Settling in, 4th of July, and Leaving for Vacation

Why hello!  It's nice to have the moving shenanigans behind us and get to start settling in!  We had a bunch of fun.  On July 4th we took some time playing in the backyard on the splashpad, and even made homemade ice cream too!  It was a fun day!

Now that we're in the new house, we've had various things we need to get.  Obviously an oversized pillow would be on the list, though maybe just to keep Grayson happy in the cart.

I took some time to start setting up my golf simulator Monday night.  I got the screen set up, and I hit a few foam balls into it.  Hopefully I get the rest of it set up... sometime. :)

We went on a few walks around the neighborhood on Tuesday.  Mostly, we tried the walk to the girls school.  On one of our outings we saw a lizard running across someone's driveway.

Grayson took a pretty crowded nap, and it really doesn't look that comfortable to me.  But I guess sometimes being surrounded by your friends is more important.

Of course we had a watermelon with our dinner on the 4th.  It was a really good watermelon, though it hadn't been in the fridge, which I now know is a pretty big deal to me.  It was even better the next day after spending a night in the fridge.

The kids were playing with all our silicon molds, which mostly meant standing on them.  I never picked up what the game was... maybe the floor is lava or something.  They were all happy though.

Monica and I were unpacking stuff in our room Tuesday night, and the neighbors behind us were doing fireworks, so it turns out we were in a pretty good place for some fireworks!

I've been in the works with the HOA company to try to get us early pool access, and it got all taken care of Wednesday!  So we got to go try out our pool, and it was super fun!  Possibly the best part is that we got all of the kids jumping in, and Grayson was getting his whole head completely wet and didn't care, he was just having so much fun jumping in.  He also did quite a bit of swimming around by himself too.  He'd jump in, and turn around and swim back to the edge of the pool.  He also started swimming back and forth across the whole pool, and it was so fun to watch him swimming along with his feet running in a walking motion!  I'll have to try to get a video of it with the waterproof camera.

And here we are after some pool side festivities getting ready to head home on Thursday evening.

We've been working on getting Brooke's new bed all set up, and she's been loving it.

Saturday found us in the car all day, driving to the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri.  We got lucky and there was a Buc-ee's on the way!  We stopped to go to the bathroom, and we picked up a few things and snagged a picture with the Buc-ee statue out front!

One of the things we needed was a straw for Grayson to drink his chocolate milk, and boy did they deliver!  What a happy camper.

We drove the full 11 hour drive Saturday, and made it in about 12 hours.  The kids are doing a lot better with road trips lately, and we were able to keep the breaks short.  The Ozark lake is actually a flooded river, and the hills down the side are STEEP!  Hopefully that comes across in this picture, but to be honest, it's steeper than you're thinking.  Our car didn't want to stay parked on the slope, so we pulled to the side halfway down the driveway.

Brooke and Audrey were very excited to get back together and hang out.  They headed to the back porch to read some stories together before bedtime.

Sunday morning Grayson helped me take the trash out to the dumpster.  When we were heading back a neighbor called out to us and asked if we wanted to see a turtle.  There was one chilling out right next to their tree, so we stopped by to give it a look.

After church Grayson and I headed to the dock for lunch.  We didn't stay there for long.  Grayson mostly wanted to just walk back and forth across the bridge to the dock.  He is... bridge obsessed!

Winry took her winky mustache to a whole new level by taking on the snappy mustache challenge!  I'm really glad she's learned to snap, because she really loves to do it.

And here's Winry walking out onto the dock in her church dress.  Just thought it was cute.

Well, we had a week settling in, and then taking off again!  We had a good time, and are looking forward to some fun this upcoming week here at the lake!