I say "down time" because it's the time in between trips, but wasn't really down time. I mean, when you come home from a trip and immediately fall into spontaneously babysitting your neighbor's daughter for the summer when you've already got a scheduled final book edit and you've got at least 5 loads of laundry to do to wash all of New Mexico's dirt out of everything and you need to replace your dryer in order to get it down because your dryer requires 3 cycles to get anything dry and leaving scorch marks in the process...yeah, you wouldn't call it down time, either. Especially not with two-year-old teething and normal life appointments on top of all that. It was a rude "welcome back to life." So the first day back from the trip I wanted to cry thinking about how long it would take to do all my laundry, so I shopped on facebook, found a washer and dryer set nearby for $240 and delivery for $25. Sold. And then the guy installed for me and hauled the old ones away. I rounded up to $300 and was very happy! Got all 5 loads done in one day!
Thora was so proud of herself for dressing up in her Thing 2 shirt for Lori. It was a forest day and that black skirt fell off her somewhere, escaping her notice. It's gone.
The girls painted nails in my bathroom with our neighbor...they did clean up, but then a two-year-old happened.
My two cuddliest kids! I'm teaching them that they can cuddle with each other to fulfill those needs when I'm done being touched. Pretty sure this was after a breakfast smoothie and Thora was cold.
Beautiful sunset
"Mom, can you type my password?" Lovely way to wake up to knocking at the door because the three-year-old wants to do her ABC Mouse lessons.
Baby snakes!
Yep, lost the skirt. But hey! She's walking the balance bridge by herself! Woot for independence progress!
Crocs float. Thank goodness.
Sliding is so epic with this boy.
I showed Thora the cup game...
Do you look at a bar stool and see a bus? They do.
Our house was hot, even with the AC running. Scarlet found the vent and just stayed! Smart bunny.
Tim and Tristin came to visit the first weekend in June. They came out for a concert and a night with us before heading up to Denver. We played Canasta and took them to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.
Katie loves getting to bring Lindsey anywhere I'll let her.
Sunny D
Kayak outside the wolf lodge.
{Megan, Sam, Katie, Time, Thora, Dancy, Tristin}
Tristin made it up the Sky Ride, though never wants to do that again.
{Hey, it's us!}
Dancy and Katie escorted Tim and Tristin down the ride.
Selfie with the selfie queen of our family.
Thora threw up a few times one night. She wanted to sleep with me, so we went to the couches and set up a sick bed for her and I slept on the other.
Samson spent a week entertaining himself in the mornings. He'd get the bathroom stool and use it to reach the farm animal homeschool game, then sort the animals by color and make their sounds for them.
We gave Dancy the gift of a week at Zoo Camp for her birthday. It started the second week of June and since everybody else had been sick over the weekend...Dancy threw up in the parking lot the first day of camp. So back home we went, spent a sick day on the couch, and she was fine the next day to enjoy all the rest of camp. It was half days, so we just had to get her there at 8 and pick up at noon. On days that we didn't have to be anywhere else and when I felt like I had some time to spare away from editing on the computer, I stayed with the kids to enjoy the zoo. We saw this sloth climb from its perch in the tree back to the hammock in the building.
And it was this close.
Because this was the smallest shirt offered and Dancy wasn't even the smallest kid at Zoo Camp. There were younger age groups. Happiest zoo camper ever! We gave her this gift because she wants to be a zebra helper, aka zookeeper, when she grows up. Get 'em started young!
Shad did the Friday run for Dancy to get to zoo camp because I was pushing to finish my book edit (which I did in 6 days). Katie and Emma in the rock wall area at the top of the Sky Ride.
In the reptile house.
As if we hadn't been at the zoo enough that week, Saturday was a Harris night at the zoo, entrance, dinner, giraffe feeding, and face painting paid for.
Giraffe walking amongst bird friends.
Sometimes she's a grump, but it's really fun when she's not!
Samson loves his giraffes so much!
One of our baby giraffes had been born that week! Here it is with Mom, and Dad on the other side of the fence.
The fluffy rose bush from New Mexico!
Elephant poses!
{Tom}
{Sam}
{Thor}
{Dance}
One of my favorite parts of the zoo!
{Kate}
Tapir getting friendly
Riding an ant, waiting for siblings in the long line for face painting.
Everything is epic with him!
Tickled excited to have their faces painted!
{Kate}
{Dancy}
{Tom}
We drove up to Denver to meet Dan and Tabitha's new human, Will, who was born on May 21. Thora wasn't that impressed with him until I told her to come hold him. Then she was okay with him being her cousin.
Sleepovers with Lori!
When a two-year-old gets a blister, his evaluation of it may surprise you: "Megan, it's my foot nipple!" Oh, because for all of April it was 50/50 whether he'd call me Mom or Megan, then in May he went full Megan. And I don't correct it because I feel it's indicative of the close relationship this boy and I have. We should be on a first-name-basis. Except since his first name isn't a closer name for me to call him, I call him by his middle name in response. Recently he decided that Shad would be Shad instead of Dad. I've even heard things like, "That's not my mother, that's my Megan!" I am his and he is mine. Forever and ever. Back to the foot nipple.
Marble maze at the ERC.
Because sometimes a three-year-old needs help easing out of crying over every. little. thing. And so we filled two of these charts to train her to be a big girl. Used images of her heroes, emojis because she loves texting them to Lori, and stickers because that always makes things fun! The reward was a date of her choice with the parent of her choice. For the first date, she chose going to Costco with me and we ate an ice cream sundae and talked endlessly. The second date had to wait nearly a month (til last weekend) because she chose to go ice skating with Shad. But now she is a bona fide big girl and we get to remind her of that when she chooses to cry over petty things like needing to go to the bathroom or get her shoes on to go to the park :D
Just a post-forest bubble bath, playing Mistress Heart (that's the unicorn's name).
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