Back to School

 Summer 2016 was great!  We always love having more down time, more family time, and more fun time, but at some point, we have to go back to school.  We celebrated the final night of summer with sno cones from Bahama Bucks!

 Then it was time to start 2nd grade.  I'm completely biased, but this is the most handsome and wonderful 2nd grader on Earth!

 His teacher, Ms Kang.  She is truly awesome!  Communicative, creative, caring and kind...

 This guy was sent into a little shock the first couple weeks of school with both Daddy and Jake gone all day.  He asked me several times when he was going to school.  Although Mommy does not want to speed up time, Luke would be ready to be a ACM falcon tomorrow if he had the chance!

Lawson Vacation 2016

Every other summer we try to take a vacation with Kevin's family, and this year we drove to Orange Beach, Alabama for a little beach fun!  The weather forecast did not look good, but fortunately, we were able to have some beach or pool time every day, and things were cooled off more than normal, so the weather was really quite nice.  Our first full day was great weather, so we took advantage of it.  These kids loved the sand...

 All the kids, except for Luke, loved the ocean water.  Here's Luke giving it a try...

 and then heading back to shore...

 These two played in the ocean the MOST for sure....

 Lounging on the beach...

 Some shots after dinner...

 Cousin friends walking down the pier...

 When the weather wasn't cooperating, we found other things to do.  One afternoon, we played some games outside, but under cover...

 One of the restaurants had an awesome area for kids to play.  Unexpectedly, foam starting coming out of some big pipes.  The kids enjoyed it for a while.  It was definitely unexpected and a little crazy.  Here's Campbell's foam hair...

 Luke didn't venture in until the end when it felt a little safer...

 The worst weather day sent us looking for some alternative fun which we found at an arcade!  Oh well for outdoor fun, but the kids still had a blast!

 A couple nights after the younger ones went to bed, we took Jake and Cohen out crabbing for the small sand crabs.  They LOVED it.  Here's a few of our crab friends...

Great vacation!

Children's Aquarium

Jake's #1 pick for the last part of summer was Children's Aquarium at Fair Park.  We had a school friend's family over for dinner and they were talking about how much their kids liked it, and Jake overheard so he was hooked.  It turned out to be a great affordable adventure!  Here they are at the front...

 Battling an octopus...

 A rescued sea turtle...

 Jake's favorite part, without a doubt, were the sting rays.  They had an open air tank of sting rays to pet and to feed if you bought some shrimp.  I got the shrimp for both boys.  Jake did just as he was instructed and bravely put his hand down in the water and the string ray ate it right up!

 Luke, on the other hand, wasn't such a fan.  He would not put his hand in the water to feed them and he was definitely not interested in petting them.  Jake spent over 20 minutes just running around the tank petting them while Luke had a snack.  These next pictures beautifully capture some of Luke's and Jake's opinion of the stingrays...

 Luke did love the entire rest of the aquarium and it turned out to be a great place for both boys!

Zoo

 Summer began drawing to a close as August hit, so I let the boys make some final summer fun selections.  One selection was back to the zoo!  I even let Jake ride the merry-go-round.  Luke was not interested...

We enjoyed being close to the animals.  Some fake...

 Some real...

 The zoo is usually Luke's super favorite, most happy place.  On this day he hit a little slump.  It was hard for him that Daddy was working and not at the zoo and it was hard for him to walk.  Luckily, the slump only lasted about 15 minutes and he was able to turn it around so we could keep having fun.  It was a long 15 minutes that looked a little like this...

 Now back to the fun...

 I think the zoo would be completely unbearable in the summer except for two things: the first is going early as close to opening at 9 as possible.  The second is the children's area water feature.  It was August the 1st, so after seeing some of the zoo animals, the boys spent the rest of our zoo day playing here!  It's amazing what a couple inches of water can do.  Jake liked it just as much as Luke and it was a great way to end our zoo day!

Birthday surprise

 Kevin surprised me with an overnight trip to Oklahoma City for some special treats for my birthday this year.  He did all the planning for the trip so I could just sit back and enjoy!  He must know me really well, because every choice he made I loved and we had a wonderful trip!  We started the fun with a nice dinner in the river walk area of the city..

 After walking around and enjoying the river walk, we headed to the main event for our trip seeing the musical Fiddler on the Roof!  I am a sucker for musicals, so this is the best present ever!  Here we are in front of the music hall...

 The next day we visited the botanical gardens.  It was beautiful and relaxing to walk around...

 Kevin knows I like trying new restaurants and ordering new things.  We tried a sandwich place that was recommended to us and it was great!  I had a really hard time deciding what to order because it all looked so good, but I decided on the Reuben with a fried egg on top!  I definitely had never eaten that before and it was delicious!  Huge, but delicious!

 We continued to walk around some cool areas of the city...

 While walking around the plaza district, we stopped for a slice of pie at Pie Junkie.  Yum yum!

 Our last stop was to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial.  A beautiful place honoring such a tragic event...