Birthday cookout, Hiking, and Cousin Time

Happy Wednesday everyone! Hope where you are it is cooler and less humid than here! Today we are looking at temperatures of around 90 degrees with sky high humidity; we also have an enhanced risk of severe storms later with very high winds and possible tornadoes! Not fun. I have our lanterns and flashlights at the ready if we lose power. 

Thank you all for your kind words on my last post. The kids miss Thomas and a friend on Facebook put it best when he said "Isn't it funny how even the tiniest of pet fish can become a part of your family?" So true. 

What else has been going on? 

Well, over the weekend we celebrated my sister's 24th birthday with a birthday cookout! Ben wanted to make her a birthday cake so I helped him with that before we went. 

We had yummy food, and enjoyed lovely adult beverages including a homemade mojito! 

We ended the evening with lots of cornhole games. I realized that I am not very good at it but it was fun non-the-less. Bill and I played my Dad and Mom and we won. Then my sister and I played my Mom and my brother and we lost big time. The kids were running around having a blast as well! 

Sunday, we went on a hike around Wolf Run Nature Park. Lots of hills and pretty scenery. Ben was really cute as I would stop to take a picture and he would run back to me and say that he wasn't going to leave me behind. He did this the entire hike. Everything was so green and grown! It was a perfectly relaxing hike (even when I pulled something in my knee!). 

Monday morning came way too early as I am starting to have my niece and nephew here during the day while my mom works (as my sister and her girlfriend moved back to college). She has to be at work at 5:30AM so they are dropped off here around 5:10AM. They come in their pajamas and go back to sleep on my couch for a couple hours before we begin our day. I am trying to have more scheduled activities to keep them busy so Monday they watched some videos on secret codes and we made secret messages with white crayons on white paper and markers. They also learned how to write secret codes by changing the letters of the alphabet to represent other letters. They had fun with it and then after lunch we spent time playing outside until it was time for them to go.

After they left, I finished cleaning the porch. I washed down the siding by hand and it looks 10000 times better! Now if the weather wouldn't be so humid so I could sit out there and enjoy it. LOL 

Then it was time for dinner. I pulled out precooked ham from the freezer, made some corn casserole, cole slaw, and sliced up a couple of farm fresh tomatoes from a local farm stand that my mom brought me. It was super yummy! 

Well, this post got really long so I am going to stop it here. The kids are watching a movie and I need to flip the laundry before I get them some lunch. Hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday! What's going on in your world lately?