With our upcoming trip and some curriculum training, our summer vacation at home ends next Wednesday already! The temps here are below average (sorry AZ!), but comfy. What have we been up to? Well, Ashley’s room got its coat of paint too. She also got a present from Great-Grandma – the panda mirror from the condo! New carpet should be installed next week in both girls’ rooms, which is great because they have the 11 year old original stuff with cheapo padding. Here is Ashley’s room.

We still need to put her stuff back, but we are waiting until the carpet comes in so we don’t move it all in and then have to move it all out again!

Last week, we went to Great America for a day at the water park with friends. We spent a little extra money this year and got the Gold Season pass, which puts parking on all 4 cards and allows us to enter the water park 30 minutes before everyone else. I thought that meant you just went to the gate for the water park, flash your pass, and were allowed in. Not so! The park has a super secret special door that opens along the back fence. A security guard checks every pass ID as you sneak in. We have used this perk several times, and there has never been more than 30 people waiting to go in (even on the day when it was 95 degrees here!). We love it! You can save yourself some chairs in the shade, and the girls get to ride all of the tube rides that always have long lines. Here is the secret door. Do you see it?

The girls had about an hour before the park even got busy and some friends of ours arrived.

They went in the lazy river.

This last photo was just before Ashley leaned a little too far back and scraped her forehead on a rock wall. Luckily, she was fine and had nothing serious enough to require anything other than some ice. She enjoyed the rest of her day! We hope to one day bring B,T,K,and C to the park. We do get buddy passes during the summer….

You might recall that Kayla came home from her retreat with some “camp crud”. We took her to a Walgreens clinic one evening and followed instructions for the viral bronchitis she was diagnosed with. But the cough would not go away. We went to see her pediatricians on Wednesday, where she was diagnosed with a bronchial infection. She had to have a nebulized albuterol treatment in the office just so that he could listen to her lungs. She just couldn’t take more than half of a breath without coughing. Funny thing is that she never had a fever in 3 weeks time. She is on zithromax, prednisone, and an inhaler for 5 days. She is starting to feel better now that she has some meds on board, and she has been cleared for our trip. We visit the doctors again on Tuesday for their routine physicals and a follow-up on Kayla.

Lastly, Kevin and I escaped this weekend for a little trip. We found something in our suitcase:

This hamster has become a game in our house: whoever finds it has to hide it next. We found him in our suitcase and took a picture from our room. Now, he is hidden awaiting discovery……