Week Six

For our sixth week of summer vacation (Wow! I cannot believe the weeks are flying by so quickly!), we felt like people of leisure again. The weeks of VBS and Swim Camp felt so structured by comparison. We went to the library and updated our summer reading logs. Gracie had earned 16 tickets, Lauren had earned 15, and William George had earned six. George immediately spent five of his tickets on a water gun/fire extinguisher-type thing, while Lauren judiciously spent two on a bracelet. Gracie was amenable to my idea of saving her tickets to collect the maximum of 20 so that she could purchase a medal, a more permanent marker of her summer reading activities.

Pixie had an eventful week. She went to the veterinarian to be spayed, and while having the surgery, they discovered a defect on one of her ovaries, meaning that her procedure was more involved, resulting in a larger incision site and longer recovery time. Here she is with her cone. While she was out for the surgery, she also had some dental work performed, i.e., a cleaning and extraction of three stubborn baby teeth.

Since she was staying overnight, we agreed to a grooming experience, and our little Pixie experienced her first bad hair cut. In addition to not looking her best, she sustained a nick to the ear, resulting in two sutures.  Needless to say, Pixie had a rough go of things, and we pampered her for an entire week. She was pitiful, but her hair is growing back... slowly.

We also had some significant yard projects in the front yard, wherein we removed the old border and installed a new stone border, consisting of about 400 stone blocks. Whew! Skip gratefully borrowed our neighbor's Gator to re-mulch all of the beds and extend existing beds, and he, Gracie and George are now obsessed with acquiring a Gator, so much so that George received two toy Gators for his birthday.

Gracie, George and Skip

By the time July 4th rolled around, we were hobbled and limping (from all of the labor), and we (Skip says, "We??!!" Ok, it was mostly him.) fired up the grill for a quiet celebration. Gran and Poppa and Grammie came over to help celebrate.

Yankee Doodles

During this week and the next, we were in full birthday preparation mode for William George's upcoming 4th birthday. Therefore, on the 5th, after church, we grabbed lunch at J. Alexander's (a family favorite), and then procured supplies from Costco. George had vacillated wildly on what he wanted for his party, from Snoopy to a "helicopter" party to Cars... he couldn't make up his mind! We finally nailed him down to helicopter so that we could order his cake and proceed with our plans.  This meant his birthday week, the week of the sixth, would be very eventful.