July

July has been a busy month for our family. We started things off with the 4th of July. Trevor's swim team participates in the local 4th of July parade. It rained a lot that morning so the turn out was not as big as it sometimes is, but he had fun. Apparently the only fireworks legal here are ones that make smoke and little poppers. But the kids had fun anyway, popping things.

The next day we headed up to Canada to go to Canada's Wonderland, an amusement park near Toronto. It was a really fun park. We all especially enjoyed Leviathan, their 300 foot coaster. They also had a VR coaster, where you wore a VR headset while riding an actual coaster. It completely changed the feel of the coaster. (We rode it once without the VR head set as well.)

We also tried the classic Canadian dish of poutine: gravy and cheese curds on top of fries. It was a bit weird but once you got over the weirdness of it, it tastes pretty good.

After spending a day at Canada's Wonderland, we went to Niagara Falls. We spent the first day there on the United States side and went to the Cave of the Wind where you go right up next to the waterfall. It was fascinating to get that close and feel the power of the water coming down.

Cave of the Winds gives everyone souvenir sandals to wear

The American Falls from the observation deck.

The second day we spent on the Canadian side. We rode the boat up to horseshoe falls and took the tour behind the falls. The power of that much water falling that far is astounding. We also got to see the falls at night and fireworks. At night, they light up the falls with colorful high powered beams of light.

After Niagara, we went out to Palmyra where we were able to watch the Palmyra pageant and tour the church history sites in the area. Before the pageant, the kids posed with some of the actors. The Pageant was really good. We also really liked sites we were able to visit.

Trevor with King Noah

At some point during the month, we also ended up with a hole in a bathroom wall. Alexa got to learn how reinforce a wall and how to patch a hole in drywall. The results look great.

This month also included a lot of swimming and swim meets. Trevor had his summer championships about a week ago. He got a ribbon in all 5 events he swam and got his team points for three of them, helping them to take third in their league.

This past week Trevor also went to Scout camp for his first time. Since he is only 11, he had to come home every night. He was able to get several merit badges though. On Friday, he and I slept over. Shortly after we got our tent set up it started to rain  really hard. Then it let up and we thought we had made it through the worst of it. Later in the evening, it rained even harder and longer. By the time the closing campfire (which actually had no campfire since they moved it indoors due to the weather) was finished everything was under water. The dirt roads back to our site were now rivers, and when we got back to our site we found that we had picked a bad spot for our tent, which was now in a river running through the site. Fortunately, all of our stuff was on an air mattress so it was relatively dry, but the floor of the tent was a pool.  I don't think Trevor will experience a wetter camp out for a while. But we made it through it.

The first rain put out the charcoal for our peach cobbler, so it was more like a warm peach stew.

At the end of last school year, they gave all third graders a cabbage plant to take home and grow. When they pick it, they are supposed to take a picture to turn in when they get back to school in order to get entered in some sort of competition. Alexa picked hers this weekend. It is the largest head of cabbage I have ever seen. Unfortunately it seems to have a lot of bugs throughout it as well.