1st day of Summer!!!

I was super excited for our first evening of summer, as a family. The kiddos and I picked up Ellie from school, walked to her classroom to say goodbye to her buddies and classmates, and took our time meandering to the car. I had a perfect plan of what our celebratory evening would hold...but life on "blogs" and in books tend to paint a different picture than reality sometimes. Haha! Ellie cried for 40 min. about how much she'll miss her teacher, how mean her friends were today, how happy she was that we surprised her with a frosty, and how she hopes Annie is in her class next year. (Hmmmm...puberty at 7??)
We truly did enjoy a great sun shiny evening outside with pizza, music on the back deck, and relaxing on the lawn chairs...

but THEN our lawn mower broke. And that's always fun for the hubby to endure after a long day's work, ha! ;) So we decided to head out to get ice cream for a fun distraction (accompanied with a quick trip to Lowes for lawnmower parts).

Lowes was a hit, let me tell ya. Not only did I get stuck in the car for 10+ min with kids who thought they were getting ice cream right then, but Ryan ended up buying the wrong parts for the mower. Success.
But ice cream time soon arrived! Koala Berry, our fav!!!! :)
But we forgot the BOGO coupon...whoops.

Haha, oh the adventures of our family! :)

The absolute highlight of this typical family of 5 crazed evening was most assuredly this:
**After both respectfully (and maybe a bit angrily) arguing with Ellie about who should be punished for the sibling post-ice cream "she closed the door on me" war, enuring quite a few tears from my now second grade daughter, this is what she says to me through her pre-pubescent tears:
"Mommy, you're not mean. In fact you give me more than I need in life. You love me so much and I'm glad you're my mommy. Thanks for having me mommy, I'm so lucky."
Finished our emotional evening with a five min video by Jason Gray "Remind Me," brought up some great conversation between Ellie and I. We talked for the first time tonight about how some people don't live with both their mom and dad because sometimes they choose to not be married anymore...tough chat. But again, real life...
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSIVjjY8Ou8

SO ALL THAT TO SAY...
It was a good day. This is real life. This is good.And we are finished with our first child's first year of REAL school. It was a battle and the battle has just begun. But we are going to faithfully keep loving on these little arrows God has entrusted to us. Thank you Jesus.