The Scroggins Family: August 2012

We loved Spring in Chicagoland! Beautiful sunshine and gorgeous vibrant colors! And best of all, several visitors with whom to enjoy our new surroundings. It was a busy few months, but oh so fun! Here's what May looked like for us...

Mother's Day pictures at the Nature Center

So thankful to be a Mama to these two!

After we returned home from our picnic the kids got their swimsuits on and went to work washing the cars.

We have so many birds in the trees around our home, including some who made a nest in our tree. It's fun to see them flying about and listening to them sing. But I love it whenever I see one of these beautiful cardinals!

Let the party begin... the Thomas family is here! We were so excited to have my sister and her family here for a few weeks in May! It was such a joy to see the cousins together again after having been apart for 6 months. They played hard the whole time, and slept hard too. And we have LOTS of pictures from our two weeks together!

So excited to be together again!

As soon as breakfast was done it was time to try out the zipline.


There goes Josiah!

And now Micah!

Josh was happy with bubbles

We had a fun morning playing at a nearby park

Downtown, checking out the sights of Chicago

The jelly bean is always a favorite for the kids

Sisters in Chicago

Cousins in Chicago

The kids had so much fun running around in the open space by Buckingham Fountain! And Uncle Micah only added to the fun!

Josh and Ashlyn thought the craziest thing in the world was pushing each other around in the stroller and then chasing after it. So fun to see them laugh and laugh together!

As we headed out of the city we stopped at the "world's largest McDonald's" (according to Micah). He is fascinated with this 2-story McDonald's that we drive by every time we go to the city. I think he considers it to be the city's top attraction. Haha! So it was extra fun to finally get to go inside.

The Thomas family flew out here on Josh's birthday so of course we had to celebrate it while he was here. And every birthday celebration in our home begins with breakfast birthday cake.

We had two cakes for two birthday boys. Uncle Micah's birthday was just two weeks earlier (and we needed an extra cake to feed us all!)

Josh is very into garbage trucks so he said he wanted a garbage truck birthday cake. This is what I came up with. I'm so thankful the timing worked out for us to be able to celebrate his birthday with him!

Happy Birthday Joshua!

Time for presents!

The cap guns were a hit! Josh loves being a cowboy!

Micah was excited to have his cousins come see him play in one of his baseball games. And he even got to play his favorite position... catcher!

Cheering for the home team on a very hot day!

We had lots of HOT weather while they were here so that meant lots of fun with water outside!

Josh and Ashlyn were a bit more timid than the big boys, but they still had fun!

The Dads were happy to just sit on the side and watch

Enjoying lunch outside

A hot day means time for a lemonade stand. Micah had some business funds from his Hot Cocoa stand last winter, so he decided to invest in lemonade for the summer. And he recruited a few workers to help out. They had a pretty successful day ~ about 15 customers in an hour!

We celebrated Uncle Micah's birthday one evening with some strawberry delight. (Not sure why the picture posted sideways though.)

Micah's birthday lunch at Portillo's

Enjoying some yummy watermelon!

The boys enjoyed the freedom of sleeping downstairs on the air mattress. It was always funny to check on them and see how they move around when they have the space to roll.

A day at Legoland Discovery Center!

The highlight of the day was building cars and racing them on the track. I think they all spend well over an hour perfecting their cars and racing them against others!

Ashlyn liked taking breaks in the midst of car building for a trip down the slide.

Time for lunch

Read for some 3-D lego movies

May brought the end of our Classical Conversations program this year and Micah did an incredible job this working hard to memorize his weekly grammar. This was his first year to work toward Memory Masters and he was able to get down about 90% of what he had covered. Pretty good for his first time diligently working toward that goal. So he wasn't able to achieve Memory Master status, but we still wanted to reward him for a job well done. The reward ~ Settler's of Catan! And of course that meant we all had to sit down and play!

The next day we had a party at our house, celebrating the end of our Classical Conversations year. The families from our community joined us for a potluck lunch and the kids had a ball playing together outside.

After a while we headed across the street to the park for a little change of scenery. The younger kids were content with the playground. But the older kids were able to get a game of capture the flag going, with the help of one of the parents.

Ashlyn LOVES this new toy at our playground. Not quite sure how it works, but you sit in and it starts spinning. If you're sitting just right, it actually gets going pretty fast.

We're so thankful for new friends in our CC Community!

Ashlyn loves her baby dolls and was thrilled to have Josh play "house" with her for two whole weeks. It was so fun to see them imitate what we do! After a bit of sickness in our home, they even carried around throw up bowls for the babies because they were sick.

Watching another baseball game...

and having fun on the playground afterward.

Love those boys!

During the Thomas's last weekend there, we sent the kids on a little scavenger hunt. Presents are always so much more fun when you have to figure out clues and hunt to find them. It was an early birthday gift for Micah (and Ashlyn too) because we wanted to have it for the cousins to enjoy. We had hoped to have this earlier in their visit, but we were thankful it arrived with a few days left for them to all enjoy it.

Heading out to the garage after reading the last clue

Looking, looking, looking!

Here it is!

A trampoline!

Time to get this thing put together!

Ready to jump!

Micah's birthday season leading up to his birthday ended up being pretty long this year. In addition to the trampoline, he also got to open presents from Josiah and Joshua while they were here

Micah's birthday wish this year was to watch Star Wars with Josiah. So one night after the younger kids were in bed, they got a bowl of popcorn and were ready to watch. After watching A New Hope, he was eager to watch the next two. And now he claims them to be his favorite movies!

The kids had fun with this science experiment that we never got around to during the school year ~ a volcano. We set it off several times and every time they loved it just as much as the first. I only got a picture of it pre-eruption though as we were videotaping during the eruption. They had fun adding twigs and things to their model to make it look like a real mountain.

Enjoying another lunch outside. There's something about eating outside that makes lunchtime so much more fun!

Trying out the new slip n' slide

Ashlyn was happy playing in the water the pooled at the end of it.

Dumping it on Micah was lots of fun too though!

On one of the Thomas' last few days with us we headed back down to Chicago to check out Navy Pier. Sadly, we never got a picture of all of us together down there.