Some Summer

I wanted to get all caught up over Christmas Break, and now it is ending and I posted once. I admit that I am a bit terrified of Monday morning when school and seminary resume. I survived seminary and maintained my 4.0 even with 4 classes last semester so I should be more confident going in to this new semester, but in reality I am far more nervous this time because this time I KNOW what lies in wait. I never slept more than a few hours a night and I never had more than 2 spare minutes to rub together. It was intense and while I know that if I did it then, I can do it again, I am not sure I am ready. Oh well, ready or not, right?

Just for the record though, I loved my lit classes last semester. I had two family classes that were less exciting but the two lit classes were great and my teachers hugely boosted my confidence after that nasty writing teacher I had last year. I went in a bit nervous since the basic writing lady thought I sucked and these were upper division classes, but these teachers were incredibly encouraging and even told me some of my work needed to be published. Of course, I am too busy, or maybe just too lazy to get them ready for publication but just the suggestion was enough for now. And I got to be the student moderator during Steinbeck week so what more could I ask for?

Anyway, let's try to dump a little summer on here.

I mentioned my mom's visit in the last post, so let's start there.

Strawberry Picking




 
The comfy theater...I think this was when we saw Transformers and I was out cold about 10 minutes in. 
 
We went to Long Grove, Illinois to tour what I thought was a Chocolate Factory but it was actually just a small store so we skipped the tour and just wandered around town.



 
The girls both marched in the 4th of July parade. This is Alyssa's coach, Chelsea. She coaches her in synchro and private lessons. Chelsea was Miss Pleasant Prairie 3 years ago, so she still gets to march with the new court each year.




 
Because Chloe was under 7 at the time, a parent had to march with her. Since my mom was in town I assigned Seth to march. Doesn't he looked thrilled?
 
I didn't even recognize Chloe at first because they took off her cute hat and put this goofy one on her. 


 
The girls before the parade. The theme was Take Me Out to the Ball Game. 

 
Over the summer, we got a new ball team in town. They are called the Kenosha Kingfish and they are in the NWL, a league of college players who play in the summer to practice with a wooden bat. They fixed up the old ball field down the street from us, which is actually the only ball field still in existence from the All American Girls Baseball League, as seen in A League of Their Own. Did you know that one of those teams was from Kenosha? Now you do. Anyway, this park is a blast. They have fun and games between every inning and let the kids run the bases and have a big boat out in the outfield where you can watch the game and all kinds of other fun stuff. We really enjoyed it!
 
The kids met Elvis, the Kingfish

 
It was throwback night, so the team wore jerseys that looked like what the Kenosha Comets (ladies team) wore, and the first pitch was thrown by a 90+ year old woman who was on the team. 
 
A bunch of people were in the old school uniforms, as you see below. 
 
Because I was in school until late July, the kids spent the mornings finding ways to amuse themselves. One day Alex set up court.

 
He taped a pencil to a cup for a gavel and I have no idea why he was wearing a helmet.
 
The witness
 
The jury
 
We went to the Dairy Breakfast and dragged Dan along. A lady attempted to take a pic of all of us but you know how that goes, right? No picture to be found on the camera. Oh well.



















And one last picture that is sitting on my phone is this squint-eyed, bright-flash selfie of Seth and I at Summerfest. We planned to go and just watch the smaller shows, but when we got there they were offering Zac Brown tickets for half off because the show had already started. We missed a few songs, but the rest of the show was awesome. I was sad that we missed Highway 20 Ride...that song makes me cry every single time...but later we learned that they didn't even play that one.

I think the only other summer pics I have are from our trip to Utah, but none of those are loaded to Photobucket yet so for now....