A summer full of memories and lots of smoke. It was the summer I got back on Instagram, and Susan took social media by storm.

We started off the summer going shrimping on my parents’ boat.

We had our fill of ice cream truck treats as they visited our road quite a bit this summer.

I painted. Not a lot. Not a little. But I painted, and it was a way to paint what I saw, what inspired me, and what I was learning. Here are my calendar ones I did.

My family visited for Father’s Day weekend. We went to Silverwood and cheered on my brother’s friend at Ironman.

My mom, Nana as she’s called, stayed with us the following week. We went and had pedicures, Nana got to play a duet with Quinn at her piano lesson, and we did a ropes course that had us laughing til we cried.

We celebrated Quinn’s 9th birthday with an outdoor movie, which was so fun. Big Fat Liar is what we watched, and it was a hit.

Some family came into town with some friends, and we met up with them at Silverwood so Quinn could have some cousin time.

After this, we took a very spontaneous trip to Laurel, MT. They have the best fireworks show Jordan has ever seen. And I can attest, it was the best I’ve ever seen. They do the fireworks to music, and each song has a grand finale. It was loud and very patriotic. Quinn fell asleep, and we didn’t get back to our campground until 1 am. We went ziplining in Anaconda, MT, on our way home. It was Quinn’s first time ziplining, and she had a blast.

We followed up this trip with a friend’s camping trip to Osoyoos. We played in the lake, SUPped the river, and went wine tasting in Canada. I also included this picture of my angry eyebrows. Every night we would sit around the campfire after the kids had gone to bed and every night, my glasses would cast a shadow on my forehead making me look like i was very angry. It caused lots of laughing.

We celebrated our best friend’s birthday with an Escape Room. We had so much fun, we did another right after.

After that, we were home for a week, and then headed to Oregon to go to Arch Cape. We had so much fun. We ended up buying wetsuits and bougie boards and spent the week riding the waves. On the last day, my mom thought she saw a shark. It turned out it was a sunfish caught in the surf. But boy was the adrenaline racing.

Since Susan took social media by storm, I celebrated her birthey my DIYing a gingham, watercolor birthday hat. I got some great videos and pictures. The jury is still out on whether she even knew it was her birthday. She seems to know she was celebrated with that face.

Quinn rode Aftershock for the first time this summer. She was scared, but she must’ve had fun because she continued to ride it for the rest of the summer.

More family came in and stayed the weekend with us. We stayed until Silverwood closed, and we were the last family to ride Thunder Mountain. We got soaked. But you can’t even see it because the lighting is terrible.

We filmed for our game, History Rewritten: JFK. We dressed up in character, and I had to sit at a table and read a teleprompter with my lines. I got to a certain point and teared up because I’m so proud of Jordan and all the work he has put into this. I then started laughing, and it was hard for me to get back into character. It took about two takes for me to not cry when I said “The President.” haha

Quinn spent a week at my parents’ making lots of memories with her Nana, Papa, and all her cousins.

We went to our fair, went to the Demolition Derby, and ate all the fair food we could put in our stomachs.

We closed out summer with a trip to Bellingham, WA, where Jordan and my cousin, Emilee, did program for family camp at Firwood. They played travel agents trying to get people to come to IOWA. Their Midwest accents were in and out, they had amazing wigs and glasses on, the way they walked was ICONIC, and they made all of us laugh a lot.

The summer was full of fun. As always, I’m so thankful for routine and that the fall is upon us. Time for coziness, less AC, more warm fires and tea, and settling into this new school year.