Pennsylvania Getaway

We had one last hurrah before we started school.  We made a quick trip to visit the Jeffries in PA.  "Quick" was the length of time we stayed to visit while the drive itself was anything but quick.  After driving through the long night, we arrived Thursday morning - exhausted!  Almost immediately, Isabel disappeared.  She and Maia found one another and picked up right where they left off last fall.  It was adorable to watch them stuck like glue all weekend long.

 

 During our time there, we ate lots of great food and dodged many Nerf bullets flying through the house while the boys battled.  In between, we went swimming, celebrated a birthday and played some miniature golf.  You can see we were quite the large group but we had fun splitting into 3 teams.  Below is Amy, a foreign exchange student staying with the Jeffries.  She was having a great time playing her first golf game ever.

 

 

It was worth our while to make a memory.  As you can see, the long drive didn't dampen too many spirits. :)

Summer's Summary

What can I say?  It has been a very busy summer at the Murphy house and blogging just never made it to the top of my list.  I find that I'm notorious for trying to cram as much as I can into our summer vacation before I have to sit still and focus on school.  I procrastinate on my "work projects" until the last month or so and I tend to pay for that.  I do feel good about the rooms painted, stairs stained, carpeting replaced and flower beds built.  The cupboards are stocked full of home-canned food grown by the sweat of our brow and the blessing of God. 

Don't worry, we had plenty of fun to fill our summer days as well.  You can see we made a couple trips to the local bowling alley for some air-conditioned play.  The kids all returned to summer camp for some of their favorite memories with friends they only see this one time each year.  We also welcomed our friends, the Morby's, for another annual reunion of our boys who were so close back in Ethiopia.  That's always a gift to us.

This summer was also marked by more fishing than usual.  I can say my man hauled in a large amount of fish AND did the honors of deliciously frying it up for supper.  What talent!  This photo shows that I can actually fish as well but we won't focus on that. :)

Aunt Laura made a trip to town for a weekend packed with swimming, fishing, Civil War reenactments, garden harvesting and hours of watching her favorite zombie show (very eye-opening).  I'm not sure how we actually crammed so much into a 3 day weekend, oh yeah - we didn't get much sleep.

 

Below shows the kids camping  out with Dad in the backyard.  They had so much fun making this memory with him and he was quite a trooper since he wasn't feeling well before it even began.  You can imagine he felt MUCH worse after the campout. :)  I almost felt bad for sleeping in my own bed, almost... 

Well it's been good for me to recount some of our summer here.  It's easy for me to think that this whole summer was represented by 100 degree temperatures and severe drought.  Just goes to show that we need to count our blessing so we will remember that we do have them.