4th of July fun!

The fourth of July was a great weekend for our family! The boys woke up super excited on that day and remembered it was the 1st Saturday of the month-- so that meant Home Depot kid's clinic!
This time Daddy got to come with us so it was especially fun! They made little picnic caddies and now they are the tote for whatever they can find that fits in them!







Then we got adventurous and decided to go to a big children's amusement park near Pittsburgh. It is called Idlewild, and it was such a great place! Everything is geared for young children, so Carson and Connor where able to ride on EVERYTHING! It was so fun to see how excited they were about what looked like the lamest rides. They didn't care and had such a great day. We even stayed until 10:00 when they had a firework show and it was also great. It has an attached (and included in the price) water park with big slides and tubes kind of like Sunsplash in Az. We got in our suits and realized that 70 degrees just isn't very warm to go swimming. :(
Overall though I would recommend this little place to anyone who has young children who ventures out this way!
Here are a few highlights:

This one looked especially lame, but it turned out to be one of their favorites! They basically pedalled with their hands along this little track. We weren't sure if Connor could do it or not, so they let one of us walk behind with a stick in case he needed a push. As you can see, the stick was not needed since Kevin was RUNNING just to keep up with Connor! He was hauling!

Carson's Church Talk

A few weeks ago Carson was asked to give the talk in Primary class at church. Now, as a preface, he has NEVER given a single talk in Primary. Has he been assigned before? Yes. Would he stand up and talk in the microphone? Not a chance. Not even a bribe has worked so far. So, when we got the paper slip stating the date and theme, I knew we were in for another struggle.

The week went by and I forgot about the talk, but luckily Daddy had enough smarts to remind Carson about it on Saturday. With dread, I had him come look through the Home Evening drawer to see if we could spark some creativity. He looked through and then told me, "I want to write my own." What do you mean 'write my own'? As in write your own talk? Okay, whatever you want.

So Carson goes off to his room to write a talk on forgiveness while I stare blankly at the drawer, trying to come up with a simple, effective talk.

Five minutes later, he comes in with his talk completely finished. I laughed and asked him to read it to me. I was dumbfounded when he was finished. He had caught the perfect essence of forgiveness and it was perfect. Was it long? No. Was it eloquent and thorough? No. But it was Carson's testimony of forgiveness and I loved it. Add his sweet testimony of the Savior and prophet at the end, and you can see how my heart melted when he stood up and read his own little talk that Sunday. So here it is, hand-written by Carson:

Translation (if you can't read his sound-based writing):

Forgiveness is when you do something bad. You say, "sorry." You ask for forgiveness and that person says, "yes."

We're back!!!

We are alive! Sorry for the delay. We appreciate you patience (most of you, anyway) as we try to get back to a normal summer routine. My music classes have been soo great this summer, but it has been a little consuming. It is great news to finally have the classes boom, so I can't complain, but apparently others can (Marc).
So, here we go: I'll post all of the random things we have done this summer and show you how much fun we have been having with Carson home. I LOVE it! I have missed having him be away at school, and being gone full day in the fall will be really tough, but we have enjoyed every minute of the summer togetherness. Enjoy! Finally!