July

July

July truly passed by in a blur. With our trip to Flathead Lake, the 4th of July, and our family reunion, I pretty much blinked and July was gone.

Probably the most exciting other news of the month was that Ailey went to Girls Camp for the first time!!

She was super excited and also very nervous!!

Katie, Ailey, and Clara

I was texted a couple of pictures of Ailey from some of my friends who were at Girls Camp too... like the one below... and I saw more on FB.  It definitely looked like Ailey was having a great time!!

Camie and Ailey making crafts!!

While Ailey was gone our house was SO QUIET!! Reilly and Ailey are our loud chatterboxes. Kameron and Bryn are both quieter, definitely calmer, and enjoy doing their own thing. It was weird. So silent. Tyler and I took advantage of having only two kids at home and did a bunch of one-on-one things with Kameron and Bryn. Tyler had each one of them come and have lunch with him at the cafeteria at his office. They have some great food! They loved it.

Kam declined taking a selfie. 15 year olds...

Bryn and I went to the movies together, shopping, and out for a treat.

We went on a bunch of family walks after dinner:

Enjoying the view!!

Ailey came home from camp full of tales of adventure!! She had a BLAST and said that she didn't miss us a bit! Good. This from the girl who cried her eyes out the night before because she was going to miss me so much. Ha ha!!

We've hung out and done a lot of this...nothing!

We started Tea Party Tuesdays:

My girls have been begging me to do this with them for the last 6 months. My step-sister-in-law Hanna is a home schooling mama and she does all kinds of fun/interesting things with her girls. This is one of them. She has tea parties with her girls where you share and discuss poetry...fun and educational. (Don't even get me started on my rant about how poetry is dead in the WA state school system.) Well...things were pretty busy around here and we never got around to doing it. When school got out for summer this was number one on my girls list of things to do...and we still never got around to it. Finally on the VERY last Tuesday of July we managed to squeeze it in and it was a HIT!!

On this particular day we discussed Shel Silverstein (Bryn's pick), poems from a vintage 1930s children's book of poetry (Ailey's pick), and the children's poem Which Loved Best by Joy Allison which I love and quote often!! I made Reilly memorize it when she was little because she was very often "little Nell" in the poem...and so are a few other Johnson kids that I could name. Hint. Hint. (They got the message.)  It also has the distinction of once being quoted in general conference by President Monson which lends it a certain gravitas to my children. I also picked my old favorite Stay Gold by Robert Frost. This poem was memorized by me and my cousin Tania in the height of an Outsiders frenzy. (Tania, Stacey, and I also memorized nearly all of the Shel Silverstein poems from Where the Sidewalk Ends one summer too. There was no TV at the lake. There still isn't.)

That lead to this:

Glorious day!!

**Side note: When I was in 4th grade my 17 year-old babysitter Andrea Fullmer was reading it. She could barely watch us because she said it was SOOO GOOD! She told me all about it and told me that if I let her finish it she would leave her copy with me. She did. That book changed me. My horizons were forever broadened and a whole new world of literature opened up for me. My babysitter Andy and I discussed these characters for a month straight. She bought me an Outsiders Tiger Beat magazine that I still have and picked me up and took me to see the movie with she and her cool high school friends. Andy was an awesome babysitter!! The next summer at the lake I introduced my cousin Tania to the joys of Pony Boy, Soda Pop, Johnny, Dally et al. Since then I have LOVED sharing this book with friends, family, and MOST OF ALL... MY CHILDREN!! This book made readers out of Reilly and Kameron...even though I initially had to bribe them to read it. They loved it. When Kameron heard that Ailey was reading it he literally fist pumped the air and shouted "yes!" (That's more emotion than I have seen out of Kameron in about 6 months. 15 is a little on the apathetic and surly side these days.) Reilly happened to call home that night and instantly began quoting it. Ailey devoured it in a day. She loved it too!!**

We went back to the lake because it's summer and it's hot:

Hanging out with my mom's dog...Maggie Mae

She's getting calmer. Hallelujah. She used to just be a black blur in pictures.

In all our lakey glory!

Where is our little Norwegian flower?

Sitting in the shade. Trust me. He was having a good time. He got in and got out. He cannot take the heat.

View from my pink floatie. Looking at a child of mine who is under her pink floatie.

Then we went to dinner. In our swim suits. Wet swim suits. Lake hair don't care!

And we sucked down about a million of these.

And...That was July.