First Day of School: 2nd grade & 4th grade

Today was our FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

Ella & Miss Delaney (2nd grade)

Lily & Miss Ahlert (4th grade)

These two cuties are home with Mom!

our last hurrah of summer

We enjoyed a wonderful family day today.
We began our day with one of our favorites, pumpkin baked oatmeal, and then headed to the 9am gathering at The Bridge Church. After church we grabbed lunch at Panera, using our gift cards, and then headed to Carolina Beach.
We participated in the summer reading program through New Hanover County Library.  Each of the kids received a coupon for three different things down at Carolina Beach: one free hour of paddle boat or bike rental, a free ice cream cone at Krazy Kones and a pick 3 candy's at the Fudge Shop.

We tried the paddle boats first. It really was the perfect day, overcast & breezy, not sweltering! We only had to use 2 of our coupons since we needed 2 paddleboats.

We decided to go ahead and do the bike rental since we still had 2 coupons left. That was fun and very entertaining.  Everyone smiled and waved.

After the bike ride the kids picked out their candy, which we are saving for our road trip this weekend. We then got their ice cream cones and headed out to the beach to play!

Savoring these moments when we are all together.

summer bucket list: tie dying shirts

This year, at school, Lily tie dyed shirts for their field day. She loved it, told the other kids about it, and they wanted to try it again over the summer.  Well sadly, our summer is almost over! I ordered a kit on amazon, grabbed everyone a white shirt at Walmart and today we tie dyed shirts.
We did it on a weekend  while Jake was home, to join in on the fun and have an extra set of hands. Speaking of hands, all 12 of our hands were busy tying and dying so I don't have any pictures of the process, but I do have pictures of the finished product.

Parkwood Estates

Here is Jake's recent project for/with our community. 

Over a year ago, a car hit the Parkwood Estates sign at the entrance to our neighborhood.  No one knew who hit it and it was left there, untouched, for a long time.  The hurricane happened and people were busy with bigger, more pressing, projects. Fast forward to this past May, our community had a meeting one Saturday to talk about different needs in our community.  The sign was on the top of that list. We needed to remove the old sign, take care of some fallen trees and landscaping and then tackle a new sign.  Jake stepped up and said he could build a new sign.  Our neighbors agreed that they would help raise funds and gave some insight on the new sign. Jake took over from there and here is what he came up with:

Jake and a handful of neighbors installed the sign on Saturday afternoon. It looks beautiful! The community has been very pleased with the final result.

Scripture Art

A sweet friend of ours recently gave us this coloring book.

I am loving coloring scripture to hang around the house, gift to friends, and the girls have each put one in their folders for school. We can always improve at scripture memory and hiding God's Words in our hearts.

by Lily