It's been beautiful this first "official" week of summer.  

We are learning to enjoy central air--not too hard to do!

Caeden in his music producing spot

He is really liking the midi controller he got at Sweetwater last week!

Friday afternoon, Jeremy took Sylvia to Indiana.  He spent most of Saturday helping around his' parents' place. I tried to clean up and organize our back porch and also worked on staining and sealing the new wood pieces Shannon put in the entry way. It is looking so cool!

Erin took the girls shopping in Fort Wayne. Sylvia tried on formals that were on clearance at Von Maur just for fun and ended up finding and buying her senior prom dress for a really great price! They had so much fun, too!

Tonight Caeden and I watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.  He loved it.

Jeremy went to Meijer today.  He found fruit roll-ups on sale for $.99 a box.  

They are unicorn tattoo fruit roll-ups.

Today's SnapChat filter comic relief...

 

 

Sylvia and I went for a walk this afternoon. 

The trees in bloom around the village are so pretty right now!

We visited Magnolia's magnolia tree again.  Soooo beautiful!!!  Now I have a new wallpaper for my phone background!

My fuchsia tulips bloomed today!

And the grape hyacinths are full!  (And the dandelions are creeping in too, of course.  I let this one stay because Sylvia said she likes the color it adds.)

Guess what?  We are on spring break!  Well, Sylvia and Caeden are.  They are supposed to be on their way to Florida today with the Ridgeview band and choir to perform at Disney World this week and visit all the parks and Universal Studios too. 

 Instead, we sat in our living room and watched the new PoC live-stream church service on YouTube this morning. It was a great comfort to "come together" in this way after the past week of weirdness and everything getting canceled and put on hold for the forseeable future.  

I use Amazon Subscribe and Save for a few items I know we will need every month, one of them being a 96-roll pack of toilet paper.  Guess what?  I won't be getting that delivery this month, since TP is the most hoarded item of this pandemic.  Jeremy has been to the store 4 times in the past 10 days and has seen no sign of TP yet.

It snowed again today!  It is a sort of tradition to have snow over spring break.

Sylvia, Caeden, and I went to Goodwill this afternoon and she found this beautiful gown for $6!

Last minute shopping

We bought Sylvia a dress for homecoming back on Labor Day Weekend at a really cool store (Altar'd State) at the mall in St. Louis, but it was long and really funky.  She got cold feet, and decided not to wear it for the dance tonight, so we made a very last minute trip to Von Maur to find her something more like the typical thing girls are wearing for homecoming right now.  

As we were driving down Veteran's Parkway, the windshield on the Soul cracked. No rock.  Just cracked.  That'll be $100+ later this week.

Sylvia tried on about 12 dresses, and these were the top 3.  She chose the black one.  You can never have too many little black dresses, right?! 

Sylvia's friend Briley came over and went to Von Maur with us, then got ready for the dance with Sylvia.  Briley wore Sylvia's homecoming dress from last year and looked so cute in it!  She also has an older sister who has moved away, so the girls enjoyed being "stand-in sisters."  I'm so glad they're friends. And 

Visiting Annah

Since Sylvia and Caeden had school last Friday and couldn't go with us when we took Annah to college, we all visited her this weekend!

We arrived early yesterday afternoon, and Sylvia got to go in and see Annah's dorm room and meet her roommate.

We admired the note board for the girls on Annah's hall to leave notes for each other.

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We decided to go to the St. Louis Galleria Mall.  It was really busy when we arrived, and as we were looking for a parking space, we saw 2 policemen running, at least 1 of them had a gun in his hand!  Caeden said he had seen a man run around the corner and thought he had a gun in his hand too, but then he thought there was no way he could be seeing that!  As we went into the mall, we heard police sirens and saw more police gathering in.  Later we found out that the man had a gun in the mall and when police asked him about it, he ran.  They chased him out of the mall, across the street, and into a bank parking garage where they fatally shot him.  

Fortunately, once we were inside the mall, we didn't see any more commotion regarding the incident.

Galleria is a really nice mall, and we enjoyed walking around.  We were mostly window shopping.

Ryan's dad has saying people know him for, and one of them is, "Don't be a dillard." So we made sure not to go to Dillard's, and took this picture for just for him.

Jeremy told Annah that she and Ryan got to choose where we would eat.  None of the kids had ever been to Cheesecake Factory, so here they are waiting for a table there.

Caeden and his tacos--and gang signs?  I don't know.

I had an amazing kale salad with salmon.  

And of course we had cheesecake!

After the mall we hit IKEA!  It's always so fun to walk around and see all the cool stuff there!

We got Annah a body pillow because I am worried about her falling off her loft bed with no railing.  Caeden got one too, because he has a big full size bed all to himself.  

Here's the guy with all the money...

Sylvia got a cool light for her room.

Caeden playing with silicone oven mitts...?  Again, I don't know.

After IKEA, we stoped by SIUE and Ryan gave us a nighttime tour of campus!  It's a big place with lots of nature (We saw a very friendly skunk!), and we could tell even at night that it is beautiful.  It's no wonder he loves it there.  We even ran into his roommate, David, and met him and some of Ryan's friends who were on their way to get something to eat.  I hope we can go back and visit in the fall sometime to see how beautiful campus is then!

When we got back to Greenville, Jeremy, Caeden, and Ryan went in to see Annah's room and chat with Tori, since it was during visitor's hours in the dorm. Caeden thought Annah's dorm room was pretty cool, and was a little bit fascinated with how all of their things are organized into such a small space.

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This morning, Jeremy ran to Walmart for some things Annah needed.  He got her a new BigJoe beanbag chair, a padlock so she can get a locker in the music building, AA batteries for her computer mouse and Wii remotes, and maybe some other things.  He took them to her and picked her up at her dorm to join the rest of us at the Huddle House for breakfast.

We took Annah back to her dorm after breakfast, where she waited for Ryan to come pick her up for church.  

It was really hard for Sylvia to say goodbye to Annah and leave her at school!

Caeden also didn't want to let her go.

A selfie looking into the sun...

Everyone but Jeremy) the driver did some snoozing on the way home.  

What blessings to get to see Annah and Ryan in their new homes and adjusting so well.