Oh the Glorious Days of Summer

All is not always work at the Rieck house! Today, for instance, we celebrated the Fourth of July quietly as a family - relaxing, packing for various destinations (Kirsten to Mississippi; Andrew to Camp Forest Springs; Alan, Ruth and Jadon to Chicagoland to visit Alan's family for a few days)and, of course, watching fireworks. The day was gorgeous with partly cloudy skies (keeping the temps down which is great because our air conditioner conked out--Yikes!). Happy Birthday, America!

After dinner we pulled out some sparklers for the boys to run around with (Jadon had obviously used them before) and roasted marshmallows...a big hit! Then it was off to watch the Eau Claire fireworks. To avoid traffic problems we decided to try watching them from the parking lot of Chancellor's Hall on the university's upper campus. The view was slightly obstructed but not bad at all. Jadon really enjoyed his first American fireworks display.

On the warm days this summer activities have included splashing on the slip and slide, riding bike and playing at the school playground. A favorite activity is actually digging in the sandbox there.

Jadon is making wonderful progress in his tutoring. His English is improving by leaps and bounds these days too. He has started using complete sentences all in English over the last day or so. It's been refreshing. We have expressed appreciation to him over and over again. He has started acting more and more like the typical younger brother too. Yesterday after he'd been told no one was going to play on the Wii for awhile he ran after Andrew (who had gone downstairs to get his shoes) yelling, "Andrew, Mommy said no 'ping ping'" (Ping ping is Jadon's term for the Wii) I had to chuckle to myself. Things have seemed to start normalizing. God is so good.