Happy Birthday Grandad!

Happy 75th Birthday Grandad!!  We Love You!  We look forward to celebrating with you later today.    Have a great day!

Weekend Fun

The fall season of soccer has started and it's going well so far!   Jake's club has been split into three levels now, with Jake in the highest skill level, but playing in both the middle and higher level based on availability of games and for varying experiences.   The team tied their first game and won their second game...quite a change from the endless losses of of the first spring season.

 

Some of my lovely school friends put together an amazing Day of Service for our city on Sunday.   Growing up, I'm not sure how my parents did it, but I feel like I always had an opportunity to give back.  In both high school and college I was on the community service leadership teams, and while I'm very busy giving my time still today, it's time to start getting the kids involved.   So I brought them to our local park clean up and we all did some great painting together.  

 

 

Saturday night was our annual block party.   It includes three blocks around us, and it was filled with kids!   My kids were introduced to nerf guns by the local boys...great!   But games, pinata and potluck make for a fun party!

 Lastly, the girls and I went to our first Daisy Troop information session on Sunday.   We'll be helping start up a troop at our school this year.   The best part was that they actually went into a room of girls they didn't know, did arts and crafts and learned songs for the hour we were learning about leadership, and then PERFORMED on stage with the other kids.   This would literally have been unheard of just six months ago!!  wahoo!!!

Late Summer Post 1

I'm not finding much time to update this blog these days, but I love to save the pictures in our annual blog books, so here I'll dump some random summer fun.

Fredrikson Family Camp:   One of my Dad's fondest memories of when my sister and I were young was heading up to Deer Lake for summer family camp.  I honestly don't remember much about it except for my Mom's discomfort with camp living, the craft shack and getting stitches from a bad fall.   But, my parents really wanted to re-create a version of it for my kids this summer.  So we went up for an overnight and my parents went all out with setting up their home like a family camp:  badminton set, horse shoes, tie dye, etc.    

Here was a nature walk where the girls found a couple of banana slugs-

 Cooling off in the shade after some serious badminton games-

 The kids bonding with little Sabrina-

 

Gilroy Gardens Fun-  hottest day all summer in the hottest city, but Gilroy Gardens is built for the younger age group so the kids had a blast.

 

 Summer Movie nights with friends:

 All three kids mastered the water slide this summer too!