More BB guns:

Every day after lunch, the kids got free time to go on a homemade slip and slide and eat snow cones.

James always wanted a snow cone, but after the first day he opted out of the slip and slide. There were so many kids waiting in line for it, they only ended up getting to go down once or twice before it was time to go. He decided that it was more worth it to spend all that time in archery.

The last day the Bear dens put on a mini carnival for the rest of the scouts. James chose to run the game of knocking over cans with a bean bag. He loved being in charge! He got really into character as the carnival attendant and didn't want to stop when someone offered to take over so he could actually play the games.

Rett had fun in the sibling den. They did crafts, played outside with bubbles, watched a lot of movies, and even got their own time for the slip and slide and snow cones.

It was a long, fun, and exhausting week! Every morning we would leave the house by 7:15 (the building is 45 minutes away) and be home a little after 5. Two days out of the week we went straight to basketball practice instead of home and on the last day we went straight to 2 back to back basketball games! I was dead tired every day and James was asking if we could go play at the pool before bed. Where do they get all the energy???