7th

**Here's a rare post with very few pictures of the kids, and not much mention of them either. So if that's why you're here, scoot along.**

June has flown by, as it usually does, and so have the first few days of July. Now is about the time when I start to panic (OH NO! Only two months left of summer!!), but not this time. Maybe because June didn't feel much like summer anyway, but mostly because it's been so busy that I'm ready to slow back down and enjoy life. In fact, I am actually looking forward to cleaning my house today--something must be off.

For the Fourth, we headed up to Jeremy's parents to celebrate. We started the day off with our very first 5k run! Jeremy's sister Ashley asked us awhile ago if we wanted to run with her (and by with, I mean, behind), so we got ourselves all ready for it. I expected to run it in about 36 minutes, but I exceeded my expectations. Jeremy and I both finished in just over 29 minutes! And Ashley finished in 26 1/2 minutes!Here we are after the race, feeling pretty proud of ourselves. And feeling pretty sweaty.

We spent the rest of the day with Jeremy's family and enjoyed watching their city's fireworks show from my in-laws backyard. After that we headed home because we had to be at our church meetings on Sunday. It was the longest hour drive of my life--we were tired! Then after church on Sunday we headed back up to their house and dropped the kids off.

On Monday Jeremy and I celebrated our 7 year wedding anniversary. We don't normally do much for our anniversary, but I decided that I wanted to this year. And since our kids only existed as mere thoughts 7 years ago, I thought it would be fun to have that be the case again! So while they got to play at grandma and grandpa's, we stayed at a family cabin and went out on the Rhino on Monday. It was fun, relaxing, cheap, and QUIET. After dropping them off I asked Jeremy if our lives used to be that quiet, I guess we just never appreciated it.

While out on the Rhino we passed a ton of meadows full of wildflowers and the colors were gorgeous! We also passed many a mud puddle in the road. I'm pretty sure we drove through more while Jeremy was driving, but got muddier while I was driving. In fact we came to one and Jeremy said, "drive through this one as fast as you did the last one and I'll take a picture". So I did, but not much happened. Which meant, of course, that I had to do it again. I backed up, got more of a running start, and drove more to the left where the deeper puddle was, and this time something happened!
Let me tell you, that water smelled about as good as it looked.
After driving for several hours we finally loaded the Rhino back up, spent 20 minutes and a small fortune hosing it off at the car wash, and picked up the kids. Thanks to Mike, Cindy, Ashley and Trent for watching them, they had tons of fun!
Here we are, 7 years into this adventure. A little dirtier, a little fatter (we're working on that!), a little more tired, a little more experienced, a lot more in love, and a whole lot happier.