Shannon is Six!

Shannon had a prolonged birthday since we were busy with Christopher in the hospital.  On the day of her actual birthday she had pancakes for breakfast, then she opened some of her presents from us.  Here she is with her new camera. 

Happy birthday!!!

She went to her cousins' house for the rest of the day and we had her actual birthday party a few nights later. She made out like a bandit!

A microscope!

Leah enjoyed the cake a lot.

Shannon got a science kit that came with a fossil for her to excavate, a volcano to build, and triops eggs. She thought the fossil was really neat, and she has already started her triops eggs. Tonight we might have to do the volcano.

 Aside from anything related to science, Shannon also loves to read.  This picture isn't great because Matt was trying to get a candid shot of the girls reading together. This is one of their favorite things to do.

She also loves to read to Christopher whenever she can. He loves it and gets very excited.

Fourth of July

We had a really fun Fourth this year.  It was very relaxed.  We just did some fireworks at our house and watched all of the ones our neighbors did as well.  Here are Shannon and Leah with their sparklers.

 Here they are with some fun sparkler swords we found.  They really enjoyed this.

In other news this summer, a friend of mine gave me all of her gooseberries this year because she had to go out of town and they were getting too ripe, so I made some leather and 10 jars of jam.  She also gave me these currants, and I had never seen currants before. They were beautiful! There weren't tons, so I just made juice out of them.

 The girls had a sleepover with their cousins, and they had a BLAST! The oldest one is all the way on the right under the blanket.  It took me a few minutes to figure out where she was.