July in New Mexico brings in our monsoon season – so we’ve been waiting and praying for a lot of rain to help cool things off. Those of y’all from other parts of the country have no idea what this is, but our house is cooled with an evaporative cooler (“swamp cooler” if you want to sound like a local), so basically, the humidity level in my house can rival Disney World some days. We’ve discovered that Eisley girl has curly hair! 😉

We got the yard to livable, safe-for-the-kids-condition and then put things on hold for a bit, so it’s still not real pretty but it’s totally functional for the kids to dig and run and play. Nathan found a bunch of tall grass growing under their slide and for whatever reason, decided to put one in his mouth and came walking up telling us he was a farmer. His two shadows were right behind him. 😉

I love this because I totally would have done this as a kid – we bought this box of Panda cookies on sale at Costco and each little cookie has a different image on it of a Panda playing all kinds of sports, and then on the side, there’s a list of all 35-ish sports. The boys have been circling off the ones we’ve gotten on the box so they can keep track of all the ones we’ve seen. Ha!

Bike ride in the blazing heat. They lasted about 30 minutes. 😉

Long story, so not to get into too many details, but we got some news this last week that was just very, very sad regarding something Jon and I have been hoping and praying for for a long time. That night, the whole in-town family came along to dinner with us and it was just such a wonderful time. So thankful for all of them.

The boys went to pick up some stuff with Jon and Eisley was still asleep, so when she woke up, we had a little Mom and Daughter time with some kettle corn. Eisley loves to mess around with the different filters. 😉

And then, we ended the week celebrating our new favorite two-year-old!! I cannot believe our little Gabriel is already two – I feel like we were just sleeping in the hospital waiting room, waiting for him to finally come. Love our little buddy.

And speaking of birthdays, tomorrow is a certain someone’s SEVENTH birthday. Where does the time go??

Hi! First, I can’t believe it’s already JULY. This summer is going by so fast!! We get so excited for summer to get here and then it just zooms by.

On the Sunday before July 4th, we took the kids to the Natural History Museum here. Such a neat place! The kids were really intrigued by the touch room. 😉

These two just scared us with the stuff they were trying to hold, so we nixed that and found something else fun:

The footprint sand pit! Parker actually tried to make the footprints, Eisley just liked messing everything up. 😉

And we lost Nathan to the microscopes. I don’t think he left that stool the entire time, other than to ask the worker questions about everything. (So did Parker, though, too. He was constantly yelling, “EXCUSE ME, SIR? WHAT KIND OF FROG IS THIS FROG? SIR? SIR, EXCUSE ME?” Goodness.)

I mean, you can’t go to a dinosaur museum and not take pictures by a giant fossil. 😉 Nathan’s reading has come a long way and there were definitely parts of the museum that I was wishing we were back to an illiterate child. 😉 But I feel the same way about certain bumper stickers we pass in the road.

You cannot beat New Mexico sunsets. You just can’t. Jon and I have been getting the little people in bed and sneaking out to the deck to watch the sunset at night and it’s just the best. Life gets insane. It’s so nice to have a few moments together to just sit and talk without a bunch of interruptions.

Parker brought this in one morning and told us it was a bunch of policeman taking the bad guys to broccoli jail. Jon goes, “Too bad they are unarmed.” Buh-dum-chish. 😉

On July 4th, I’d seen these little inflatable pools at Target several times and I finally just bit the bullet and got them. And the kids went NUTS. We set them up at Gammy and Pops’ house and they played for hours in them!

Nathan was a little big for the pirate pool, so I got a much bigger one for him and Parker just jumped back and forth between the pools.

Pirate time from Erynn Mangum on Vimeo.

Jon and Uncle Bryant were in the pools most of the time as well. Love this one – ha! Eisley was trying to be just like Jon and I love how she’s holding his hand! 😉

Aunt Nicole with my two nephews! 😉 Love it!!

We had to bust out the big bow for the 4th of July festivities. 😉

So much fun. The boys went nuts because Bryant let them “help” light the fireworks and then they would run like crazy back to their chairs. Ha! Such a fun Fourth!!!

Nathan discovered the iMovie app this week. Oh my goodness.

Star Wars Kids from Erynn Mangum on Vimeo.

I helped him with the spelling and the droid line. He came up with the rest. I love it so much! 😉

We’ve been reminiscing a lot about last summer and how nuts it was and I am SO thankful we aren’t reliving it this year!! We’ve been busy but NOTHING like last year.

Nathan has been practicing his weird headstand tricks constantly. He’s nuts. And it makes my neck hurt to watch him.

Junie turned three and we celebrated Minnie Mouse style. Eisley thought she’d died and gone to heaven. 😉

Love this!!

Sweet, sweet friends. Parker tells me often that Junie is his bestest friend. 😉

We took the next morning off work and took the kids hiking down by the Bosque. The boys were SO ridiculously happy.

Little Miss was not so ridiculously happy since she had to ride in the carrier for the most part instead of walking around like the boys. 😉

Three happy littles on a log.

