Can you believe it’s almost time to start school again? Summer seemed to fly by and we’re speeding towards the end of the year.

We kicked off July busier than anticipated.

The first was my sweet Jack Jack’s 14th birthday!

Then we had the 4th of July. We played with sparklers and went on post for the firework show.

Little Man was super interested in the fireworks this year. Every time we heard them go off, he’d drag one of us outside to see if he could see any (even in broad daylight).

This year, post finally brought back the carnival, so we braved the heat and went for a few hours (and $150 later between arm bands, food, and games).

Safe to say, he enjoyed it.

We wrapped up the first week with his Home Depot workshop.

The second week of the month brought a bit of a hiccup. My car’s battery decided to die and Little Man and I ended up stuck at the mall while we waited for the Mister to come jump it (we had the jump box, but the battery was dead dead and sucked the juice completely out). We bought a new battery and found out the one I had wasn’t even the right one for the Dart. I swear we’ve changed the battery more times than we ever should have for an 11 year old car, but it is what it is since it does have all the bells and whistles.

The upside came during the weekend, when we attended a sunflower festival at Red River Farms in Springfield.  It was blazing hot (seriously, one of the hottest days to date), but we had a nice time.

There were vendors (though we didn’t check them out — we were too worn out to trek back up the hill), tractor rides, helicopter rides, monster truck rides, and a pick your own sunflower patch.

The last couple of weeks ended up being slower. My dad’s hip replacement surgery got rescheduled to August so he could get his teeth implants done first. We put off our visit until then so we can be back home for that.

We had a neighborhood kitty show up in our driveway and befriend us. He was very sweet.  He spent the night on the back porch (Hina got to come inside) out of the rain.

I scheduled him a neutering appointment with the humane society, but there were no openings until September. I figure the $45 is worth not having new litters of kittens all over. He’s since wandered along, but I’ll keep the appointment just in case he decides to come back.

July certainly felt like it went on and on forever. We are looking forward to August, though it’s going to be a strange month.

My parents are coming down for monster trucks, then we are following them back to Nebraska so Little Man and I can be home for my Dad’s hip replacement surgery while the Mister is in Texas for therapy. We’ll get back in time for Meet the Teacher night for preschool and have a few days to get back into our routine before school starts back up. Before we know it, it’ll be September and the rest of the year is downhill.

Until then,