They had a raffle and Asher won a huge flag! Thanks to his graduation ceremony at Little Red Schoolhouse, all flags are grand ole flags to Ash, and he was so excited to have won one 😂.
Poor Sophie got marked in the aftermath 😂
The 4th of July weekend was busy with Arts in the Park, and then a gathering with my family, and then one with Philip's.
Quinn's BFF, Ravi, was at the park, too, and they had a great time with the axe throwing inflatable. They would intentionally throw it as high as possible onto the target, and then parkour themselves up to grab it 🤦🏻♀️. It only resulted in one collision, which was impressive for the amount of time they spent doing that.
Quinn and Ravi teamed up for the balloon toss, so I partnered with Ash. He did better than expected, with both catching and throwing.
We came back home for a cookout with Greg and Lori's family that evening.
The boys made paper rockets, which Ollie really enjoyed shooting at me 😂
They had fun with sparklers
We went to see Nana and Juju, too, and the boys fun had playing with their skee ball game and swimming in their hot tub
Quinn got to prove me wrong about that tooth timeline that I mentioned last time, and knocked one out of his face three days before his birthday 😂. He was stunting on Ash's balance bike, riding with his feet on the seat 🤦🏻♀️ when he fell and smacked his face on the handlebars, effectively removing that wiggly tooth. He had already been working on it, so he just finished the job in a dangerous way. He was upset when he told me about his accident, but he perked up at the end of the story when he showed me his extracted tooth 😂. I told him at least he got a good story out of it. 
He specifically requested I make Dirt Cake, and then he never even ate any of it 🙄🙄🙄
It was pretty cool, but I won't do it again 😂
🦷
Later that week, Hannibal Pool was having a free swim day so we decided to do something out of our norm. We took Lincoln with us and all three ended up going off of the high dive 😳😳😳. Ash is much braver than Quinn, so of course he went first out of the two of them 😂.
They're both braver than me, who has no desire to ever go off of it 🤪
That pool day really wore Asher out. The next day was Quinn's birthday, and of course he got up at his normal ass crack of dawn time. He wanted to open his gifts, so I told him to hang on so I could go see if Ash wanted to get up and watch him. I tried my best but I couldn't wake that kid up 😂. He said something later about how he didn't know Quinn opened his gifts, and I told him I tried to wake him up but he wouldn't have it.
Quinn had an interesting birthday wish list, but he wanted an electric dirt bike most of all. His other asks were Nike socks, an army outfit, a snorkel set, and kinetic sand, most of which he got. I told him he had to open his gifts in order of smallest to biggest, which just happened to align with the excitement level of each.
Who gets this excited over socks? 😂
He opened his helmet and I tried to trick him in to thinking we just got it for him to wear on his bike, but he didn't really believe me
We had his dirt bike hidden in Philip's office. He walked downstairs, took one look at it, and ran over to hug me, and then to hug Philip. He really is super fun to watch open gifts 🥰
Quinn was adamant about having his birthday party on his actual birthday, so he had to wait until the evening, since it was on a Friday. He tells me 6 7 is old now, but that didn't stop him from wanting a 6 7 themed party. Being 6 turning 7 during this weird phase of obsessing over a totally random number seems like the coolest coincidence, and should be commemorated. I think one or a couple of his friends planted the seed that maybe it wasn't cool, so he wavered a bit, but he didn't give me any other ideas, so we went with it anyway. He recently declared that he doesn't like Spiderman anymore (which broke a tiny piece of my heart), so we didn't really have a back up. I know this stage of middle childhood brings a new sense of self awareness, but I was a bit sad about the development. I don't miss the baby phase, but I don't want my babies to grow up too quickly either ☹️. Superheroes, especially Spiderman, were such a huge part of his identity for so long, it was bittersweet hearing him say he's moved on.
I made a banner for the wall and my text was terrible 🤣. Oh well, maybe next year's will be better. He didn't even really care about it anyway. Actually, he didn't even care about his party because all he wanted to do was ride his dirt bike 🙄. Next time, he isn't getting his big gift until the end of his party.
I spent entirely too much time and tape on making this blind vending machine. You pick a string to cut and then lift the bottom flap to see what you go. It had full size boxes of theater candy in it.
He got even more Nike socks, and he was just as excited as the first time 😂.
I also captured good faces for silly string and kinetic sand
We sent a video to Kiki to show her he was mixing the sand colors because she reallly doesn't like that and I'm a bad friend 😂
Nana and Juju got Quinn a rolly poly cage, which was big of Nana because she hates bugs so much 😂. We got it all set up the day after his birthday.
To finish out Quinn's birthday weekend celebration, we took another trip to Tanger Outlets so he could spend some of the money he got for his birthday. He also wanted to play at Planet Bounce again, but we didn't realize their hours were limited and got there too late in the day. To try to lessen the disappointment, we hit up the arcade at the mall on the way home, but that's didn't fair very well, either. I dislike that place very much because of the noise level, but some of the games seemed kinda fun to me. Quinn was dissatisfied though. Philip and I told him we were sorry things didn't work out how we wanted them to, but we tried to make it fun for him anyway. He was a little grumpy but life goes on 😂.
Quinn didn't like the shirt I got for his birthday, but Ash did, so he got to pretend to be a big kid. It says "I was 6, now I'm 7."
The rest of July was filled with lots and lots of pool days. In fact, we went five days in a row one week, and our streak was only spoiled because of the terrible air quality. Quinn was so excited because Lincoln came with us a few times and that gave him the confidence to try going down the slide. He was on the cusp of being 48" tall, which I think was really about 47.5, but most of the life guards allowed it. When one denied him, he was too embarrassed to try again for a while. I kinda wish they would've been consistent, and I would've been okay with whichever way they went. One of them finally told him to go get measured on the wall, which had been marked with a piece of tape. I guess that's the final word, and according to it, he was tall enough. Once he had that affirmation, he was secure enough to tell them he had done so and he could go.
Buncha goobers
We stopped at the park after the pool. We tried really hard to get a good pic, but this is as good as it gets 🫠
Ash had a big boy moment, too, when he learned how to ride his bike without training wheels. I had been telling him for a while that I thought he would be able to, we just needed to take them off for him to practice. He would always remind me at extremely inconvenient times, but we finally got around to doing it. He and Quinn are so different when it comes to persistence. Ash didn't get it right away, despite being a speed demon on his balance bike, but he kept on trying! He gained confidence too fast and was annoyingly insistent that I let go of him before he was balanced 🤦🏻♀️. After about thirty minutes, he got it down and was ready to zoom around!
He had lots of help figuring it out 😆
🚴🏻♂️
We took the boys over to the walking trail in Hannibal so that they could ride the loop
Taking a break to look at the river 🙂
Our last activity of the month, before the beach, which will have it's own post, was also our last activity ever at the Center for Children and Families 😭. I have lots of feelings about their closing, but I'm going to keep it brief. We've been going to Playgroup there since Quinn was born. I ran playgroup for the first year of his life, but when I left to stay home with him, we were still regulars. It was a part of our weekly routine for years, and even though this would have been our last with Ash going to Pre-K in the fall, I wasn't ready for it to end so abruptly. The center closing was a huge loss to the staff with their jobs, and to the community with their home visitation program and family events it hosted. While I hope that someone else takes over the grant and opens another center, it will never be the same, and for that I am truly sad.
We had a beekeeper as a guest speaker for our last playgroup
🍯🐝
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