End of Summer

This week was Elliot's official last day of summer camp (Amelia's camp finished over a week ago) and he delivered some fresh donuts to his teachers. I know I'm biased but isn't he the cutest delivery boy?!?

While Elliot was still at camp, I took Amelia for a surprise visit to Build-A Bear after work. This child LOVES stuffed animal and you can imagine the joy on her face when she figured out where we were going. As soon as she entered the store, her heart was set on a purple "enchanted" unicorn and promptly named it Lola. Lola in the making, and Amelia giving her heart a kiss before placing ii inside of her: 

Creating Lola's birth certificate: 

A happy girl and her new unicorn:

On Tuesday afternoon, Derrick's brother and his two children, Ryan and Devin arrived in town. My niece will be pursuing a Master's in Health Science at a university here in town and they were here to set up her apartment. We are happy to have Ryan nearby and to see her on a regular basis. The children were delighted to spent some time with their cousins for a couple of days. 

Elliot and his uncle watching BattleBots:

Ryan also introduced them to Snapchat. With these filters they look so adorable. Not sure which one I like the best: 

The CA Martin's also surprised Amelia with an early birthday gift and sang to her and we all ate delicious chocolate cake to mark the occasion. 

On Thursday while Derrick had to work, the kids and I went back to our happy place. There were hardly any people there and it was just perfect:

While the children swam and built sand castles, I read:

They even made friends with some other children and played together on the floats: 

That was one way to cool off and the other way is by jumping in to the kiddie pool: 

This concludes the last week of our summer break as tomorrow we will go back to school. Over the weekend we were busy prepping for the upcoming week, getting organized and running some last minute errands. We also made sure to rest up and watch a family movie as the first week back is normally a dozy. By mid-week the children are exhausted and tired and crankiness will set in. Until then, they will be all excited about going back to school.