Gettin' Down and Dirty!

Summer means chalk. And if you cover the whole drive way with solidly colored art, you become colored yourself. Right, Katie?

Summer also means that these three humans don't cling to me crying the whole time we're in the forest and we can actually last the 2 hours. Hooray! Also, they're getting much more adventurous with their exploring.

{Dancy, Samson, Thora}

She used to be afraid of EVERYTHING!

Can't really tell, but we're all barefoot in the creek.

Forests are for yelling in, right?

The train game. They all scoot along the beam of the bridge with Samson singing, "Chugga CHOO CHOO! Chugga CHOO CHOO!"

{Samson, forest friend, Dancy, Thora}

Samson's face!

It never gets old to them, playing the train game and asking me to take a picture. Yes, Dancy is wearing an orange Broncos shirt with pink leggings. She's bold.

{Thora, Dancy, Samson, Katie}

During sacrament meeting, Thora practices writing her name with me. She's mastered the spelling of it so that she can tell people what her name is and be understood, though people still don't understand her. Poor kid. With her pronunciation of 'R' people always hear, "T-H-O-O-A." One day she'll get there and be understood! In the meantime, her writing is coming along nicely!

Samson is so delighted when Scarlet takes interest in him.

She's started this new thing of chasing at our feet when she's out of our cage. She just wants attention and pets!

How many bunnies do you know that do this?

{Dancy, Scarlet, Samson}

And Scarlet also lets Thora brush her...while wearing her matching skirt!

Thora helped me cook brussels sprouts. And she ate them, too. That's pretty rockin'.

Typical Thursday for me means waking up at 6:30, maybe doing yoga, maybe reading scriptures, quick breakfast at 7:30 and we try to be out the door at 8:30 to get to the forest. We're usually there 9-11, sometimes 12. Drive home with half my kids stripped down due to mud or creek-soaked clothes. Throw the kids into bubble baths, start a load of laundry, then wash the kids and we eat lunch. Crash on the couch til 5-ish, start cooking for D&D, dinner at 6:30. Sam goes to bed, girls have a sleepover movie night in the playroom, Tommy stays up playing D&D with Shad and the guys, I run out to the church to play volleyball til 10:30.

That's the norm. Then add in extra things like Primary activity to plant flowers at the Denver temple at 5:30 pm. Or whatever time it was. Something like that. Also, that Thursday was particularly beautiful weather, so we stayed at the forest til 1:15. Which means we didn't get home til 1:45 to start baths, laundry, and lunch. All just to turn around and head back out the door at 3:15 to drive to Denver. The kids thought Deseret Book was a cool store and Tommy got to look at some scripture colors for the set he'll get next month. Then we planted flowers, at donuts, ran around in the grass until 7, drove home and I still managed to get to volleyball around 9 or 9:30 and played til 11. Exhaustion.

{Samson, Megan, Katie, Tommy, Thora, Dancy}