uber summer

School is finally out and we are definitely in summer mode! Look at this adorable face - Matthew (missing his two front teeth) is obviously excited for summer.

All third graders spend a day dressed as pioneers for Pioneer Day. This year I was on the planning committee and in charge of biscuit making, butter churning and lemonade. It was a LOT of work. I don't know that I want to be in charge of this when Matthew gets to this point. However the kids had a blast. It was a really fun day. They did tin punching, leather stamping, square dancing, candle making, made biscuits, butter, and lemonade, did chores, and so on. They lived as a pioneer and the kids loved it. Sarah really had a great time so I guess the stress was worth it.

Sarah in a blue pioneer dress

Sarah square dancing

 We have had two fantastic camping trips with our new explorer.  The car handles SO well and drives smoothly. I'm really happy we have it. The first trip we went to Alum Creek State Park and stayed in the G loop near the camper beach. The kids played in the sand for almost 8 hours while I read Red Rising by Pierce Brown. I have since read Golden Son and Morning Star. Those books were incredible. No wonder they won the science fiction goodreads award. I gave them 5 stars! Anyway, the kids had a great time.

Our second trip was to Lazy River with Matt and Sunshine and a new family we just met - the Bombas. The Bombas have 4 kids between 10 and 4 with only one girl (8).  I assumed Sarah (9) would play with the girl but she struck up a friendship with the 10 year old boy over mutual pokemon fascination. We had a great time and the kids played on the new playground there.  We are looking forward to more good camping trips this summer!

Alum Creek

Now these are some good oreos!

New Park at Lazy River

 We bought a new digital piano. It seems to work well. I'm not a piano player so I can't tell but the kids seem to enjoy trying to play. We will expect to be better than Beethoven now that we have this fancy piano I got on ebay.

digital piano

 On the first day of summer break I took the kids to McDonalds for breakfast. For some reason this is a huge treat for them. We never go to McDonalds for breakfast so they were so excited to have microwaved pancakes and rubbery sausage. Yum!

McDonalds for breakfast!

In other news:

1. Erik traveled for 2 weeks recently for his new job. I'm hoping he will like his new role and it will not be too stressful. Also I hope this new job will come with some job security!
2. My paper was accepted to IEEE Frontiers in Education in October. I'll be presenting and I'm excited about it! I've also been talking with a faculty in North Carolina about some collaborative research. I'm hoping it will move forward.
3. We went to Mammoth Cave (pics in next post) and had an amazing time. I'm hoping to do the wild cave tour with Erik sometime. 
4. I was flown out to Chicago to do an interview on cybersecurity and the internet of things. I hope it went well. I was nervous the entire time - of course there were bright lights and a ton of people in the film crew. They will be putting videos of me on social media now. Yikes! 
5. I took an uber from the airport to the Devry campus and back. It was fun to take my first uber ;).