Crawling and Flying

Days equally crawl and fly around here it seems.  I have been trying to do enough with the kids to have fun and stay a little busy/entertained but also give us plenty of down time.....but get too much down time and it is hard for the kids to handle it.  Well...one child in particular.  So the delicate balance of staying active and busy with laying low and bumming around the house continues.

Day 18:  Monday, June 20th.  So I already missed documenting a day of summer.  AND it was our Anniversary AND Father's day and not a single picture was taken.  Oh well.  So Monday we really needed a day around the house but I had told a friend that I would meet her at Flandrau beach WHENEVER it worked for her.  And so this day worked....we spent 4 hours at the beach which actually turned out to be super relaxing and kind of what we all needed.  Otherwise I probably would have just cleaned, done the mountain of laundry from camping and all the stuff I should have done.  Instead we swam, played in the sand and chatted.  Before we left in the morning the kids begged to do a lemonade stand.  They made invites while I was getting beach stuff done (and starting on the mountain of laundry) and handed them out to kids and adults in the hood.  They put down 2:30 p.m. and the neighbors showed up!!

Kids did pretty well and are saving most of the money for our trip in July!!

Day 19:  Not much to report this day.  A little stop at our favorite park for a church play date to get the wiggles out before grocery shopping:

Day 20:  Wednesday, June 22nd:  A decent bike ride away and we are at another park for a little while.  This one is best loved for the old school merry-go-round.

And making homemade ice cream for the first time for the homemade ice cream maker we got Craig for Father's Day.  Excited to experiment with this a bit.  We did a basic Vanilla (without egg) and it was a little too whipping cream tasting for me so I think we need to play around with it a bit.  Still good though.  If you have a favorite recipe I would love to try it!!

Day 21:  Thursday, June 23rd.  Caleb has been begging constantly to head back to the some dirt trails.  I think he is going to be our X-Games kid.  He likes all the daring stuff and never seems afraid or to get hurt.  We did the trail twice just because I knew it would be awhile before we could come back and the kids enjoyed it like usual.  They are becoming pros.....we may need to branch out a bit and find some more single track for them to play on.

Caleb Kineval:

And some Dilly Bars afterward of course.  (It's 11 a.m. here...and summer)

Day 22:  Friday.  The last few years we have camped with a family at our local state park for a weekend.  We always have fun but the men were getting a little tired of camping at the same state park.  So this year we decided to branch out a bit and go a few hours north.  Mainly because of the lake at this state park.

Hiking a trail when we first got there.  We like to explore our homestead when we get to a new camping spot.

Camped right on the lake the first night.  It was windy but also cool and bug free!

Day 23: Saturday:  After breakfast we did a little of this:

And then a lot of this:  The lake was so clear and we really enjoyed dropping anchor and swimming in the refreshing (read:cold) water and tubing.

Day 24:  Sunday.  Drove home and it was hot.  Kids were tired, Craig and I were tired.  We had a lot of laundry and little motivation.  So Craig built the kids a Ninja Warrior Course in our backyard and we drank ice tea and did nothing and it was pretty awesome.  Back to the real world tomorrow :)