Summertime Adventures 2013

Last week almost killed us. It was our annual go to Vacation Bible School all morning, come home for lunch and then go to swim lessons all afternoon week. I know tons of families do these kinds of things day in and day out and that's great but we aren't typically that busy. If the kiddos had one meltdown last week they had one hundred meltdowns last week. But I will say they had tons of fun at VBS and Emma Mae has been singing all sorts of songs about Jesus this week which makes me smile. She keeps ending one song with "he gives us ever lasting might" and I keep telling her I think it's supposed to be "ever lasting life" and she tells me "not in my song mama!" So, whatever. He does also give us might I suppose.

We are watching my neighbor's eight year old boy three days a week this summer. So the kids have a friend to help keep them entertained which is good. And I have one more child in the house to keep entertained or else I hear the dreaded words "I'm bored!" So off to the swimming pool we go. Every. Single. Day. If Jake gets any more tan or his hair gets any more golden highlights in it we will have no choice but to sign him up for some sort of little boy swim suit model contest. Or surfer boy poster contest. I don't know but seriously I could die from all the cute over here. Even our fair skinned little Emma has a pretty good tan going on. And yes, I sunscreen them. With zinc oxide even. The good stuff.

Yesterday we met some friends at a local movie theater that shows free kid movies every day in the summer. God bless them. I didn't even mind paying $6 for popcorn because we got to sit in an air conditioned dark room for two hours with no complaining! Blissful.

Today, Mike and I took all three kiddos for a two hour hike at the greenbelt. My poor neighbor boy actually said to me "what's a hike?" when I told him what we were doing for the day. City kids. He actually ended up loving it and said to Jake "I actually feel HAPPY right now!" as they were walking down the trail. Which goes to show that a little outside time for boys is not a bad thing if you ask me. To make things fun I told the kids the first one to spot a butterfly got five points. Then a hundred points for a lizard. You get the picture. By the time we hiked over an hour to find the only little pool of water in the dried up creek bed we were close to each kid had racked up about ten million points. We saw butterflies, lizards, birds, bugs, squirrels, weird tail less rodents, tons of baby frogs and to top it off three snakes. Yes, I said three snakes. They were all in the little water hole we eventually found. First we saw one and that was cool. Then we saw a second and that was neat. Then we saw the third and I said to Mike "do you think we're in a snake den? hey kiddos! go ahead and back slowly out of here and let's get back on the trail. what do you say?!" Then Jake and his friend spent the next 45 minutes completely forgetting about how HAPPY they were on the hike out and instead talked of dying in the woods from being too tired or their feet falling off from walking too much or of dying of starvation or thirst before we made it back to the car. Clearly, we need to toughen up these boys.

Now, on a completely unrelated note: