A bit of summer so far

It seems that summer is not a good time for blog updating around here. Who wants to be inside sitting at the computer?! But more sadly, I also haven't been taking many photos. Here is a sampling of the little I've documented of the summer so far.

In mid-June we had another awesome MCC Bangladesh reunion at our place. I'll post more photos of that later, but here are two: one morning the kids got to go to the park, and (below) our kids got a taste of kiting.

We've obviously drunken a lot of terere these last months.

The "chickies" are growing like mad and are almost ready to join the big mamas in the barnyard.

We've had plenty of rain, so the garden looks pretty good. The raspberries are most bountiful right now. We're also eating lettuce/spinach, peas, and those kinds of early season yummies. It'll be quite a while till the tomatoes and peppers are ready.

The kids started playing that Jonathan's (very low) bed was a "bunk bed," and Anna even slept one night in the 6-ish inches under his bed one night. The next day Ramont put longer legs on the bed, and this was the arrangement for a good month or so.

A few nights ago we sent Anna back to her room, as it seemed like she just wasn't getting enough sleep at night. Jonathan is such a night owl, and they were staying up too late talking and generally having too much fun...

Jonathan sported his first U.S. boil last week. It's all better now. He bumped it with a book at the height of its, well, grossness, and that spelled the beginning of the end.
 

In summer we eat most of our meals outside, either on the lawn out back for supper or here in the breezeway for lunch. Here Ramont tries to catch a bit of rest before we eat.

 In June we attended the Central Plains Mennonite Conference annual meeting at the Anabaptist-oriented Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul. It was fun to see new and old friends, and especially interesting to learn more about this unusual mega church in the Cities.

The kids love conference, and were much looking forward to it. Jonathan has made a good friend from Freeman (his parents and I were at Bethel College together). There were special preschool-age activities all day long on Friday and Saturday, meaning we could fully focus on the delegate sessions and workshops.

Another highlight was staying the beautiful home of the Faith Mennonite Church pastor. It was located just a few blocks from the state capitol building. Perhaps even more excitingly, it was right across the street from a McDonalds...and ice cream cones are apparently 69 cents this summer!

Living some city excitement: sirens! people! cars!

So that's a bit of summer so far, not including hay baling, garden and yard fun, and general outdoor living. Hopefully more to come soon.