It's almost August. What. The. What.

So June, right? The kids last day of school arrived.  School is great and wonderful but it meant early mornings and long days so summer break was most welcome.  I thoroughly enjoy sleeping in until 8 and having mostly nothing to do (except for the excessive amount of appointments with doctors, dentists, orthodontists and chiropractors to make up for not doing it during the school year.)  In short, the girls all had a great school year and in grand Scharman tradition, I had more than one child cry on the last day of school because they were sad to say goodbye to their teachers and friends.

We love our new tradition of getting together with family and friends to shoot rockets off at the nearby high school...however, you would think that with all the engineers in the bunch, we could figure out a better way to keep them from landing on the school roof.  This was the last rocket day of the season because sitting out on the parking lot during summer would be a death sentence.
Shhh, don't tell anyone that Clark and the men found a way on top of the school to retrieve 'said' rockets.

Grandma and Grandpa have invested in a giant bubble making apparatus.  The grandkids love it.  I'm still trying to figure out a way to get into one of those bubbles and float to the ocean.

Right after school got out little Hazey had an appointment to have her tonsils and adenoids removed.  They were enormous! She took after her sister, Mia, who also had hers removed a few years ago.  She was pretty calm and happy - especially after her "relaxant".  Post surgery wasn't as fun and it was a pretty slow recovery but she had plenty of pudding and popsicles to make up for it.

Clark was tricky and somehow convinced me that our mini van wasn't cutting it anymore.  I don't really remember much of his reasoning but I think it has to do with minivans not being manly enough or something.  In any case, we got a new Expedition out of the deal.  "A bigger car for bigger kids" he said.  I may or may not have said something about a bigger family too.  He was not amused. (That is not an announcement.)  The timing was good though.  We bought the car with 250 miles on it and 6 weeks later it has over 5,000.  But our two week trip up North is another post.
I do miss my little silver van.  It was good to us.  Very good.

And then Jonah turned 2.  How I failed to more fully document this, I will never know.  But he makes my heart skip and I love his little guts.  He is a smart and happy little boy and his chipped tooth smile makes me melt.

Time certainly does fly.  This was practically yesterday.

Now this next part may just make you fall off your chair.  We returned home from our massively wonderful and busy family vacation and did something insane.  We surprised the kids with a dog.  I have been very hesitant.  I blame the fact that we have lived here for an entire year and I am starting to get antsy with no change on the horizon.  So I texted Clark one day and said, "I think I want a dog".  He was on it.  Within 24 hours we had found a breeder with the kind of dog we had been looking for, with puppies available the following week.  But we also began seriously looking at labs at shelters around Houston.  When I saw this little guy I knew he was the dog for us.  The breeder never returned any of our calls or e mails so we took it as a nudge to move the other direction.  The best part, besides his smaller size for a lab and adorable white belly and feet, his given name at the shelter was Clark.  It was a match made in doggy heaven.  We made the arrangements, blindfolded the kids and Clark brought the dog in.  It was adorable and fun and so happy I may just have teared up a little.

He is the sweetest little dog ever.  He follows us around and lays at our feet.  He sits and comes when you call.  We named him Dashel Bark Vader Scharman, Dash for short.