Lemonade Stands and Block Parties

It’s really summer now, isn’t it? Today is actually quite cool for a Kansas summer (65 degrees on my run this morning, what?!), but last week was scalding. We spent most of our time at the pool or in sprinklers, searching for relief from the heat. This weekend was our first annual neighborhood block party, and have I mentioned how much I’m loving our street lately? When we first moved here almost five years ago, I was so blah blah about living in suburbia, but in the last year our little nook of the city has become a pretty fun place to be. Lucy spends her days and evenings running back and forth to the neighbors’ homes, making grand plans and catching fireflies. Little Tate runs behind them, trying desperately to be part of the crew. It’s hard being the littlest sometimes, but he does pretty well for himself. This is the kind of life I envisioned for my kids when we moved out here. Running from house to house, eating popsicles and pushing each other on tree swings. Having a secret walkie talkie code with the neighbor boys and spending all day selling lemonade from their homemade stand.

This weekend was the debut of the big lemonade stand that Trent and Lulu made together. It took them about a week, two weekends really, but it really is the cutest thing you’ll ever see. Trent made it out of an old desk painted with leftovers from Lucy’s room remodel. He got all the neighborhood kids involved and everyone had a piece in making the stand a success. They served three kinds of drinks (regular lemonade, strawberry lemonade and Kool-aide…or a mix of the three if you wanted to get crazy!) and even came up with a bottomless cup system, where you’d pay a base price, then you’d get a temporary tattoo to wear, which you’d show to get your refill for free. I was so proud to see them work on this together and to see how happy Lucy was to show off what they’d built.

The lemonade stand’s first day was at our block party, which was also a huge success! It was so awesome to see all of our neighbors come out and spend the day together. One of our neighbor’s used to own his own BBQ restaurant, so he smoked ribs and grilled hotdogs and hamburgers for everyone, while the rest of us brought sides and desserts. The fire department came with a shiny red truck for the kids to climb all over and explore. Sidenote: This was seriously the best looking fire brigade in history. They looked like they belonged in one of those hot firemen (and women!) calendar. Tate was especially enamored with a firewoman aptly named Megan, who he flirted with the whole time. There was a bouncy house, karaoke and a fire pit with s’mores. At around 10 p.m. I finally made Lulu come inside, covered in dirt and with a Kool-aide mustache, exclaiming, “This was the best day ever.”

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As you can probably tell if you have seen a calendar today, it’s the first day of July! And if you’re a long time reader, you know July is when I take some time off from the blog to refuel my creative engine and go on a little Internet hiatus. I have lots of fun plans for July, and I will definitely share our adventures when I’m back in August, but if you miss me too much, you can always come visit me on Instagram, where I will be posting daily. I am participating in the July Photo-A-Day Challenge and have set a goal to run a mile each day, which I will be documenting over there under the hashtag #mileadayjuly. I will also be over on my Crazybananas Facebook and Twitter pages sharing bite-sized updates and photos when I just can’t help myself. I hope you all have a fantastic July! I will miss you like crazy!