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- (If you’d like to take a stroll down memory lane – here are the past 4th of July Abby’s Saturday posts: #358, #306, #253, #154, #103, #51)
- Yay for a week of no sickness! Every time we go through a round of sickness taking down our house, I tell myself I will be thankful every single day that we are not sick going forward. So, I am SO thankful for a healthy week!
- While we weren’t sick, our car was. Our main car’s “check engine” light came on – I wasn’t worried about it, but Derrick was concerned. He made me promise not to drive it anywhere until he could get it looked into. It turns out, it was just a faulty gas cap (it’s been broken ever since we bought the car, but I guess it finally really broke). Another item to add to the “I’m so thankful this week” list.
- Since we were “stuck” at home for the first half of the week, we spent LOTS of time outside – like endless time. The kids spent hours in our little pool, we ate so many of our meals outside, it was simply a beautiful, wonderful week (and without being able to drive the car, it was quiet and on the more relaxed side). Another thing to add to the “I’m so thankful this week” list.
- Speaking of running around outside – our children rarely wear shoes outside. They just hate taking the time to stop and put them on. Unfortunately, that decision proved to be a bad one for Braelynn this week as she got stung, on the bottom of her foot, by a bee. Poor girl. She sobbed for (what felt like) hours, crying that it was “the worst day ever” and that she was NEVER going outside without shoes EVER again. Thankfully, she isn’t allergic to bee stings and has recovered completely.
- I gave Braelynn a book-reading-challenge this week. I challenged her to read 5 books and promised her a reward whenever she finished. I collected a whole slew of easy-reader books we had and put them together for her to choose from – and she instantly got to it. In fact, she got it in her head that she wanted to read all 5 books in one day. She didn’t quite make it through the last book and was quite upset, but she woke up the next morning and finished. She’s quite determined – whenever she sets her mind to do something, she goes after it whole-heartedly. I am so proud of her! As her reward, she got to go shopping & she found a Sonic the Hedgehog stuffie. She’s now started into her second 5-book reading challenge, this time working toward a special dinner out!
- We finally made it back to Kennywood this week (between traveling & sickness, it’s been over a month since we’ve been there – which is UNHEARD of for us in the summer! Typically we are at Kennywood at least once a week through the summer months.) We were there Monday evening (with my Mom!) and went back again last night for the first night of their 4th of July fireworks! Monday was a fairly busy day, but yesterday was a slower day at the park (we figured it would be a toss up – it would either be SUPER busy with it being the beginning of the holiday weekend & their first night of fireworks, or it would be SUPER slow since there were some storms threatening and the rest of the weekend has a much better weather forecast). Thankfully, it was slow & we were able to do a TON of stuff at the park – more than we usually do!
While we were eating dinner, Braelynn declared that she wanted to ride Exterminator – Kennywood’s indoor wild mouse roller coaster. She’s been tall enough to ride it for a while now, but since it’s in the dark, she’s been too nervous to ride. Well, last night was the night – and she rode it!! She was quite nervous (my arm is bruised – no joke – from her clinging to it the entire ride), but she did it! And now that she’s done it, she said that it “wasn’t so bad” and that she’d ride it again. - I finally finished all of our vlogs from our Florida vacation! Talk about a HUGE labor of love! I had over 800 video clips from our vacation, so it took me a while to go through them all. I’m SO proud of the films I created though and absolutely love that we have those precious memories documented of our family. We truly had the BEST time away. (You can watch them on my YouTube channel HERE.)
