Mason is 14!

And we were able to spend his birthday weekend with the Iowa family. 

{I, admittedly, am getting pretty good at making Angel Food Cake!}

{We had planned to go tubing down the river, but rain got in the way, so we ended up spending a fun afternoon at Top Golf instead!}

{All the cousins. All growing up!}

Round two of birthday was spent having a Chipotle dinner with my parents (Mason’s request), and lots of cologne and clothes. I would have never guessed we would ever reach this point! 

I hope this kid has an endless supply of hair products, cologne, and full-length mirrors to make this trip around the sun sparkle! 

This time, 18 years ago…

If golden anniversaries are a thing like golden birthdays, then this is ours. 18 years on the 18th. And because nostalgia is my current favorite thing, a look back at how it started. I miss those baby faces!

Back to school!

 These three are back it—two of them are at new schools!

{Jacob is a sophomore.}

{Mason is a freshman.}

{Camryn is a 6th grader.}

{Heavy rain squashed any chance we had of taking outdoor pictures. But the show must go on…}

Molly Bits

 In absolutely no order. 

July Bits

 The pieces of our July puzzle.

{After more than a year of applying Nair, Camryn has now committed to the lifelong chore of shaving her legs. Any bets on when the excitement of this wears off?}

{We watched the 4th of July fireworks in our hometown on the 3rd with friends. Jacob was somewhere else, and I fell in the river.}

{My carpenters upgraded our shed from “falling apart” to “not as falling apart.” It looks great!}

{Jacob is our dependable long-distance chauffeur. He’s good at highway driving because there aren’t curbs or parking lots.}

Travel Baseball. The end.

Mason wrapped up his travel baseball season with a trip to the Field of Dreams where his team made it to the semi-finals (gasp) before being eliminated. They went 4-1 on the weekend, doubling their total wins for the season in a single weekend. It’s hard to believe that there are teams out there with less talent than the Canes, but we found them! I say this with absolutely no disrespect to Mason. Going from 12u to 14u is a huge leap, and Mason had his best season yet. He hit the ball well and consistently, his catching was the best I have ever seen it, and his grace to the bottom-of-the-barrel teammates that surrounded him each game was a true test of his character. He went out on the field each game working hard to play his best game, regardless of what follies and circus acts were happening around him. 

We were lucky to have our Iowa fan base in attendance, and spent a lot of time eating great food and visiting some pretty unique and fun wineries and breweries. It was a great weekend! 

{After the last game. None of us will miss a single thing about this team!}

{We spent a good chunk of time at the actual Field of Dreams despite not actually ever playing there. Mason participated in the home run derby, and Caleb was picked from the crowd to participate in the Ghost Players entertainment show that took place on the field. And though he will make excuses for his performance, let’s just say that Caleb has lost all grounds to criticize Mason’s baseball skills…}

{The boys found some time to trout fish while the rest of us strolled around downtown Dubuque.}

{Our chauffeur for the weekend. He’s really good at long-haul highway drives, and I love not being behind the wheel!}

Cicadas!

From those of you living under a rock—much like the cicadas—this is the year that both 13-year and 17-year cicadas emerged simultaneously, something that hasn’t happened since 1803 and won’t happen again until 2245, so literally once in a lifetime. The emergence was very sporadic—meaning that while my parents had very few at their house, and our former neighbors had none at their house, our current neighborhood was crawling with them. Pun intended! 

According to the Internet, hearing loss begins at a decibel of 85. The decibel meter app on my phone clocked those noise machines at 93 during some points. It really was a deafening loud, and it started as soon as the sun came up!

No surprise that they were as loud as they were given the fact that they coated our plants and sidewalks and tree trunks.

And because they caused no harm other than freaking you out when they landed on you while riding in a truck with the window down, or bounced off your face when you were taking your dog for a walk, I loved having science come to life in our backyard! And now that they are gone, we are left with a yard littered with exoskeletons as a reminder of what was.