Reed's Rat Race

What's a girl gotta do to get some ice cream around here!?!

Izzy often likes to play fashion designer and use Milla as her model 4th of July Fireworks with our best neighbors! Milla wasn't too sure about the sparklers, but with close supervision, she had fun Today Izzy hosted her first tea party with invited guests. We had a great time with the neighbor girls. We played games, painted sun catchers and made glow-in-the-dark jewelry. Even Gavin wanted to join in with us, but he was NOT going to use good ettiquette and manners. Please note that he wasn't going to use those small tiny plates to hold his food-- the cloth napkins served his purpose.

This year, we roped off a section of the garden and told the kids they could plant whatever they wanted. They both planted sunflowers. Gavin grew a monster 11'-1 inch tall sunflower plant. The close-ups are from Izzy's plants. Anybody know how to roast sunflower seeds?

Yesterday we proved we still have "it". "It" being the ability to be spontaneous, even with three kids. I had Friday off and up until 8:30 am, we hadn't planned to do anything different other than a few chores around the house. But then Angela said, "Let's do something fun!". So we did. By 10:00 we had picked a destination, loaded the family transporter, and were on the road and headed to Rickwood Caverns State Park in Alabama. We grilled hotdogs, hiked, took a guided tour of the caverns, and swam. We wore the kids (and ourselves) out but had a great time. Couple of interesting facts about the caves... In the 1950's, folks thought the cave would make a good fall-out shelter. So they packed a bunch of food and medical supplies and about 1100 people in the cave as a test. Turns out, the limestone is so porous that it wouldn't protect anybody from a nuclear or chemical attack. They left all the food and supplies down in the cave and abandon...