Happy Hogwarts, Anna Kate is 12!

Anna Kate is going to be at camp in Tennesee on her birthday, so we had to have her party early.  It was very important to her that all of her crew be able to come, so we found a date when miraculously everyone was in town.  Anna Kate has been meticulously planning every detail of her Harry Potter party for the past 6+ months.  

We sent Carigan off to Kerrigan's and Wesley off to Hyatt's for the night, but Tate wanted to be right there in the thick of it with all these girls!

Anna Kate should be a cruise director - She's a recreational coordinator extraordinaire!  The first craft of the evening was decorating clipboards to use in their bracelet-making.  Tate is so stinkin' sweet... when it was time for gifts, he told Anna Kate to wait there.  He ran upstairs and got a dollar out of his wallet and ran downstairs telling her to close her eyes.  I love how you can see him jumping up and down in excitement.^

Essential oils and all things Harry Potter and Stitch.  Her friends know her!

Emma, Wynn, Anna Kate, Ila, Lillian... and Tate.

Our most daunting project of the night - making authentic frozen butter beer.  Recipe direct from Universal Studios.  I am majorly intimidated by culinary craftiness, so I was one proud party planner when it actually worked!

"Send them to the Rogers, they say... They will be safe, they say... No bad influences there, they say." 

Harry Potter movies, bracelet making, popcorn, and lots & lots of candy.

I don't know how long they stayed up, but they were all still asleep after 9:00 when I came to wake them up.  Smoothies and cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and a game of Whodunnit before moms came to retrieve sleepy kids.  Love these girls!  Thankful for sweet friends.

Summer Celebrations

They love hot laundry! 

What goes up, must come down... Photos taken by a neighbor across the lake of Space X's Falcon Heavy rocket launching at 2:30 a.m. on June 25. Second photo is the two side boosters falling back to the landing site. I put an arrow pointing to our house. I miss the shuttle days - nothing like feeling a giant impact and running outside sure to find an entire tree fallen on your roof, only to look around and see your neighbors doing the same and then you realize, "Oh, must be a shuttle coming in today."

We had already made plans with Sudi to go see Toy Story 4 on Tuesday, and by total coincidence, this popped up in my Facebook memories the very same day.  It may not be 15 years later yet, but it's 9 years later... It's all happening too fast!  Wesley has been doing Raspberry Pi camp at LCS this week with his best friends.  They all got summer bowling passes too, and they've been bowling at least once a week.  RT picked up the boys from camp and took them bowling and we all met up for a late lunch at Moe's:

Tate's best friend Jax had his 7th birthday party on Wednesday.  We got to go to his house and play on the water slide, swim in the pool, and fish on their little floating dock.

Jax's grandma framed this photo of Tate and Jax at their Kindergarten graduation, and Jax keeps it by his bed.  There have been many tears and fears from both of these boys about being separated next year, but Susan and I are committed to keeping their sweet friendship going. 

We were invited to a reception on the library lawn Thursday evening celebrating all of Lake Morton's Century Homes.  Fresco's catered, and Tate quickly found his friend Eva, whose parents own and rent out a century home in the neighborhood.  We received our plaque and Michael mounted it this weekend. 

Wes was at Raspberry Pi camp on Friday and Carigan was at Kerrigan's house, so Anna Kate, Tate and I decided to try out Il Forno at Merchant's Walk.  We've been craving calzones ever since we had them in Bonita Springs.  I've only been to Il Forno once before that I can remember, and it was at least 15 years ago because it was before Wesley was born (we were with a group, Randal and Paige, and some others).  Oh my goodness, we are in love.  It's so funny how some places are on your radar and others just aren't.  I can't believe we've been ignoring this place for 15 years!  We will be back... lots. 

Today is Mimi's 70th birthday!  She doesn't like a lot of fuss - we brought her presents earlier this week when they had us over to swim and grill out, and we had breakfast at KeKe's this morning.  They just got back from a couple months in Chattanooga.  We've missed them! 

Sanibel Sun

Our final late night beach stroll starfish count: 14

When you look up at the pool and realize that big sister has been a bad influence.^  Giving me a heart attack.  And of course we had to squeeze in our annual trip to Island Cow: 

Tate and the iguana match!  We were eating dinner when Tate remarked that his tooth hurt... I looked inside and saw a new tooth had broken through the skin, and wiggled his baby tooth, and sure enough, it was loose.  I said, "Tate, you have a loose tooth!  You're about to lose your first tooth."  I wish I had a video of his response... a slow smile spread across his face as it began to register, and then he began to giggle.  It went on forever.  He is SO excited.  He keeps asking how long it takes for a tooth to fall out.  He was the only kid in Mrs. Henry's kindergarten class last year that had never lost a tooth.  He has been waiting for this moment!!

It's our annual Sanibel tradition to pay a quarter to check out That Thing You Do on VHS from the resort office.  Yes, the VHS/DVD combo still works!  This time they didn't even charge us a quarter.  I think we're the only people that even still ask about the VHS tapes.  We first watched this together here several years ago, and we've borrowed this same tape every summer.  Our favorite line is, "Guys, Chad fell down."  This is Rogers Family happiness right here!!

Michael has just started wearing reading glasses.  I still do a double take every time I see him sitting there reading... Who is this sexy silver fox?!  He finished A Land Remembered this week.  He also got up early and worked on his fly fishing technique most mornings.   

We rode bikes down to She Sells Seashells every day.  The kids had all week to make a final decision on their end-of-week purchases. 

Tate is so excited he got to see Ms. Holly last night here in Sanibel of all places! This is the amazing speech teacher that worked miraculous wonders with our sweet boy that learned to talk when his tiny ear anatomy distorted every sound like he was hearing it underwater. He wasn’t speech-delayed... he spoke a different dialect and had to learn to replace each and every sound with a different one. And to remember to do it every single time he had a thought he wanted to express. I’m talking some HARD work for our tiny guy. And Ms. Holly got in the trenches with us and worked with him for four hours a week for two whole years. And what they accomplished is nothing short of wondrous. This kid has a LOT to say, and listening to him talk is often the highlight of my day. We will be forever grateful!

We've had so much fun grillin' and chillin' this week in our happy place!  So thankful we didn't skip it.  Very thankful we're able to do this.