Husband & Children Pictures

Why do I love pictures of my husband and children so dang much?

Maybe it's because the kiddos bring out the best in that guy that I love.

Whatever it is, I need to take more pics of them together!

I Love You ~

Shannon's Summer Projects

Shannon has been a busy guy around the house this summer.  He started everything off with a bang, building a new coop/shed/barn.

We call it the sharn ~ or the shoop ~ or a boop...but I digress.

Anyway, it looks quite nice and our chickens are super happy with their new and improved home.
That's what is important, you know, to have happy chickens, because if you have happy hens they actually lay eggs and that is their sole purpose in life!
At least that is what Shannon says.
He relieved me of chicken supervision a year and a half ago or so.  He told me he would oversee the care of the chickens because he knew what females needed.
Whatever ~ I wasn't in the mood to argue ~ so now we actually get eggs where before we really didn't.
Which, of course, he would use to prove his point.
I think we just didn't have egg-laying breeds ~ hence our low egg count.

Anyway ~ here is a pic of the shoop, it blends quite nicely into the trees behind it.

Then, he ordered a bunch of timbers and finished our front porch.  While our previous version allowed access to the front door and was perfectly functional, it could be quite scary without handrails, especially during the winter.  

Yes, one would just fall into a snowbank, but one would also probably not make it out, stuck there for the winter with their legs protruding from a pile of white.  

This added a sense of place to the front of our house.  I wish there was a before pic, but alas, I just don't think of those things til it's too late.  

Thank you, Shannon, for always trying to make our home beautiful!
I love you!

Summer & Entertainment

Summer is the best time of year.  Winter can be good too, but the simplicity of summer makes it simply perfect.  Everyone is content with simple dinners, very little clothing and little to do.

I was asked a month ago or so how I kept my kiddos entertained all summer long.
"Entertained?" I thought, "Gosh, isn't summer by its very nature diversion enough?"
We do things that we typically wouldn't, go places that we ordinarily wouldn't, but in and of itself, summer entertains!

It made me contemplate all the ways our children are entertained, or should I say, over stimulated: television, video games, movies, umpteen summer camps, etc.  Has this continual "entertainment" led to a slight hiccup in our children's imaginations?  Certainly this is not a novel revelation occurring to only me.  But it did make me think possibly, just possibly, we are doing something right!
Maybe time spent just with our thoughts spurs the imagination to greater heights.

I was clicking through our summer pics thus far (yes, I was entertaining myself!) and laughed at the things my children have done this summer.  It reminded me of summers from my childhood.  My kiddos make darn sure they have something to do, because if they complain to me about boredom, heaven only knows what I'll dream up to occupy their time!
And it won't be a summer sports camp, more likely it will be sanding down all the kitchen stools and refinishing them!

Oh, they're already doing that....they must have been caught complaining once or twice!

Hiking Red Mountain ~

Cousins & ice cream cones ~

Cousins and the summer Symphony ~

Cotton candy ~ and I didn't buy it, they figured it out on their own!

Just chillin' ~

Licking water off the deck railing ~

could anything be more entertaining?!?

The solution to boredom....washing windows ~

Catching frogs ~

More cousin time ~

Swimming....or at least thinking about swimming ~

Catching critters ~

Practicing baseball ~

Lunch lawn picnics....PB&J just tastes better that way ~ 

Sun Kissed ~

Evening picnics ~

Sprinklers ~

Drinking pop or juice from a can ~

S'mores ~

Sisters and s'mores ~

Climbing trees ~

Looking for little creatures ~

Drawing ~

Catching teeny fish ~

Butterfly faces ~

Building dams ~

Getting our hair wet just for the heck of it ~

Sending pop cans for a ride ~

 Yes, he missed ~ thrice ~

Sunflowers

I love sunflowers...I look forward to their pretty, bright, ant-filled faces all summer long.  This summer, I watched them alongside the roads as I was jogging from the time they peeped through the dirt anticipating their late summer blooms.
Monday morning I was excited to go for an early morning run solely so I could see them bobbing alongside the road, as they were almost ready to open last week.
When I jumped out of the car I almost cried.
The county had apparently sprayed weeds in the past few days and all their stems were curling, their blooms wilted toward the ground.  The motivation for a good run disappeared right then and there...not that it takes much!

So, I went home and picked a handful of raspberries, another summer joy.  I began tearing them all out last summer when Shannon intervened and told me I should give them one more year before giving up completely.  Am I ever glad I listened!  The raspberry bushes must have realized that their time was limited and began to produce profusely this year.

Nickles & Dom can lean out their bedroom window and pick the highest berries ~