July started with a BANG!...and ended with a Fizzle.

Movies, movies, movies!! We celebrated the 4th of July with a trip to the movie theater to see Fantastic Four:Rise of the Silver Surfer. Logan came out of the theater shouting, "I LOVE that movie. It was full of ACTION!" Later that week, Julian and I went with my friend and her daughter to see Nancy Drew. How could I pass it up?? I read over 100 of the books when I was a youth and I still own them all!! The next week Jarid took Logan to see Transformers and now, of course, he wants to earn money to buy the all character toys he doesn't own yet.

The night of the 4th we also went to Grandma and Grandpa Carter's house with the rest of the Carter Clan. The adults had fun eating and visiting while the kids were entertained by the Slip-n-Slide and firecrackers! Then we came home to watch the city fireworks show from our backyard. We are so close to the field we can actually hear the music!

Logan had a mysterious playdate with his friends at our house...or was it the potion that was mysterious? Playing laboratory is something all the kids could agree on and Logan is a pro since it's been one of his favorite things to do in his hospital room this last year!


The kids and I slept over at "The Farmhouse" with Gma Patty and Gpa Burk, who took care of the kids for two days while I attended my blog and podcast class.

Some of my closest friends surprised me for my birthday with a Hawaiian window display (pictured), gift certificates to a Hawaiian restaurant, and an amazing comic book they wrote and illustrated about my "super hero family!" The comic book is hilarious and FULL of inside jokes. It may possibly be featured in an upcoming post. :-)

I've already posted about Logan's recent stay in the hospital. We were home a couple of days and then he became sick again. The doctor allowed me to keep him at home where I monitored his IV fluids and gave him IV meds to keep him comfortable. No culprit was found. He's been feeling better, though, but his blood counts are very low from whatever he's been fighting.

Thus the fizzle, the isolation that ends the fancy freedom of summer fun. I am SO glad that we made the most of every moment earlier in the summer while we had the chance. It never seems to last and I would have hated to miss all those good times.

I have put the hours of sitting next to Logan to good use, though. :-) I read the 7th and final HP book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! Here is my take on it with NO SPOILERS, of course..."Rowling REALLY knows how to unfold a story!!! All the answers fit perfectly into place, yet still they were mostly unpredictable. One can tell she had the story very well planned from early on. This book is fairly fast paced (unlike #5), but the last 100 pages made it VERY hard to put down...even for me, a non-member but supporter of the Harry Potter religion.

:-) Hehehe!"

So, less than 3 weeks left of my glorious and much appreciated summer break! I think that now I ought to do something about the house I've neglected while we've been having so much fun!