Summer fun...kid style...

Thought I would capture a typical summer day at our house...

(white trash slip n slide...)

Best friends...

And this...

Hope your summer is as wet and wild as ours...

Starved Rock

We took a nice drive out to Starved Rock.
It was a beautiful day...
Of course we did not realize exactly how NOT accessible this place was. Wow...

Of course Ella had fun going around hugging all the statues...

Shawn too! Austin and I hung out together while the others went hiking. He was not in the mood to have any pictures taken this day.

I think Ella took this one...pretty good.

Dad took Ella and Shawn out hiking on all the trails. Way longer than anticipated. They were exhausted! A fun day...

Happy Fourth of July...

from our gang!

the Cricket...
the Peanut...

and...the Bubs...

Summer...

I love summer in our yard...

The birds are finished making babies and my houses are empty...
The flowers are in full bloom...

The herbs are yummy...

And the tomatoes are popping up all over the vines...

The kid toys are strewn all over the yard...

And I am enjoying the new planting boxes...

A few fires have been made...

And all is good in our world...

Shawn goes to Camp...

Shawn and Daddy are headed off to Scout Summer Camp...

I hope Shawn doesn't have to carry Dad's pack very far...

Lasagna...

Had a craving for lasagna tonight...

Had a great time harvesting the herbs from my own garden...This lasagna had spinach, Italian sausage, ricotta, motz, romano, alfredo sauce and red gravy.

It was super yummy!! Of course we didn't eat the lasagna alone...there was garlic bread...

and watermelon....of course...it is summer after all...

Summertime...

This is where my children spend a lot of their summer.
Jumping on the trampoline.

This year the kids have added a new dimension to the trampoline experience.

It's called "The Butt".

Any time I pull out the camera now I get..."The Butt".

Unless I say..."Cut it out...no one wants to see your butts."

And then I get this...I have no idea what this is...maybe the butts weren't so bad after all.

There...that's better...a nice face picture.

And right as I was taking the trampoline pics this giant bird flew over our house. This was the best picture I could get on such short notice but it was pretty cool.

Welcome to summertime...

Catching up...

School is almost out and my time will be limited so I wanted to catch up on some blogging.

Tim and I were so excited to meet one of our Facebook friends and his wife a few weeks ago. It's funny when you get to know someone on the computer and then meet them in person. We were very fortunate to genuinely enjoy the real "Marty" as much as the online version...

Of course no blog post would be complete without a quick Cricket photo.
Austin's class took a Field Trip to the zoo the other day. He begged me to let him take the camera with him to document the day. At first I was reluctant but I am glad I ended up letting him take it as it was really interesting to see things from his perspective.

Someone took a few pictures of him which was really nice.

And he took a bunch of animal photos. I was so impressed with his vision in the pictures. He did a great job framing them and choosing what to photograph. (well...except for the 27 photos of blue..."Look Mom, a seal. Look Mom, a dolphin. Look Mom, a walrus.")

He has now decided that he would like to become a photographer.

Mom thinks that is a great idea!!

Happy Summer everyone...it's going to be a crazy one around here...

Another Cricket post...

I know...I know

It's good thing my boys don't read my blog because they would be wondering why the last like 27 posts involved only the Cricket. But let me tell ya...this was too good to pass up...

This is how the Cricket came out this morning for school. Yes...those are leg warmers!
In case you missed it... here's a close up. She has on her summer shorts outfit and her leg warmers. And no amount of bribing, cajoling, threatening etc...was going to get her to change.

In fact...she was quite proud of her ensemble. I tried to pretend that she wasn't mine but all that "Mom" calling probably gave it away.

Maybe she will be the next Lady GaGa??

(just kidding)