I feel like this picture accurately describes our summer. 😉 Lots of playing, lots of fun, lots of kids who can’t keep their eyes open at the end of the fun. 😉

We took advantage of Jon working from home to go get iced coffee during the kids’ rest time. Love this!

Needless to say, Eisley has been known to get away with murder when it comes to her dad. Particularly when she’s wearing her hair in pigtails. 😉

She plopped in his lap to watch Wild Kratts and it was the highlight of his whole day.

Love summer family dinner nights – the kids run themselves tired outside at Gammy and Pops’ house and then finish up the evening with ice cream. It’s the best time of the year!

Hi everyone!!

I really hope you’ve been enjoying our little summer book club!! We are meeting TOMORROW, on my Erynn Mangum page on Facebook Live at 10AM MST (which is 9AM Pacific time, 11AM Central time, 12PM Eastern Time).

We’ll be discussing The Negotiator, so bring your book, grab a cup of coffee and join us!!

Can’t wait to see you tomorrow!!

For Father’s Day, we gave Pops some new pictures for his office, because 90% of them are before Parker and Eisley were even around. 😉 So, it was time for some updated shots.

I’ve said it before, but Nathan’s super power is totally smiling for the camera. He’s excelled at this since he was eight weeks old. 😉 Rarely does it take longer than about three seconds to get ten perfect pictures of him.

Parker does not share that same talent. 😉 Ha! He takes a lot more convincing. I usually have some pretty fantastic outtakes of him.

And Eisley DEFINITELY doesn’t share that talent. We can only get her to look at the camera and smile if all the stars align and the four of us are all acting like circus clowns. Ha!

The outtakes:

This one cracks me up because this was her reaction when a hummingbird flew by. Ha!

Goodness, I love these kids.

We had a nice, low-key Father’s Day celebrating our Jon. 🙂

The boys made cards for him and were so excited to give them to him!

We gave him his cards and then took him out to a Father’s Day brunch at his favorite breakfast restaurant. 🙂

Eisley is SUCH a daddy’s girl it’s not even funny. Someone is going to have a terrible time when Jon goes back to regular hours in the fall.

The Tuesday after Father’s Day, we sold my car! We’ve been looking at bigger cars since Eisley was born but never could quite pull the trigger. Finally, we decided to list it this summer since Jon’s schedule was a little more conducive to us only having one car for awhile, if we had a long gap between having two cars again.

On Wednesday, we went to go look at a used Kia Sedona and ended up buying it the same day. 😉 Ha! Not a long wait at all! We were so thankful! We didn’t tell the kids until we went to “pick up” Jon from the dealer and this was Nathan’s reaction:

Ha! We will see if he has this same reaction when he’s sixteen and finds out he gets to drive the van for his first car. 😉

I protested the minivan for YEARS and now, I’m actually kind of really enjoying it. 😉 It’s so nice to have a little more room and it’s REALLY nice for Nathan to not have to climb through the hatch. And, we went to Costco and no one had to hold anything on their laps on the way home. Ha!

Photo credit: Parker. 🙂

I heard the balloon when I was up trying to get some work done early in the morning and so I ran and got the boys out of their room. They ran out on the deck. You know they are close when the balloonists are calling, “Good morning!” as they float by. Ha!

Front facing cameras should not be allowed in a house with small boys. Weirdos. 😉

I’m so excited for you guys to meet Amelia, Landon and Joe!

You can read more about Swing Lowe and pre-order your very own copy here!

As a reminder, the Kindle app is absolutely FREE and you can read it on any phone or tablet. It will also be available on Nook and Kobo on July 17th!

Thank you all so much!!!

Swim lessons continued this whole week!

Warming up to the water again on Sunday at family dinner at Gammy and Pops’ house. 😉

It must have worked, because this Little Miss went from HATING swim lessons to LOVING swim lessons! Ha!

Such a cheesy girl! We were so happy!

Nathan has always and likely will always love swimming. He’s good at it too! When he settled down and focused, he did fantastic.

I couldn’t get a good picture of Parker the Blur during lessons, but after the last day on Friday, this guy was TOAST. I even had a call into our pediatrician because I was so worried about him – he slept for almost three hours in about four different locations all over our house as we tried to get him up. 😉 Poor little man. Swimming every day for two weeks straight is hard!!

(Edited to add: If you checked this post earlier, I’ve changed the book due to a few concerns and reviews. So, new book!)

So so excited for this!!

I have been going over potential books for forever and after MUCH debate, I think I’m going to go with an oldie but a goodie. 😉 So without further ado…

The Negotiator by Dee Henderson!! I first read this book in college and it totally hooked my attention! It’s been a LONG time since I’ve read it and if you haven’t ever read Dee Henderson’s O’Malley series, you should just go ahead and set aside some of your summer money to buy the rest of the series. 😉

Right now, it’s about $8 for either the paperback or Kindle on Amazon!

As far as a timeline goes, let’s all have it read by July 1st and I’ll have a definite time for you soon, but on that day I’ll do a Facebook Live chat (and FUN – I think I’ve convinced my mom to join me for it!). So have your book read and a cup of coffee ready and we can all pretend we are in the same room. 🙂

So excited to hear what you think!!