School's Out for Summer

Out for summer
Out till fall
We may not come
Back at all

June 1st was the last day of school! The next day we took a road trip to Omaha to visit the Henry Doorly Zoo and then we went to Jessica's wedding reception in Council Bluffs in the evening.

Happy Meal Guess Who game during the car ride:

Happy Meal Battleship, I guess:

She's hot:

Penguins, looking awkward on land, yet nimble in the water:

Walking through the coral reef glass tunnel, surrounded by sharks, rays, and fish:

More jelly fish than you can shake a stick at:

Manta rays:

The bonnethead shark's snout has the ability to detect movement beneath the ocean floor caused by crabs, which it primarily feeds on:

The butterfly exhibit allows you to walk through a building full of butterflies flying around freely:

Lots of other animals, too. The gorilla down below cracks me up:

When we came home the next day Rose decided to burn her evil math book as we roasted marshmallows:

Cynthia and I have been racking up a lot of miles on our bikes the past couple months:

We set up a new 14' trampoline in the backyard! It's kind of impressive how quickly it wears us all out:

Backyard

My lens fogged up between the front lens and the UV filter as I walked from an air conditioned house into a hot, humid backyard. The result looked terrible when previewed on-camera, but once I downloaded it I changed my mind...

The rest are less foggy, heh.

Fire Pit

A few weeks ago we built a new fire pit in the backyard. We used 32 landscaping stones and 1 tire rim from an 18-wheeler and – voila! There it is:

Fires in the Backyard

Ah, Summer

Come What May

Wow, I missed the May update completely. Too much going on to try to recall all of it, but here are the highlights from May...

I designed book covers for a couple self-published authors I know. One for Casey:

And one for Jolene:

I'm also finalizing the design of 15 flavors of granola for O'Brien's Own, which will be sold in Hy-Vee grocery stores and numerous other grocery stores throughout Iowa. It's been a huge task designing 15 different products, but it'll be cool to see them on the store shelves! Not too long ago I shot senior pictures of their son and mentioned that I also am a graphic designer, so they asked me to take a shot at designing their new packaging and it turned out great.

The Quad City Air Show is normally later in the summer, but this year it was early and we had a perfect day for it. Cynthia, my dad, my brother and his wife all went with me and we had a blast! Got lots of good shots. Some of my best so far of the Blue Angels:

I'll add more air show photos in a separate post later.

We celebrated Cynthia's birthday and invited friends and family. The weather was awesome, so we set up in the garage and I grilled out.

I got her a really cool banjo for her birthday, too!

In May we went to the Bicycle Rodeo in Hiawatha and the girls both got new helmets. I bought Emily another bike (since she has outgrown her old one) and Rose is riding without training wheels now!

After a lot of waiting and anticipation, Cynthia and I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road the night it opened. It was a blast! OH WHAT A DAY, WHAT A LOVELY DAY! So much fun and it exceeded my expectations. They've been filming it for years and I've been following the news and waiting for it to be released in theaters, so it was pretty exciting to finally see it. It did not disappoint.

The girls' both had artwork that was on display in May at the Cherry building in NewBo. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted the pics prematurely from my phone and only have one remaining:

In May we spent time in the backyard around the fire roasting marshmallows:

I saw these little dudes when I went for a walk during lunch one day – a baby snapping turtle and a toad:

Before school was out, we attended Garfield Elementary's 100th anniversary celebration:

We also went to the girls' outdoor school concert during the last week of school and sang our butts off. Actually, they sang and we did parent stuff like taking pictures and complaining about hearing all the same songs for the 3rd straight year, haha.