Happy Friday!

Happy Friday!  I hope you have had a great week.  It's been HOT - feels like 106 - hot in the Midwest this week.  That means we have been doing everything we can to stay indoors or stay cool.

Homemade BLTs on sourdough bread is the perfect Summer lunch.

Leo would argue a homemade PBJ uncrustable is the real best lunch.  The boys have become expert sandwich makers this Summer thanks to some sandwich cookie cutters my mom gave them.

We popped in to see our favorite Grandma/Great Grandma to drop off a little treat and check in.  Her flowers were looking beautiful.

Costco sucked us in to buying one of their samples - Stree Corn Dip and Sea Salt & Lime chips.  SO GOOD!

Bookclub dinner!  We went to Comfort and enjoyed some strawberry butter, rolls and a big salad.  We talked about our book of the month - Theo of Golden - SO GOOD!  And picked our next book.  Then we did a lot of catching up with each other.

The kids have been crafting a lot.  The big kids are enjoying perler beads.  Fletcher found a Mr. Pringle template.  It turned out so good.

Everyone pampers Pumpkin.

We put our Urban Air Summer passes to good use a couple of times this week.

Water Day!  We pulled out every water toy we own - 3 pools, water balloons, slip and slide,water guns and more.  They had the best afternoons in our backyard.

My marigolds are so pretty this year!  I have 3-4 different varieties.  I love to collect the seeds and to store for my pots next year.  We also tried a new flower - Night Sky Petunia.  It's purple with yellow specks in it.  It's so pretty!

I'm currently reading Remarkably Bright Creatures and love it!  I have heard botht he book and the Netflix movie are so good.

I'm catching up on all the documentaries and shows this Summer.  DCC, I just started Sweet Magnolias, The Crash and Maternal Instinct.  Wowza.  I need to be a in a documentary club so that I can discuss all these crazy documentaries.  The kids watched Swapped on Netflix and it was really cute.

I finished The Last Flight.  It was interesting and surprising.  

These two went off to run some errands by themselves.  They came back with FIREWORKS!

We celebrated some cousin birthdays.  The girls had the cutest party.  My SIL made really fun desserts and my brother made sure we had a delicious dinner.  Good team work!  Leo saw this fruit cake, gasped and said, "That is the most beautiful-est cake I ever seen!!"  It was delicious, too.  And the jellycat cupcakes were precious.  Cute party!

My brother + Fletcher are a lot a like!  This time they talked all about fishing.  But they both love collecting things, shooting, fishing, pocket knives and chatting with people.  It's sweet!

We celebrated some friend's birthdays at the pool.  Leo could have done this slide on repeat all evening long.

Wishing you a very happy 4th of July/America's 250th birthday weekend!  Stay cool.  Enjoy some delicious cookout food.  Go USA!

Linking up with Momfessionals

Goodbye, Mr. Mittens

Goodbye, Mr. Mittens.

I am heartbroken to have to write this post.

It's taken me about six weeks to come up with the words.

We very unexpectedly lost Mr Mittens at the end of May.

I thought I was ready to write this post.

Why am I still crying about a cat??

Because we loved him so much.

Many of you remember back in January when he had to have life saving surgery because he ate a Nerf bullet and it got lodged in his intestines.  We survived.  We barely survived that incedent so you can imagine our alarm when he started throwing up again on a Sunday night in May.  We said some family prayers that it was no big deal, but it was a big deal.  I asked our cat loving friends to pray for him.  We were all navigating the craziness of the last week of school plus a really sick cat at home.

Mr. Mittens got very sick very fast.  We consulted the vet, scheduled an appointment and he said he'd either eaten something again that was lodged in his intestines or that he had a tumor in his abdomen.  Either way he wasn't going to survive.  We were devastated.  

We went through our whole house and removed every single Nerf bullet and we have been very careful about putting any choking hazards away.  I do not know what he could have eaten.  We made the awful decision to have him put to sleep in the middle of the day on a Wednesday just three days after he got sick.  Kevin took him in and he passed away peacefully in his arms.

We sure do miss our favorite rascal.  He was BUSY and was always causing his own special chaos.  He climbed everything, landed himself in the washer, took a spin in the dryer, tight rope walked the garage door tracks and he always made his presence known.  Olive was his favorite.  I think I was a close second.  He loved us both a ton.

I know that we did everything we could do to make sure he had the best two years possible with our family.  He was wild and crazy and so handsome.  I adored his big personality and his polka-dot paw.  We all grieved in our own ways and have found ways to remember Mr. Mittens.  I'll share those another time.  Olive says he was one of a kind and no more tuxedo cats.  We'll see.

Here's a recap of some of my favorite pictues of him.

Love you LOTS, Mr. Mittens!