Squeezing in a Little More

Finley & Hadley's summer days are numbered, like 9 of them. But my summer days are not - it still feels weird/wrong. The teachers report tomorrow and we are going to visit friends. School starting has me feeling happy, sad, guilty, kind of excited, and kind of nervous. I'm sad my baby is big enough to start school. I'm happy because she's excited for kindergarten. I feel guilty because I'm kind of excited for kid-free days to get some projects done. I'm kind of nervous because I wonder what my days will look like when those projects are completed. Who am I kidding, I'll find new projects. And there's always coffee, lots and lots of coffee w/ friends. Oh, and baking cookies and shit for when the kids get off the bus ;)  But we still have 9 more days to squeeze in a little more of summer, so here goes last week. 

One of my summer must-do's was getting the kids out to Beaver Creek Reserve. Check. The Nature Center was recently redone and it's really nice.

My crew was excited to see that Grandpa built it! Not technically, M&J was one of the sponsors of the new Discovery Room, but why not let them believe that Grandpa is fully responsible.

The Butterfly House is an annual summer exhibit, it's an enclosed outdoor room that is FULL of butterflies. So full, that you must enter quickly so butterflies don't escape - no thanks to us, they're two butterflies short now.

The butterflies are most active on warm, sunny days - we picked a great day to be there. I love this picture of Spencer, he was really hoping that butterfly would land on him.

Spencer showed off us jumping skills...

...Finley wasn't so confident. He never jumped.

We picked a trail and went walking.

Along the way, we found another play area.

We raced each other across the balance beams and over the stumps.

Of course Spencer made it look incredibly easy, he smoked all three of us. And then declared this should be an Olympic sport.

Lunch break.

We went to the other side of the Reserve...

...and found an obstacle course nestled in the woods. It was game-on for these America Ninja Warriors.

It was a really nice afternoon.

A sleepover w/ Spencer, the kids started in a line...

...and when I checked on them in the night, my kids had both flipped sideways.

Hadley was invited to spend the day at Allie's - she was SO pumped for a day full of fun w/ the girls.

Spencer visited an old friend that lives here now, Finley rode w/ Grandma to drop him off and was excited to be invited to stay too. In a small world way - Austin (Spencer's friend) was on Finley's flag football team last year - so they all knew each other.

Vacation Bible School was a Camp Ranch theme this year, introducing Cowboy Spensor - we laughed at the spelling of his name.

Spencer stayed at Grandma & Grandpa's all week for VBS, and I'm guessing he was a little jealous of Easton spending a week here too.

The full crew! Even I had a job, I was an assistant in the preschool room - oh my, 2-3 year olds have the attention span of a gnat.

One cowgirl, two cowboys.

The kids participated in a lot of fun activities - music, dancing, baking, science, running, photography, and more.

To close up VBS, the cowboys & cowgirls sang in front of the congregation.

We finally went to the pool for fun!

Finley is 8 years old and still doesn't like water in his face.

But he did like the waterslide. He's so not a dare-devil (which I'm totally cool with), he had the biggest smile every single time he came down the slide.

Little sister loved the slide too. They seriously went up/down over and over and over and over.

 Lunch break.

Spencer is a daredevil, and I both cringed/cheered when I spotted him across the yard at the diving well. He had no fear jumping off the highest dive a bunch of times.

Since we waited all summer to visit the pool, our first visit was probably our last too. It was a fun day w/ friends.

Finley had his annual eye exam and everything has stayed the same. His blurry eye has improved a teeny, but not enough to change his prescription. Dr. Jackie still believes he'll be a great candidate for contacts around 11-12 years old. But for this year, we picked out new frames for his growing face.

The kids went to a park w/ their babysitter and bumped into Finley's old kindergarten teacher and Hadley's new kindergarten teacher.

My weekend was kid-free and friend-full, we celebrated at our 20 year (gasp) class reunion.

The pictures got crazier as the night went on, my body was sore from laughing and dancing.

So happy to have all of these girls back in town for a weekend! 

We wrapped up our Sunday on the golf course. It was my first time golfing in 13ish years. I have no desire to make this a hobby, but an annual outing w/ these two would work for me. The weather was perfect and the kids had a lot of fun.

Literally Squeezing in a Little More of these two.