A life without love is like a year without summer. ~ Swedish Proverb

First of all, I want to say happy birthday to the best dad ever!  I love you, dad, and am so proud to be your daughter!  Here’s to another year of blessings and great memories to be made with family and friends!

Well today was the last day of school for the kids.  We officially have a sophomore, 8th, 7th and 5th grader.  They all had a great year and thrived academically, athletically and socially. We are all excited about summer which, of course, means sleeping in, late nights, friends, swimming, fishing, summer camps, bon fires, s’mores and lots of laughter.  It also means the countdown to our vacation officially starts today and there are only eight days until we will be on our way to Folly Beach, SC!  I’ve heard Charleston is a beautiful, historic city to visit and we will be only ten to twenty minutes from downtown. 

I am on an antibiotic for bronchitis so please pray everyone else stays healthy.  Travis is not feeling well this evening and is probably coming down with the stomach flu, and he has to work 13 hrs tomorrow.  The older three kids are all healthy but Ryan is getting another infection around his g-tube so I will have to call the doctor for more antibiotics for him.  Hopefully he stays healthy so we can have a great trip with everyone heading south.  

Otherwise things are good.  I haven’t been posting much these past couple months and really, that’s a good thing because no news means good news.  I promise to do a better job this summer posting photos of all our adventures.    The Lord has blessed us with health and strong family bonds, and we cherish our time together and with our dear friends as well. 

My job for tomorrow is to get our chore charts posted again like I do every summer.  Life runs so much more smoothly around here when the kids know what they have to do, and we don’t have to remind them over and over what is expected each week.  During the summer we require much more work from them than we do during the school year.  I always tell them, “you have 24 hrs in your day to do whatever you want; it won’t kill you to give me one of them to work around the house”. 

We send our love to each and every one of you and pray you are all well!  Please let us know how we can pray for you in the comments.  Blessings and sunshine to you all!