August always signals the end of summer break for us. Even though at the beginning of the month still we had two weeks before school started– football practices were in full swing and everything became a big doomsday countdown to the actual beginning of school
1. Epic Water Gun and Water Balloon Fight. Summer break wrapped up as it usually does at our house–with an a huge water gun and water balloon fight. It’s just the boys with the water gun fight, but the past couple of years Super Rockstar and I got involved in the water balloon battle. It was the perfect hot sunny day, and we all got soaked.
2. Black Forest Parade. The boys and I started going to this community parade several years ago. We come back every year because, other than Halloween, your kids will not get more candy. The parade itself only runs about 4 blocks, but every car and person that participates in it throws out gobs (and I mean gobs) of candy. It’s awesome. In the past they used to do Outhouse races–which were homemade outhouses that were raced by teams of local business owners along the parade route. I hope they bring those back some day.
3. First Day of School. Grayson’s first day of his junior year of high school started mid-month. It was kind of strange to only be taking one of my boys to school. Morgan is not missing it at all.
4. Grayson Volunteers at Our Church Coffee Shop. Our church opened up a coffee shop in our building a few months ago. Grayson has adopted my love of all things coffee, so when they asked for volunteer help, he signed up. He loves it.
5. Mini Golf. Â We had a couple of items on our summer bucket list that we hadn’t crossed off yet–and a trip to one of our favorite places to play mini golf was on the list. Lost Island has two great courses to choose from and have done a fantastic job with the dinosaur/king kong theme. We had a lot of fun and as usual, Super Rockstar won.
 
6. Football Scrimmage. Just before school started the football team hosted a scrimmage against one of the other schools in town. It’s a great way for the boys to put to practice all the drills they have been working on.
7.Date Nights with our boys. It had been a long while since we had separate date nights with our boys. I’m not supposed to call them date nights because my boys are teenagers and going on a date with your parents is just weird. But I don’ know what else to call it.
I’ve often noticed that my boys have very different tastes and personalities throughout the years, and this always seems more emphasized when we separate them. We set a strict budget for the evening of $50–because the night really is supposed to be more about time spent with them and not dollars spent. Super Rockstar and Morgan went bowling. Morgan likes to go bowling because the place we usually go has awesome cheese fries. Morgan never in his life has much paid attention to how much things cost and after the cheese fries–he was still hungry. Super Rockstar took pity on him and ordered more food. Grand total: $85. Oops. Oh well–they had a lot of fun.
Grayson on the other hand, likes a good challenge. He chose to go back to Lost Island Adventure so we could do the 2nd of the two mini golf courses they have. We had a great time and somewhere along the way we lost track of who was winning. Afterward he carefully calculated that we had enough money to go to Whataburger for dinner. Awesome. It was great. And then when we tallied how much we had spent, there was still $3 left. So he asked if we could get a lotto scratcher. We did. We lost. But the whole night was fun.
8. The first games of the season. Grayson’s first of the season football games began at the end of the month. He’s playing JV and Varsity this year and they won both their first week’s games. I love going to the games and I especially love their traditions. Before every game the whole team gathers to pray. After the game, they gather with the opposing team, and all pray together in the center of the field, and then our boys head straight to the sidelines to sing the school song for the fans. And so it begins….
9. Movies and Shows to Watch–Episode 103. Just click the link to read all about what we watched this month.
10. Books I read.  I made it through some more of the GIGANTIC Wisdom book by the Trim Healthy Mama sisters. And I enjoyed another Sue Grafton–I is for Innocent. Both are really good.
11. My Favorite Memes.
Hope you all are doing well. As always, I would love to hear from you.