The "Beach"

I have a hard time referring to the shore of a lake as a "beach" due to the fact that I'm an Oregonian and the beach to me is the real deal! But in Idaho, lake beaches are as good as it gets, and we're pretty lucky to live in close proximity to a lot of lakes. And they're big lakes, so that's a plus!

The other plus is that one nice public beach is less than a 5 minute drive from our house, so we went with some friends today after John got home from work. It was perfect weather (around 90 degrees!) and the kids played and played...and played...until the cold set in and their little teeth started chattering. Then they played a little more, and came home to go directly to bed because they were so exhausted! 

Alright, so it wasn't all sunshine & roses...Archer had to be removed from the water (where he ran after he got in trouble for throwing sand).

As I was taking this picture, I was saying to my friend "I'm such a bad mom for taking pictures of this!" We were cracking up at his temper tantrum. John was too, as you can see. 

A&B building a sandcastle with their friend

Swimming!

"Look Mom, I'm floating!"

Bikes, Gardens, and Bees

That pretty much sums up the last few days.

Bike ride along the lake on an area of the centennial trail that we will likely not repeat (part of it was right along the main road with no barrier in between...not ideal for small kids on bikes!), followed by frozen yogurt. Super exciting for the kids. Mostly just stressful for me - the bike riding part anyway!

The neighbor's grandsons have been staying with them, so our boys have some new playmates! It's been so nice for them to have some friends right next door (all of our neighbors are grandparents, so we are slightly lacking in the young kid department in our neighborhood!).

Poor B was over playing in the neighbor's yard when he got to experience his first bee stings. Yes, 2 of them. Thankfully he is not allergic...in fact he barely swelled up at all! 

And in garden news...we are getting lots of strawberries and more greens than we can eat (and we eat a lot of greens). Just today I harvested kale, Swiss chard, red lettuce, romaine, and bib lettuce. I gave away 3 large plastic sacks full, and we still have plenty for us! We've only had a couple of ripe cherry tomatoes, but we have lots of green ones on the plants. The raspberries and blueberries are just starting, and they seem to disappear before they come inside! Our snow peas are done, and I think it's maybe gotten too hot for our other peas as they have really slowed down. Sad, but hopefully we'll have green beans and plenty of zucchini and cucumbers soon!

Off Road Adventure

After everyone left from our backyard campout this morning, we did a little clean up but then decided to take off and relax a little. 

First we stopped at HD because the boys really wanted to do the kid's workshop. After they completed their Despicable Me 2 cars, we went to the river. We spent a few hours there while the boys played in the water and we just enjoyed the peace and quiet. John and the boys caught a few crawdads, they practiced skipping rocks, and found lots of treasures (tadpoles, baby fish, rocks, sticks...the list goes on!). 

And on the way back, John insisted that we take the forest service roads (and some off-shoots of forest service roads) to test the capabilities of the Land Cruiser. It took us HOURS to get back when it had only taken about 30-40 minutes to get there! We even saw a mama & baby moose. So cute (and thankfully we saw them from the safety of our car!). The boys ended up falling asleep on the way back, so we ended the day with a movie night since they slept until so late. 

So, even though we have a lot of clean-up to do another day, today was a good day! 

The 5th

We kind of spontaneously decided to do a 5th of July party and camp out in our backyard. We BBQ'd, the kids played (swimming pool/bounce house/trampoline/water balloons/volleyball/baseball/soccer/etc!), the adults socialized, we made s'mores, did some fireworks, and a few people camped in our backyard with us (and by "us" I mean John and the boys...I slept in my own comfy bed!). The boys had tons of fun, and we had a pretty good turn-out of about 50 people. It was a lot of work to get ready (and clean up afterwards...we still aren't quite done with that part due to slacking off today), but we had a really good time! 

I didn't take many pictures since I was kinda busy but here are a few!

The 4th

We had a low-key 4th. We were hosting a BBQ on the 5th, so we decided to stay home, work in the yard, BBQ in the backyard, and set off fireworks from our driveway. The boys loved the fireworks, of course...they went through multiple packages of pop-its, and they even got to light a few smoke balls!

Garden & Sunshine!

97 degrees today. It was amazing. I'm pretty sure that my heat-deprived body is happy once again! 

This morning I took the boys to the splash pad at one of the parks (I don't know why I do these things...there was a daycare there that had about 20 kids plus the normal park-crowd. Ugh. We are staying home tomorrow!). This afternoon they spent pretty much the entire time in the backyard. Mostly in the pool. 

I picked strawberries and pulled a few weeks. And marveled at how pretty our garden is, even with the abundance of weeds! I'm looking forward to another hot day tomorrow, and I'm definitely excited that John has a short week this week. 

QOTD

Archer picked up the hose in the garden, and squeezed the handle of the nozzle. Some water came out that was left in the hose, and he kept holding it until the water completely stopped. Then he dropped the hose on the ground, looked at me, and said "oh, it's out of batteries!"