And Two More Months...

 It is hard to believe summer has come and almost gone and it has been a different one. We still were able to celebrate Father's Day and some of the family came into town to celebrate. We had dinner at our house that Friday evening. The kids made Andrew cards and Jackson worked hard on drawing a Jeep on his. Andrew also had us all go out to the bike trail at the ranch to work on cleaning it up for Father's Day.

The Bobziens and the Brawners came into town and the kids all had fun playing together. That actually began multiple continuous weeks of family coming into town. Each week/weekend brought different people, so there were a lot of sleepovers, swimming, bike ride, trampoline jumping, etc. We also went up to Pella and surprised Kaitlin with a Last Day of Chemo Party. We made signs and joined some of her friends and neighbors to line the street when she came home and had some food for a little outside party. It was so great to be able to celebrate that with her. And we celebrated several birthdays starting with a combo party for Charlotte, Emmie and Annie at the beginning of July and Lincoln's 11th birthday at the end of July.  We decided to not send the kids to Kanakuk, so Lincoln got to celebrate his birthday at home. He was supposed to go to kamp on his birthday, but they had a Covid outbreak a few weeks before our kids were supposed to go. We knew we couldn't be honest about the 2 week quarantine before kamp (and knew that is probably how they ended up with the outbreak in the first place) so we kept them home and family came into town. Lincoln's birthday parties have been pretty small the last few years, so it was fun to have more people there this time. It was really hard though, knowing that the kids weren't going to kamp and I hated for them to miss out on everything there. We had even already started prepping and got the trucks out and going through packing list. They really could have used it this summer, but we felt like it was the honest decision to make in light of everything kamp was already going through. And Lincoln also got to celebrate his birthday early with some friends. For our kids' 11th birthdays, we let them take a couple friends to do something fun. Lincoln chose St. Louis and he took Josh and Alex. We met up with Sara, Lissy and Molly throughout the excursions and Brady joined in with the boys. We hit up Flying Spider (masks were required, but there was hardly anyone there, so lots of fun for the kids), and Union Station for the first day and then stayed overnight at the Sedlaks and hit up the zoo the next morning. It was a fun, quick trip and they all had fun getting out and doing something after being cooped up so much. Another celebration was Fourth of July. Jackson got to help with the K-Life fireworks tent several times from setting things up and taking it all back down again. I only had to work one shift and it went smoothly. I think they had a pretty successful year. And we had a lot of family back in town. The sad part of the celebration was that my Uncle Bob passed away around that time. He was my mom's first sibling to pass away and he will definitely be missed. But then soon after, we got to celebrate the arrival of Gabbie Hope, who arrived all healthy and doing well. Ellie and I got to go up and visit her the day she came home from the hospital and then the whole Taylor family came back a little later and we all got to get some snuggles in. She is absolutely precious and Kaitlin did so well during all of it.

Aside from a lot of family time, we had other going ons. First, Jackson got hired on at HyVee.  So, he has been putting in his hours there. His first few shifts were right around July 4th, so he spent his days cutting fruit and making fruit pizzas. Lots of new skills. He also was taking an online class for Personal Finance along with practice for football and basketball. He has definitely been learning time management and was able to pull off an A in his finance class. 

Lincoln was able to have a shortened baseball season for a travel team he was on, the Rage. They played several games in Kirksville and went out of town to Bevier and Marceline. They were supposed to go to Show Me State games in Columbia, but they ended up being canceled. While Lincoln was able to learn some more fundamentals from his coach, he lost interest since he always played right field. It is kind of sad to think that it was probably his last year of baseball, but it was a bit of a difficult season to watch. But he did love the chance to play soccer this summer. Matt set up quite a few practices and some scrimmages for them. The twins got to play too and they loved it. They all did a great job and were fun to watch.

And just before the 4th, Bennett had another accident, this time on the bike.  It was quite a doozy and a neighbor caught it on his security camera.  You can see Bennett come down the road and then he gets thrown off his bike and he and the bike both tumble. We are so grateful it wasn't any worse, but he did scrape up the opposite side of his face than from the long board accident.

Finally, probably the saddest news of the summer was that Buddy died. He was out at the ranch with Andrew and the three younger boys having the time of his life. He loved going out there and chasing the cows and running around everywhere. After checking cows, he went with Andrew to do a quick ride on a new horse Tom wanted Andrew to try. They just went a mile out and turned around to head back to the barn. Andrew noticed Buddy slowing down, so he went on and let him come back at his own pace since they were just around 300 yards from the barn. But Buddy didn't come back and when Mary and Lincoln went to find him, he wasn't doing well. They brought him back to the house and gave him water to try to cool him down if he was overheating and Andrew attempted CPR, but there was nothing that could be done. They were all devastated. Andrew went ahead and buried him out there. The rest of us didn't know until they all got home. I don't think Andrew could have made it through a phone call. Everyone was so sad. For all of the frustrations Buddy could cause, he was a good dog and Andrew's constant companion. He will definitely be missed.