End of summer stuff...

 Here's my attempt to catch up from summer......this picture is Reagan at the county fair who found water dripping from these hoses and started drinking from them.  I guess the poor girl was thirsty because we wouldn't spend $6 to buy a lemonade.

water babies and my buff husband:)

 Carlos worked at the Dew Tour in Portland so we all went up and enjoyed the VIP room and food.

 I think we all liked the bike jumping the best.

While we were in Portland, we hit up the zoo, which is my favorite zoo by the way.  Check out this polar bear!

Farm kids

 Love this pic of my cowgirl.  We went on a walk to pick blackberries this night but it was too dark to see the berries, so we just enjoyed the nice night and took a long walk.

Shaved ice for all!  Woohoo!

I couldn't find Dreyton on this summer day and finally spotted him up in this apple tree.  There was a little ladder next to it which he used to scurry up.

 This is where we ate dinner most nights during the summer.  Makes cleaning up the floor after dinner a lot simpler.

Of course summer wouldn't be complete without a trip to Enchanted Forest.  This is Rivers, Madison and Brody with Abe Lincoln.

 CD driving the bumper boats laaaaaiiid back. 

 So, most of the summer was spent here in the garden.  Often the first words out of Dwight's mouth were "can I go pick stuff out of the garden?" before he was even fully awake.  He LOVED scavenging the garden finding fruits and vegetables that were ready to be plucked.  Here he is with a handful of carrots.  Seriously, this was his favorite thing to do this summer.

We call Reagan the sheep whisperer because she goes out into the pastures and the sheep just let her walk up to them and pet them!  She has started doing this with the cows too now, but we make her pet them through the fence.  Their slimy, wet noses don't phase her.

Carlos is helping coach the high school football team which has been really fun for all of us.  Here he is in his Warrior garb after their first game.  They were ranked 40th in the state at the beginning of the year and are now ranked 5th.  Yeah baby!

Every night I want to take a picture of my kids sleeping. 

Oh no!  First day of school.  I can't believe Rivers is a 4th grader!  She's such a good kid.  I totally remember my 4th grade year of school. 

Big news this summer....when Carlos was out of town a couple months after CD turned 4 I decided to get Rivers old bike out and see if I could start teaching him to ride it.  As I was fixing the flat tires, to my surprise, he comes riding around the corner on his cousin's bike saying "look Mom, I can already ride a bike".  I couldn't believe it.  I jumped up and wanted to run along beside him and show him how to do it, but nope, nothin left to teach.  There's my testimonial for balance bikes because he's been zipping around on one of those for 2 years and then literally just jumped on a pedal bike and took off.  Since then, it's been so much fun to have him riding along beside me while I push the babes and run.   

I couldn't find Reagan one night in the bedroom hours after I had put her to bed.  I looked all over and finally found her in her brother's crib asleep.  She had gotten out of her bed and climbed into Dreyton's to sleep.  So cute.

Another garden pic.  Since the garden has a mammoth deer fence all the way around it, I use it as a big playpen sometimes.  I can shut the door and they can play in the dirt and pick raspberries or grapes as much as they want.

kayaking in the pool

Now that school has started I get up with the sun.  This sunrise was probably more inspiring in person.

Oh, this picture makes me laugh.  My 4 year old son doesn't actually have huge peck muscles, but somehow the lighting made it appear so.  This was at Mary's River park.

We went to Silver Creek Falls when Tyler's high school team had a cross-country meet there and I am still in awe of that place.  It is seriously probably the most beautiful, majestic place I've ever been to in the world, and it's 1 hr. 15 min. from our house.  Why don't we go there more often?!

Lookin' tough after a collision with the pavement at the skatepark.  He was not on a skateboard. 

These buddies found a hidden hole in the hay loft.  I helped lower them down in and they thought it was so fun until they realized they couldn't get out by themselves.  Now I know where to put them when they're naughty. 

I grew artichokes this year.

Here's another picture of the garden playpen.  This time Cassidy and Cubby were with the twins and when I went to check on them I couldn't see them anywhere but could hear their chatter.  I found them hiding in the grapevines, which became their new favorite place.

One last trip to Mary's River to skip rocks and play in the water.