Project 365, Week 31

July 24

My nieces and nephew are visiting from Texas, so Amy pulled together a day for our family to get together and spend time with them. It is so good to see them and hard that they live so far away.

My sister is a genius at many things, one of them is being a "fun mom". She's good at making games out of nothing. On this rainy day, she paired non-siblings together and tasked them with building a lego creation out of the random pile they received.

Maddy's School of Dance. :)

July 25
Boys stayed at Amy's, girls came to our house. Always safety first at Auntie Lisa's house. ;)

July 26
Sometimes you step outside and the morning seems too good to be true.

News flash...being in foster care is hard. The girls dealt with some hard this day, so Shaun thought an evening ice cream outing would be in order. It definitely helped. ;)

July 27
My only picture of the day, taken from the camp's website. H is on an excursion trip, biking his way through Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.

July 28
The sweet old lady who we've been helping this past month had a birthday and we didn't want her to be completely alone. I was sick and didn't want to give her germs, but she beckoned me in, waving off my attempts to save her from a head cold.

The heavens declare the glory of God...beautiful sky down at the softball field.

July 29
Avery is a hard worker. Also very cute.

July 30
Shaun had a double header softball game so in between we took a walk to nearby water. Such a pretty day!

I took the older girls and the dog to the river for an evening swim. Next to us a family came down, set up their chairs and the kids got to work playing. I noted that the kids were similar in ages to our bio children and they seemed so sweet together. At first, the kids made some attempts to engage the parents and get them to look at something they were doing, but the parents were deep into their phones. Except once in a while, a kid would finally get dad's attention and he would look up long enough to berate them, peppered with a steady stream of swearing. And then, as quickly as it started, he stopped and was right back in his phone.

It was so saddening and reminded me of these photos I saw a while ago that I thought were very poignant. I can't help but think we are getting this smart phone thing all wrong.