The Growing Caldwell Family

Lovie and Pops took the kids on the most exciting field trip of all - horseback riding! They were super excited to go and had a better time than expected! After some training in the ring, they were able to hit the trails! Love that big smile! Livy was so excited that she got to ride the horse on her own! Proud riders!

Sarah Graves very sweetly planned a surprise half birthday party for Olivia! Pops and Lovie helped her get the stuff and she directed how it should bo.  Livy was truly surprised! I think she felt very special. Happy for Livy to celebrate her half birthday in spite of COVID and so proud of Sarah Graves for thinking of Livy and wanting to do something thoughtful for her. 

Sarah Graves mentioned wanting to make a marshmallow gun, so I looked into it and was surprised to find it looked pretty easy to do. I bought the PVC parts and a PVC cutting tool and got ready for fun. With some supervision the kids were able to follow the instructions I found and basically did it themselves! Decorating them with fun duct tape was also fun! Being a little older, Sarah Graves was able to get hers really neat! On a trip to The Home Depot, Sarah Graves asked if they could see if there were any kids' workshop kits available. To her and Pop's delight, they had them! The kids enjoyed building their own miniature tool benches and Pops presented them with their certificate and pin! To add to his fairy house, Aaron ordered Charlie some army men and vehicles. I was surprised how much interest he gave them! He set them up for battle and did a lot with them. Charlie was eager to show off his fire building and cook lunch for us! He and Pops showed us their whole routine to

Some weekends are full of water fun!  Charlie has worked so hard on wakeboarding!  Sarah Graves has focused on water skiing and she is very close to being able to drop a ski!  The four of us had the chance to ride the raft together! So fun to get Aaron on with us! We took some big waves and had a blast!  These kids like to ride the raft behind the jet ski too! Lots of ways to play with lake toys! Lovie picked up these tubes for the kids and they have enjoyed them in and out of the water! Sometimes they are a chair to lounge in or fun for playing in the water!

Getting to the lake on Friday evenings is always a good feeling, but these weeks being apart from the kids, it is especially good! Charlie loves to help Pops manage the fire! He calls his sunglasses his smoke goggles! He is quite a character!

The kids have had some good times at Camp Chickamaw! These are some of the pictures that came home. Taking care of Sissy and Livy by being their "waiter" at lunch! I like the hat that sort of looks like a hairnet! There have been some fun times on the water. They take time to do some "school" each day practicing reading and math.  They had a really fun time building a fairy house! Each kid built their own. The only downside is that they later learned there were lots of red bugs in the area and they all endured lots of itchy bites! Livy's fairy garden SG's fairy garden The kids love going for golf cart rides on "whiplash"! Pops put new batteries in Whiplash at the start of summer, then it continued to have problems. Finally, it died while out on a ride and they had to enlist the help of a neighbor to get it home. That led to a day long trip to Opelika to get Whiplash looked at. Despite efforts to make it a fun field trip, the kids were not too impre