yard beach

You know your yard looks really bad when your daughter says that she wants to go to the beach and then clarifies for you what beach she wants to go to..."Not the beach in the yard...the beach down by the river!" :o)

playing in the rain

Tonight, the kids and I went outside to take our dog for a walk. As soon as we stepped out of the garage, we heard a rumble of thunder and felt a few light drops of rain. Noticing the darks clouds to the east of us and the white puffy clouds and blue sky to the west of us, we decided to go west thinking that we were only going to get the light sprinkles in this passing shower and that it would soon blow over us.

We walked by three of our neighbors' houses and as we were approaching the fourth home, the sky opened up all of the sudden. As Ivy explained it to her Daddy, "the rain just kept coming and coming and getting bigger and bigger!" Needless to say, the kids and I ran back to the house. (I didn't even think to duck under cover of one of our neighbors' porches.) As soon as we all got into the garage again, the heavy downpour turned into light sprinkles again! Deciding that we couldn't get any more wet than what we already were, I let the kids play in the rain (or what little we had of rain by then). The kids had a blast!

Then, the kids moved to our front porch.They loved getting in and out of the little blow-up pool on there.
But, apparently, Owen didn't think he was wet enough so he decided to "dive" head first into the pool. (Letty didn't like him doing that so much.)

Owen was loving it! (Is that a Zipf smile or what?)
Eventually, all three of them were sitting in the pool hanging out together.

all work and no play

Several times a day, Owen will turn to me and ask, "Work? Work?" What he is really asking is if he and Ivy can go out and play in the huge yard full of dirt that now is in existence in our side yard. Here are the kids hard at "work."

After a long hard day of work, our little guy was zonked...

adventure hike

Today, the kids and I went on an adventure hike in search for blackberries. We started down the path across the road from our house and made our way to the upper beach. Ivy was not very pleased with this as the path was very much overgrown. Then, instead of hiking back on the same path, we decided to walk along the side of the river to get back to the path that leads to our regular beach. All was well and good until we came to this dirt ledge that you have to pull yourself up to the top by a rope. (Oops! I forgot about that part!)

Ivy and Owen did so great getting to the top. And, Ivy proved to be the great encourager that she is as she was cheering me (with Letty in the backpack on my back) along the whole way up.

We then made our way to our normal beach where we ate our snack and splashed around in the river.

Ivy put on a dance performance in the water. I believe this one was called either the fish dance or the shark dance. But, then again, it could have been the turtle dance as well.

Letty kept a watchful eye on her older sister and brother so that she wouldn't get splashed.

Some of the treasures we saw on our adventure hike were little tiny toads, some kayakers and canoers in the water, unique rocks and sticks, these pretty yellow flowers,

and some yummy blackberries!

my birthday

Well, 30 years have come and gone, and now I am 31! I am officially in my 30's now! I had a great birthday...nothing too exciting which is exactly how I like it!

Yesterday, Nathan hung up pictures and a shelf on our walls. Yes, he actually drilled and pounded holes in our walls! And, yes, we are still married! (For those of you who don't know, Nathan does NOT like to put holes in the walls - I think he would prefer that nothing would be on the walls OR if you do hang something that better be exactly where you want it because that is where it is going to stay forever! Also, again for those out there that may not know this, ever since we were married, we quickly learned that there was one thing we couldn't do...hang stuff on walls together - it was never pretty, folks. You see, we just have 2 different philosophies to hanging stuff on walls - Nathan is exact and particular. He has to measure all angles, has to use certain hangers, tries to hit studs, and has to make sure it is even and level and all that. Me, on the other hand, am one to eyeball it. My philosophy is if it looks centered, get the nail, pound it into the wall, and hang it up.) Since we are still married after yesterday's happenings, I guess you could say that we are maturing in our relationship and marriage (although we still had our moments)!

Thankfully, we had a box of poptarts on hand when the challenging times came.

And, we had the entertainment of these two rascals and growing-to-be best buds...

Ivy didn't get into any pictures this day. (I guess she knew better that it was best to just stay away!)

We truly accomplished a lot yesterday which is such a great feeling!

This morning, we stopped at Dunkin Donuts on our way to church and had a breakfast picnic of donuts for my birthday treat.

After church, Miss Donna gave me the bouquet of flowers that she faithfully arranges for every church service in the summer. The bouquet was full of sunflowers and black-eyed susans. So pretty and happy! So special, too!

In the afternoon, I actually took the time to blog a little bit about our recent vacation to Maine while Nathan had the 2 older kids out helping him with some yard work. It was an unusually relaxing afternoon for me.

Then, in the evening, our friends Justin and Sarah came over for some ice cream to celebrate my birthday. Ivy thought it was so funny that when they all sung happy birthday to me, Justin called me Mommy.

Thank you to all of my family and friends for the birthday wishes and gifts. I felt so special, so loved, and so blessed!