Summer moments

We had a lot of great moments while staying at my parents' house for the summer. 

Maddie and I went on a lot of walks. Sometimes Abi came with us, but most of the time it was Maddie and I going on a quest to find deer and cats. 

A house up the street had kittens, so we had to visit every day.

cute little leaping fawn...

We also got to enjoy their amazing yard.

My mom made me a cake to celebrate my birthday a few months late...

And we went to Barnes and Noble as per our usual tradition. But this year we watched movies at home instead of the theater.

Abi didn't want to go to any stores, so Maddie and I donned our masks and went back-to-school shopping together, just the two of us. But we took lunch home for everyone.

One of the biggest things:

Maddie has been too afraid of taking the training wheels off her bike. When we have tried to convince her to do it, she would say she never wanted to ride a bike again. When we moved I got rid of her bike since it was getting small for her anyway, and Abi's bike (that she had outgrown) became Maddie's. Even though she said she wouldn't ride it, I brought it to my parents' house with us and parked it on the back patio. Eventually she started getting on just to try... on the grass. All summer she tried and tried to ride it. She finally did it! And it was amazing. 

Maddie made a doll.

I wanted to read the Bark of the Bog Owl to my girls, and so I ended up reading it to my parents too. My dad was the one begging for more chapters. 

For part of the time Doug took over my mom's office to work, but then he ended up having to go into work for a couple months, so he wasn't able to work from home again until the end of August. 

He spent most of the Saturdays working on restoring my parents' picnic table and benches. 

Maddie was proud of her biking injuries.

As usual, I took part in The Reading Rush read-a-thon. I look forward to it all year. 

A frosting thing Maddie made one day out of paper...

We didn't go out in our yard much in Provo- we had an insane amount of insects there and it just wasn't comfortable, so it was really fun to spend time reading outside. 

Abi had her first summer job. She spent the summer transcribing journals and family history records for Doug's mom.