Life as a Lewis

1. At the beginning of the summer, we asked Rory what she would like to do before heading back to school. Her answer? Go to Fazoli's. Tomorrow, we'll fulfill her one request for the summer. It may have taken all summer to get to it, but the girl is going eat fast food Italian for lunch. 2. She also informed me today that she really wishes she were a middle child. 3. I've had iced coffee 4 out of 5 afternoons this week. My idea of maintaining a summer diet is existing on air and coffee during the day and eating ice cream at night. I thank Becky for my newly found love of a triple venti iced espresso with 3 pumps of white chocolate mocha (plus milk). 4. Camden will be attending his first youth group activity this weekend. Ahhhhhh!! 5. I did a photo shoot with some new friends this week. The weather did not cooperate in temps (it was unbearably hot) and it stormed on us about 20 minutes into the photos. I still came away with a few good photos, and they stayed for pizz...

My grandpa has collected mugs ever since I can remember and over the past couple of years, he's been letting visitors choose their favorite (or two or three) to take home. When we visited my grandparents earlier this summer and it was our time to choose, the Nashville mug was kind of a no-brainer. Rory drinks milk out of it nearly every morning. While I will miss seeing that wall of mugs when we visit, I love having mementos from my childhood being used by my own child.

(haven't had one of these in a while!) We discovered that one of Camden's all-star teammates lives in a nearby neighborhood so they have been spending lots of time together. If you can believe it, this is his first neighborhood friend. Ever. He is over the moon, and it's so cute (I need a better word than cute for a pair of middle schoolers). Camden mapped out the directions, taped them to the front of his bike, and left a note in the other boy's mailbox and it's been all fun all the time ever since. No pictures because hello, thirteen. He is so mortified by the camera these days. For the first time ever, we were hoping to take advantage of a parent's night out at church (we're usually working at these events instead of getting to be the parents). And then we realized Camden is thirteen and has aged out of the parent's night out.  Also. Having older kids may mean there are no longer diapers to change, but it also means their bedtime ...

Our household woke up to a 13-year old this morning. How did Camden go from this . . . . . . to this so quickly? (I brought him Starbucks in bed for his birthday.) Since today is his 13th birthday, this week's Five on Friday is all about Camden. 1. He finished his Little League career this week, and the season certainly ended with a bang. We won our first all-star game 15-0, but games 2 and 3 ended on the last play of the game with questionable calls. Although Camden wasn't in the starting line-up all 3 games, he did get to pitch in 2 out of 3 games and threw a whole bunch of strikes. I have a feeling he will be replaying one not-so-smart play in his head for quite a while, but I hope he also remembers the triple and the impressive number of players he struck out. She thought I was taking her picture. ;) 2. His love for reading and music has not diminished over the years, and I am excited to see where both of these passions take him. H...

I came home with 662 pictures from our 4 days in east Tennessee. You can just go ahead and thank me now for not be sharing all of them here, but I did want to post a few favorites. These two 9-year olds were hilarious. They stayed off to themselves and dramatically started a band called The Shining Lanterns while planning their movie centered around their band mistakes. Camden got to fish in Gramp's pond and was pretty excited about this fish - definitely the biggest he's ever caught. Camden and the little guys had a blast playing together. We spent one day on the lake in two boats - super fun! A few of the adults (including this one) stayed dry, but most of the family (bigs and littles) enjoyed the water. Camden was a little hesitant when the other kids started jumping off the boat deck, but he finally jumped crawled over. I can't blame him for being nervous; I sure wouldn't have jumped! Brian tried to get fan...

We invited family and friends (both old and new) over Sunday afternoon for an early Independence Day celebration. I didn't make the adults jump in the picture and only snapped this quick one of the kids after dark. If you can't tell, it was just a tad hot and humid. Understatement of the day. Notice Addison's photobomb My original plan for July 4 was to spend it in yoga pants camped out on the couch with my book. We ended up spending most of the day working around the house instead, but it was still good to not have any time commitments. The kids finally got to see Finding Dory (we have heard about this movie non-stop for the last several months) and then shot off some fireworks. Not only did I not put them in patriot t-shirts, I didn't even take pictures. My, how times have changed.