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| June 30 |
Tina sent this picture and text from the cabin Sunday morning. "Walking around Silver Lake this morning. Much easier than yesterday--it's flat!" On Saturday they hiked to Lake Mary, which was a much longer and steeper. Elliott reports that while they were on the hikes they played "murder mysteries" where one person would make up a story and the other kids would guess elements of the story. Derek was particularly good at coming up with stories. The cabin is owned by Tina's sister Liz, but it used to owned by Gram Bennett (Tina's grandma). Tina would visit this same cabin with her grandmother and cousins when she was a child. At the cabin the kids played basketball with the indoor mini-hoop, Disney Lorcana (card game), and created funny stories about the old toys. They walked down to the creek and tried play with water guns that ended up being junk so they ended up trying to skip rocks. Each of the kids brought a movie to watch--Elliott took Little Rascals. While Elliott was living his best life at cousin camp the rest of us Johns spent the day driving home. It was a long day. Because of midwestern storms google maps told us some roads would be closed due to flooding, and to take the southern I-70 route home. This was a mistake. The traffic got very congested as we drove through Colorado and we passed through several storms across western Kansas. Meanwhile I-80 never closed. We stayed up very late the night before we left visiting with Meredith, so we got a late start and didn't arrive home until almost 2am.
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| July 1 |
We were excited to see that our deck was nearly complete when we got home! There are a few finishing touches, but it is now usable. There are a few It is a bit bigger than our old deck, and is made of composite material--no sanding and refinishing every few years to keep it looking nice.
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| July 2 |
Tony took Will, Jude & Adrian to the Royals game Tuesday night. It ended up being a marathon of a game due to a 2+ hour rain delay. Only the die hard fans stayed through the delay, and Tony and the boys can be counted in that group. Their diligence was rewarded twofold--they got to move down and sit very close and also they got vouchers to use at a future Royals game. The Royals did end up losing, but our boys had a fun time. There has been a lot of rain this week.
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| July 3 |
I didn't take many pictures Wednesday because we were still recovering from the trip. Miles has been a bit bored without Elliott to play with him. The big kids have been busy too. Both Will & Lauren had piano lessons, and Will worked at the pool. After weeks of cousin time, spending his day with mostly me was a bit of a letdown.
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| July 4 |
The happiest moment of our day was seeing Elliott walk off the plane! Tina said we could have Elliott fly home early July 4 before they headed up to Malad with the Maxfields and Matt, or a few days later after they come home. We decided we wanted Elliott back in time to spend the 4th with us. Anthony and I drove to airport to pick him up, but I went into the airport alone to pick him up while Anthony waited at the cell phone lot. Cousin Camp 2024 was the loudest, silliest, most self-entertained group ever--Adelaide, Millie, Derek, Nolan, Elliott &Brigham--and Elliott had a wonderful time. On the drive home we peppered him from questions about his time at cousin camp. He said his favorite memory was when Papa let him order an adult sized meal from Chick-fil-A (I usually make him get a kid's meal). In the afternoon we went to the pool for a bit. Then Uncle Matt put on a fireworks show in the parking lot of the pool. Due to the storms earlier in the week the city postponed the fireworks show to the evening. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and the kids had fun playing at the park after. The saddest moment of the day was when Miles fell off the playground at the park and hurt his arm very bad. It wasn't obviously broken, but was very tender to the touch.
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| July 5 |
Friday night we watched the fireworks at the golf course, per tradition. It was a little strange having the display the night after the 4th, but since it was Friday it worked out well. Earlier in the day I worked on getting the garage organized. I ordered new shelves that better use the space and Tony put them together for me. Between getting back to real life after our trip and then Tony getting both Thursday and Friday off of work, almost every day has felt like a Saturday.
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| July 6 |
Now that Will is mowing lawns like crazy our lawn mower is getting a lot of use. I bought a lawn mower tune up kit from Home Depot and TJ replaced the filter and changed the oil. It was surprisingly easy, though we initially put in too much oil and had to dump some out which was tricky.
