Hangin' With the Boys

With Savannah at EFY we had enough room in our car for each of the boys to have a friend tag along on an adventure so Noah got Eli and Xander chose Devin and off we all went to Rock State Park for a day.

It is such a beautiful place!

Best buds!

It was a hot summer day so the boys quickly got in the water to have some fun!

We had invited friends to join us because the more the merrier, right?

Emma Knox always seems to find Xander!

Lunch break!

And then right back at it!

Such a crazy group!

In the afternoon we decided to head over to "the rock".

The weather was starting to turn sour but the boys got some quality jumps in before the rain got going.

Lovin' the summer life!

I am so grateful that Xander has such a great best friend. These two are quite the pair.

One last jump for Noah and Eli...

and a free fall into the water before heading out.

We made it to the car before the storm truly hit, thank goodness! And by the time we hit the Jarrettsville Creamery, the storm was done. I couldn't think of a better way to end our fun adventure than ice cream cones!!!

EFY - Buena Vista (In Savannah's Words)

The group of girls I was with. We all just clicked and became really close, especially Carolyn, Corrinne, Alyssa, and I.

Game Night (Wednesday) - all companies made a slogan and a company flag. There were a ton of fun activities that we participated in. I loved our great, crazy counselors, Grace and Johnny.

That night all of us (the girls) ate pizza, told stories, danced to High School Musical, and had fun!

Thursday was our super spiritual day and it was great! Testimony meeting was amazing and everyone from our company shared their testimony.

Hangin' out on our last day together.

Lots of laughs!

Friday night we had our last dance.

Later that night, during the last prayer with our company, all us girls just huddled together and cried. I love the relationships I was able to make with them and with my Heavenly Father.

The 4th

Our 4th of July was very different this year - Savannah and I, along with her friend Carolyn, left in the early morning to head down to Virginia to drop the two of them off at Southern Virginia University for a week of EFY. It's about a 3 1/2 drive down to the middle of nowhere where the school is located; thank goodness it's a pretty drive. We had talked to Savannah a bit about maybe going to college down here because one) it's basically a church school, and two) they have a womens soccer team. But as we drove through this podunk little town that only has a Subway and a Burger King and a few small stores, Savannah was clearly having second thoughts about spending her college years here. We had to laugh as we passed a sign that stated the population as 3,546 plus two grumpy people...and we were lucky enough to see one of those grumpy people walking by the sign at that exact moment! It is a small campus with a beautiful main building but that's about it.

It was pouring rain as we ran into the church to check them in and continued coming down in buckets as we drove around trying to find their dorm room. They were anxious for me to leave so they could get their fun week started but they did allow me a few pictures before I got back on the road.

After dropping off the girls I found out that the Wardles had just arrived to drop off Alex so I headed back over to the church to meet up with them. I hung out with them for awhile, dropping off Alex in his room and Sheri and I pretending that we were sister wives. Bill might have been slightly embarrassed but Alex hammed it up, calling us Mommy 1 and Mommy 2, and even told us later that his roommate may have believed us, ha ha. After leaving Alex the Wardles and I checked out the main building and some of the campus which didn't take much time. Thank goodness the rain had let up a bit.  As always when hanging with the Wardle clan we all had lots of laughs and fun times!

Ugh, the long drive home was not much fun. There was some heavy duty traffic and it ended up taking so much longer to get home. After basically 8 hours in the car I was done! Next time we do the EFY thing I am definitely making sure David and I go together. I finally made it home, just in time to do sparklers with the boys.

Summer evenings in Maryland are absolutely beautiful!

Happy Birthday, America!!

Due to all the rain that day the toads were out in full force so of course Noah decided to catch himself a new friend.

Boy, was this little guy vocal! He kept croaking and croaking at Noah. I'm sure he was saying to let him down and get the heck away from him but Noah thought his new little buddy was just excited to play with him.

The toad's buddy must have heard his distress call and came to hang out with us. This one was much less talkative.

I LOVE this picture!

My guys!!