We have been keeping up our crazy pace of life. After missing two Sundays of church someone asked me today if I had a "restful" break. I did not laugh out loud, but I was definitely laughing on the inside. The past two weeks have been anything but restful, they have been very full. The kids had a friend from Indiana in town for five days in the middle of June. They had an amazing time with him hanging out and going to a car race. This wasn't a normal car race, it was a race up Pike's Peak mountain. We decided to spend the night on the mountain, as our choice was get there at 3 am Sunday morning and get up before the race started, or go up Saturday and sleep in the car and a tent and be there for the race. As we waited in line Saturday to go up the mountain it was in the upper 90s and the line of cars was barely moving. We didn't make it far before our car started giving us trouble, like wouldn't shift into gear trouble, which prevented us from moving forward. We fortunately were near a neighborhood entrance, so after stopping on the road, we reversed about 50 feet and pulled off at the entrance to the neighborhood and waited for the car to cool down. After that, we decided the best course of action was to go down the mountain, rent a car and try again. Thankfully we were able to rent a 15 passenger van to hold all our stuff and us and we made it back up before 6 pm which was the cut off time to get up the mountain. There was a high wind warning that night and the boys (Damen, Kaleb and their  friend) had an adventurous night in the tent, as it almost collapsed several times and at one point Damen ended up outside of it? In the morning, due to the winds they actually postponed the start of the race and ended up shortening it because of the winds, but we're thankful it still happened.   

Monopoly in the car......

Monopoly in the tent.....

Just chilling after finally getting there. 

Such a beautiful setting!

Watching the race

Standing on the race track 😁

Because the race is up a mountain with something like 150 turns, you don't get to see much of it. They send the cars up one at a time, so you see a car once every 2-5 minutes. 

So there was plenty of time to chill and have fun in-between cars. 

Leaving the race...

Back at home, more monopoly 

After their friend left Tuesday, we headed to Maryland on Friday.....on a six am flight...maybe not my brightest idea, because I didn't think about the fact that we'd have to park and take a shuttle to the airport. I think I've been to the airport six times in the past two months, it's been crazy. I know the route well, fortunately it's only about half an hour away. Anyway, we went to Maryland for my grandmother's celebration of life. I got to see all my cousins, aunts and uncles and some of my mom's cousins and my sisters, their families and my parents of course. It was a really good time. 

Friday the boys saw this sitting out and thought "Oh, fancy fruit punch" the boys served themselves some (I was picking up the girls, who were napping at the hotel from the early flight when this happened) and Damen took a big gulp....only to find it was not a fancy juice, but sangria. Ooops.

I unfortunately didn't get pictures of people, but on Saturday we went on a hike to the great falls national park and had a nice dinner afterwards where we remembered my grandmother. 

On Sunday after a lovely brunch with family we headed down to the Eastern Shore of Virginia to visit the boys foster parents. It was a short but sweet visit. 

As you can tell, Kaleb is thrilled to have his picture taken, I couldn't get a smile for anything from him 🙄

We got back Tuesday and thankfully, the boys didn't have football this week. Evie prepared to head off to camp for four weeks and I dropped her off yesterday. On top of this excitement has been all the normal weekly fun of life....and a cold running through our house, that Evie brought back from camp training that she was at for 10 days. Definitely a full summer so far.