Sweet sweet summertime....

Whew...summer is busy and I'm not complaining. Merrick and I are enjoying summer so much with all our fun activities and playdates, that I'm so sad to see it's almost the mid of July already. Time waits for no one! Of course we had playdates last week and this week....some of them included the splash pad with Kael and Jace...

And the playstation with Payton and Parker...

Merrick loves his buddies! We also got to hang out this week with some of our other buddies that I didn't get pictures of ...Xavier, Max, Clark, Owen, Brooks, Paxton, Sawyer, Hudson as well as our good buddies pictured above! Merrick has so many good buddies and I have so many awesome mommy friends. We'd be lost with out them and feel so blessed to have them! Merrick loves to talk about his "buddies" to us and thanks God for his "buddies" at prayer time. We are blessed!

DQ ICE CREAM---IT'S A FIRST!

So with this peanut/treenut allergy Merrick has been limited to only having home made ice cream cones/sundaes due to the cross contamination that goes on in the ice cream joints. HOWEVER we had attended Kael's soccer game last week and they handed out Dilly Bars from DQ and I looked very closely at the package just to see what it all said about the allergies. To my surprise the PRE PACKAGED dilly bars (not the ones made up in the DQ) are made in a PEANUT/TREENUT free facility! SUPER excited we stopped on the way home for a lil treat for my man!!! He was SO excited to sink his teeth in such a delightful treat!

GOGGLES!!!

Last week we also had a playdate with our MOPS group (more buddies and more mommies--I told you we are BLESSED!) On of our lil MOPS friends had kiddos that wore their goggles in the splash pad and Merrick thought this was a splendid idea. We ended up purchasing some of our own for our summer events. The 1st night we purchased them he didn't want to take them off. In fact he had to wear them to throw water balloons! :)

And they served their purpose well at the pool! He even dared the BIG BOY water slide cause the goggles wouldn't let water get in his eyes!
It was a lil chilly at the pool that day but we had a great time digging in the sand pit and making a HUGE mess of ourselves...I really love having a lil boy---the dirt, the sand, the fun!!! Our house wouldn't be a home without a lil sand in it :)

Off to the library...
Have I mentioned how much I love our local library?? It's literally 2 mins from our house and the summer presentations are AWESOME! So far this summer we've seen the snake presentation, the juggler, and this week the Blank Park Zoo came to town bringing an owl, snake, giant cockroach, ferret, and a baby alligator. Merrick enjoyed touching the alligator! We are headed back tomorrow to see the FIREFIGHTERS!

FAMILY ADVENTURE

Merrick has wanted to camp for sometime now. Daddy thought it would be a good idea to start by trying it out in the yard before venturing to far from home. It didn't work so well. At 11pm Merrick was still awake asking what each and every noise was. (I kinda figured this would happen especially since we live close enough to hear all the interstate noise---police cars, semis, the train!) So we convinced Merrick to go inside and we set up the lil tent downstairs, he slept in it and Daddy and Mommy camped out in the basement with him! He was sleeping with in minutes and still had a great time! Here's a pic of the boys hanging out in the tent!

A PRAISE...

Early this AM I woke to the sirens going off and clicked on the TV to hear the news man say "Everyone on the NE side of Cedar Rapids(that's us) go to your safe place and shelter as these high winds are capable of producing tornado type damage". I woke Link and went to get Merrick. Upon hearing the noises coming from the backyard I just scooped him up and took blankets and all to the basement instead of trying to wake him gently. The storm sounded terrible! We ended up with 80mph winds. When the sun came up and we were able to see this is what we found outside in our backyard!
Looks just like a tree down right?!? WRONG! This huge clump of tree was from not the tree its laying by but the tree 12 feet away. The winds pretty much twisted it off and flung it. Thankfully the tree picture was there to stop it from flying into the house/window in the direction it was flying--which leads to MERRICK'S ROOM! The tree in the picture has a 3 foot scrape of no bark from the flying part of the tree hitting it! I get goosebumps thinking about it! No wonder it sounded so awful when I went to get our precious sleeping boy!!! Thank you God for keeping him safe! BLESSED!