Where did July go?

Holy flying months Batman? Where did July go? Realizing that this is the last week of July, yikes. Only 1 more month of summer vacation. Steph was out with the kids and hitting some of the back to school sales already...crazy!

Since the 4th of July recap, things have been fast and furious. We spent a great weekend at the Coaches Time Out conference in Vancouver. It was a great event (as always) and gave us a couple days on our own. It was refreshing to be driving in the car and be able to have a full conversation for more than 30 seconds :-)

The following weekend, I passed up my Sounders vs Chelsea tickets :-( for an awesome time with the Hope caravan in the West Seattle parade. Our new tradition of piling about 20 kids in the School Bus and handing out candy to the parade goers. This year SLHS was in front, followed by Hope Church, then us in the back. The cool thing was that Hope got 1st place in the "community" category, so we were really excited to be a part of it.

Spattered among the weeks have been Hope Softball games...a new adventure for me as I have not played softball since the 8-ballers back in 2001 when Maddie was just a little tyke. I had a lot of fun, and I think the girls enjoyed playing with friends, occassionally watching bits of the game, etc. Tradition was to always hit up DQ after the games with the team, so we all really liked that. As of today, we officially are done after a 3-2 loss in the playoffs. I managed to eek out a few hits here and there....and only tweak my hamstring a couple of time. I must be getting old!

This last week was a big milestone as Steph helped put on VBS at Hope. Her and Leighellen spearheaded the effort and did an AMAZING job coordinating the week. Over 150 kids and 50 volunteers were a part of the week. Steph led all the crafts and had a ton of cool ideas to pass along to the kids. Her creativity and organization skills were at their best.

Story of the month, and especially right now (literally) is the heat wave. We have had like 2 days with any measurable rain since June 1st....amazing. This week we are breaking records for the heat, with tomorrow supposedly flirting with 100!!! After that it "cools down" to around 90 over the weekend. As you can imagine, we have moved all our time at home to the basement, including sleeping. Not sure we could make it without it.

On the House front, there has been a lot of activity, but I am not going to write anything in case it might jinx it...All I can say is pray for some good mojo :-)