Summer 2014

On Friday, August 1st, I thought to myself, “Whew.  I made it.”  Months in advance, I have to plan out the summer, arranging for camps and activities for the kids.  We are on the home stretch now, as the last week of summer is Mom Camp.  More on that later.

We started the summer with the Balloon Glow.

balloon

And some dress up from the favorite new movie.

annaelsa

 

We’ve done A LOT of this:

Spool

In fact, Samantha learned how to jump off the diving board this summer.  It’s about time.

This one, on the other hand, has been doing it (with her float) for a while:

Epool

She has had a few lessons this summer, and might be a fish, just like Samantha.

 

We haven’t done enough of this:

lake

We’ve also seen most of the children’s shows at the library.  Samantha got picked to be a volunteer in every show that made requests. This one was Billy Jonas.  It was a new show for the library, and what a wonderful surprise!

billyjonas

And we couldn’t miss Roger Day!
rogerday

 

The girls have spent lots of time on this:

ferriswheel

 

And even got to ride on one of these:

IMG_6070

 

And because we didn’t already have enough going on, we scraped the popcorn ceiling off in 4 rooms.

ceiling

 

I think that about sums it up.  I didn’t intend to let the whole summer go by and not post.  Hopefully, this summer in pictures captures it all.  School starts next week!

The Ferris Wheel

My dad built a Ferris wheel out of mainly scrap metal for his grand kids.  It’s about 12 feet tall and painted to match other playground equipment that his father made.  It looks awesome and Samantha and Ellie will tell you it’s the highlight of the trip home to visit Nana and Papa.

One of the tricks was finding an oven large enough to hold it.  He disassembled it and after three or four trips to the powder coating shop, it was done.  The wheel only had about half an inch of space on each side of the oven.

For now, he’s using a Milwaukee Drill with a 50:1 gear box to turn the wheel.  Dad’s thinking about changing it to a hydraulic motor for smoother and quieter operation.

My kids have got it so good.

Front of the Ferris Wheel Side of the Ferris Wheel with Dad

Here’s a video of it running.  Sorry it’s a bit loud.

Oh, and here’s a video of it before it was painted.  We had to test with live grand kids.