It seems like this was one of the calmer weeks of the summer, yet when I sat down to blog, a lot happened this week! Here are some of the highlights:
We decided Saturday to throw a party on Sunday for our good friends, the Asplunds. They are moving.
Maddie went to Girls Camp
Allie and Gabe went to visit with their cousin, Benjamin, for two days
Yuka, our Japanese student went home
Allie turned 10 years old, for her birthday, we went to visit my sister, Krissy, and spontaneously stayed the night.
We went to the dive in movie
Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of any of these events except our Japanese student. For their farewell, they put on a great presentation. It was full of games, dancing and singing. For one of the contests, they played "Japanese Roulette". They gave a panel of 5 people a cream puff. One was filled with wasabi. The goal was fool the audience that you didn't have the wasabi cream puff. Jayd and Gabe eagerly volunteered. Here is their contest.
Last Saturday, our local parks and recreation department celebrated their 50th birthday with a bash for the whole city. They had concerts and activities at four locations throughout the city. We went to the local park for a Garth Brooks knock off concert, complete with country activities. The moment we arrived, Allie and Gabe wanted to go on the pony ride. The line was long, but we hopped in and waited for nearly an hour. Luckily, we were able to ride the ponies, the people behind us weren't so lucky. 
We were the last riders of the night! Phew. We played horseshoes, saw the animals and Gabe caught the last hay ride of the night. They passed out ice cream sandwiches to the crowd and frisbees to take home. Then to cap off the night, there were fireworks. The fireworks were bright, shiny, shimmery and beautiful. There was a bright and festive finale, then everyone packed up to go home. 
It was a very fun evening. Half an hour later, on our way home, we heard a huge boom! We looked up, it was another firework! They set off about 8 more fireworks, then they were done. Apparently, they forgot to set those ones off during the celebration, but they couldn't put them in storage, so they just set them off. It was a little funny!
