The Closing Crew

And then it was down to the closers...  This year Levi, Jax and Gavin spent the night. We ran around playing with Row Row while Mom cleaned up. She emptied the coolers and of course we started an ice war.

Then we made an amazing scientific discovery... If you put ice cubes on the hot fire pit, they steam and turn warm! We were absolutely amazed and entertained for almost 20 whole minutes!

We discovered (but would not actually admit) that we are absolutely terrible at roasting marshmallows.

Like, really really bad.

Except me. I was pretty patient!

A little chocolate and a little graham and they tasted awesome. No sweat!


Mom threw us down in the basement with a movie and we stayed up late talking. It was the perfect day to celebrate both the end of summer and my bday. Thanks everyone!

All Together Now

Kids were starting to go home so Mom gathered the remaining group around the pool to do an "all together" photo.
Take One

Take Two - Line Up

Reeeeeady?

Good!

Not too bad, but Gavin just got back from baseball! C'mon Gav!

back to the line.

Reeeeeady?

Hold it.....

B!!!

Oh man

Well....

we tried

We got as close to "all together" as 6 rowdy 9 and 10 year old boys, a 5 year old boy and a 5 year old girl can possibly get I think :)

Back At It

After we were hosed off, we headed back over to the pool for more shenanigans. We'd been inactive for almost 10 minutes!?  Time to get back to it!

Adi amazed the Moms with her graceful handstands and somersaults.

While the boys plotted and discussed the extremly odd nature of Seth's sunburn. Dude! What were you wearing?!

Dive contests were up next! Remember how I wouldn't go in the deep end without a life jacket and wouldn't even go NEAR the diving board about 6 weeks ago?

Look at me now!

Nice work Gav!

and J.

Forward rolls from Levi

Princess Jumps from our favorite little monarch

and more craziness from me. I was in heaven surrounded by big kids. Don't think I didn't hold my own!

Sticklers for Tradition

and of course you know what comes next! It's tradition... c'mon. Levi went right into competition mode.

Gavin has only been competing for one year, but he's a natch!

Jax is a rookie at it, but he was a contender!

Oh but the reigning champ was not to be defeated... Look at that technique!



He's been a top performer in the cake mess contest for 4 years now!



My crazy neighbors jumped right in.

They got fast results!

But there was a dark horse in the running! Look what Gavin was up to!

Nice work, buddy! I think we may have a new champion! I was very proud of my bud.

Gavin's Mom was not as proud.... He had to get to baseball practice! That'll be one hose to the face, dude.

Lief thought that looked like a great idea. This cannot feel good...


Some traditions are just too much fun to abandon. Here's to another year of strong competition.
You're all atheletes in our books.

Slip N Slide Baseball

Next up was Slip N Slide Baseball! Mom had it all planned out and was just about to head out to get us all bossed around...er organized when she noticed we were already playing!?

What my best buddy is doing here is beyond me...

We played hard and we played dirty. It's slip n slide baseball!

Lots of slipping!

Lots of fouls.

Many dramatic dives

a few very sketchy turns

a face plant at home

A unruly player who decided to liven up the game with illegal assault at first

some really aggressive base running

and hilarious faces. We absolutely loved slip n slide baseball!

It took some doing, but Mom convinced us to take a break for cake. We'd been stuffing our faces here and there with pizza and watermelon but this required our undivided attention and that was nearly impossible to get.

We did it though. I have great friends who sang horribly and at the top of their lungs.
Thanks guys.