Forts have been a huge thing in our house this summer. Sometimes I love them and other times I hate them. That tends to depend on whether the boys are fighting and knocking it down or playing nicely together in it at the time. This one had four defining parts to it. The bridge between the wall and table, the table, the four chairs and the entrance with the little table which you can't see from this angle.
There it is. The boys loved this fort. I let it stay up for the ten days in between school ending and summer school starting.
Fisher turned the fort into a restaurant. Good to know he aspires to go into the fast food industry. :)
I love all of Fisher's little signs and pictures.
There were little signs all over labeling the secret passage ways to enter the fort.
He also had signs for when the fort was open and closed.
Fisher seems to have grown into a man this summer. Seriously. He seems huge to me. I feel like he is going to pass me up in height before he is done with first grade at the rate he is growing.
We have survived the summer better than I thought we would. Fisher has been taking swim lessons 4 days a week all summer long. We tend to play outside in the back yard in the pools, sprinkler and slip & slide everyday. Then we watch a movie as we count down the time until Daddy gets home for work. Last week was AWFUL but that was the first horrible week of the summer and I will take that as a victory.
Fisher has done really well with swimming and LOVES it. His swim instructor has been encouraging us to find a fun little swim team (not one of the competitive club ones) where he can have more time to swim. She has been impressed with how fast he learns and how much he loves to swim. I want him to do other things as well, but I am glad to find something he enjoys and will probably continue with it.
We have really slacked on the reading and maintaining the things he learned in Kindergarten. I hope he hasn't forgotten everything.
He sure has his slip & slide technique down though...that has to count for something.
There is the rare occasion when the boys are getting along.
Most of the time, not so much.
It has been driving me INSANE.
Cooper has had a lot of great exposure to the water this summer and will go on the slip & slide now. He also is crazy in the little pool and will throw himself in, head and all. I plan on starting him in swim lessons once we are settled in Virginia.
They have their cute moments.
I need cute moments with Cooper because he.is.a.handful. I remember saying this about Fisher. Actually, I still say that about him but Cooper definitely takes the cake for keeping me busy. He loves projects like emptying tubes of toothpaste, eating whole packs of gum after emptying my entire purse to find the pack of gum, pulling all the keys off the laptop and then shoving them into the slot in the Leapster where the games go (therefore breaking TWO electronics in one adventure), dumping out gallons of milk at a time, getting into my nail polish, opening...and closing...and opening etc. the garage door with the opener until I realize that he is doing it, shoving my mail key into the car ignition when I am not looking.
To say he keeps me busy is an understatement.
He is wearing a post office label sticker on his shirt.
We have spent many days this summer at the McD's drive through for ice cream cones.
He also loves to wear Todd's hats for work.
Trouble. I was looking fro another picture I had of Cooper and realized I had not finished sorting through June pictures so there will be another one full of pictures that I like of the boys.
Sometimes Cooper gets this crazed look in his eye and you know you're in trouble....
We sure love our little Tucker Baby around here.
He is starting to turn into a little Tucker monster but I guess he has to in order to hold his own with his brothers.
He has a tone of teeth coming in right now. A couple molars, one of his top front and a few scattered through the mouth. He is sticking with tradition and refusing to teeth in a normal pattern like most kids.
Looking at this picture makes it hard to believe that he already knows how to hit and attack like his big brothers. He is an aggressive little ball of baby.
First time with the water. He loves being outside and likes playing with water more than he did in the beginning of the summer.
He LOVES McD's ice cream cones.
I love pics when I have all three boys.
There was a Military appreciation day put on by our city that we went to. We caught the tail end of the event.
Fisher was a champ on the rock wall.
It was held at Base Lake that we did not even know existed. It is a cool little spot not too far from us.
I found out that I had kidney stones in June. One of them started passing and ended up in a trip to the ER and a two day stay in the hospital while I attempted to pass it on my own (which it didn't) so I ended up having it removed with a scope and then had a stent for a week. Yuck. I have a new found empathy for those I know who have had them in the past. It was so extremely painful, even more so than my labor pains.
Since then I had to go back in to have two more broken up with a lithotripsy which was ten times better than the first. I hope I never have them again.
My mom ended up coming out while I was in the hospital and stayed for a few days to help out with the boys. I am so glad she came. All I can say is thank goodness for mothers and I am especially grateful for my mom.
The boys had fun with grandma.
Aside from Kidney stones, our exciting news for the month was a new couch. Eventually we will buy the other pieces to make it a sectional. The left side reclines out too so both Todd and I have our fun little spots. We have very limited space in our housing and we don't know where we are going to live in Virginia yet so for now we will stick with one little couch.
Other news, which most of you know by now, we found out in either may or June that we were no longer being assigned to Japan. The process has been frustrating and stressful but we are happy with our new assignment to Langley AFB in Hampton, Virginia. We will be on the coast near Williamsburg. While we were really excited to go to Japan and were so sad when it fell through, we are happy with the new assignment and are excited for all the places we will be able to explore within a days drive. I might talk more about this later. Now I need to go feed the kiddos.
