Happy Father's Day to my Mann!

I have so many reasons to love my mother-in-law. 

This is just one of them:

 This is Pepper's bedroom, the room where Mark and Lois stayed when they came to visit.  It only took a couple of nights in this room before Lois tentatively asked if she could paint the purple wall in his room.

Sure!

So, we spent a whole day painting over the purple so now Pepper's room has all cream walls.  Lois also inspired me to buy new bedding, so Pepper's room got a Home Make-over House Guests Edition.  

Too bad it didn't look this good when Mark and Lois were here.  I still have to get some things to hang on the walls to make it look Decorated, and my goal is to do that before they come visit us again.  Or maybe I won't.  I should probably just let Lois come and pick them out.  She's my own personal Haley.

My big, grown-up girl!

Jessica graduated from Northwest High School today.

Yay Jess!!!!

Mark and Lois came out for Jessica's graduation, so we've been a-partyin'!

 When the boys were out mowing, Lois decided she wanted to give the riding lawn mower a try.

 With a little coaching, she got the hang of it pretty quickly!

Onward and upward!

On Sunday, we headed out for a road-trip adventure to Knox City, TX, which is where Lois' grandparents lived when she was a little girl.  She and her family used to drive out to stay with them every summer.

First we went to the Knox City Cemetery, hoping to find her Grandma's grave, but we didn't have luck with that.  Pepper did find a little gravestone for Paul Herndon, though--a little baby that died at 11 months old.  Lois didn't know who he was, so maybe we found a long, lost ancestor.

Near Knox City, we found this old house by the side of the road.

I was NOT about to walk through that snaky grass in my flip-flops, so Brad took my camera over to the doorway and snapped pictures of the inside for me.

That's pretty much all there was to do in Knox City.  Don't be deceived by the name--there is nothing 'city' about Knox City.  It basically consisted of a gas station, car wash, and a lot of mud, some of which we nearly got stuck in (which is why we got to know the car wash so well).  But we had a great time exploring and listening to Lois tell stories about her summers at Grandpa and Grandma Herndon's house.

Tuesday was Luke's second grade awards ceremony.  I got an email from his teacher saying he'd be getting an award, so I showed up at the appointed time with my camera in hand.

They started off by calling all the names of the children on the A/B Honor roll.  Luke's name was called, along with about half his class, so he walked up to the front and got his certificate with everyone else.  I clapped and settled down to watch the rest of the ceremony, pretty sure that was the award I'd been notified about.

Yep.  They called the names of the A Honor roll kids.  Then the names of the Good Citizenship kids.  I was good and comfortable in my chair, knowing Luke had already gotten his Honor roll award and there was NO WAY he'd be getting a Good Citizenship award (since I get a note almost daily from his teacher telling me his varying degrees of naughtiness in Talking Out of Turn).

I had my camera all put away when they announced the last two awards, one for Outstanding Student and the other for Outstanding Character.  They were the biggies.  Outstanding Student went to some girl who looks like she's every teacher's dream.  Then they announced that the Outstanding Character award went to...Luke Bitner!

I flew into action, digging my camera out of my purse and trying to get it set to take a decent picture from the back row.  This was the best I could do with my shaking, thrilled hands as I stumbled to my feet:

Sorry it's so out-of-focus.  I was a little beside myself!

Today, I got to go to another awards ceremony just for Lukie's class.  

This was a just-for-fun ceremony where every kid got a candy award.  Luke's was the Smartie's Award--probably for being a big smart-aleck. You can see he's delighted.

Tonight, my little Sica-sue graduated from seminary!

After four long years of grumbling about getting up so early, she did it!  She finished!!!

With her super-awesome seminary teacher from this year.

Actually, this is her with two of her seminary teachers.  Poor girl.  No wonder there was so much grumbling!

Tonight was a great night!  We are so proud of our girl!

On Saturday afternoon, we joined Brad's sisters and their families for some bowling.

I didn't pack for bowling, so I channeled my Inner Duggar and bowled in my skirt.

 I'm happy to report that no swear words were heard from Brad this day.

After bowling, Becky divvied out tokens to all the kids and explained that they were all to go win as many tickets as they could.  When their tokens were gone, the person with the most tickets got to have ALL the tickets.  

Let the games begin!!

Adam was the winner!  He used all the tickets to buy this ... stuff.

Good times!