Water fun in the back yard

Mario got a few blow up toys for his birthday on July 4th when we got home from camping. The next few days we set everything up in the backyard (along with our slip n slide, pools, sprinklers, etc.) and they played out there for hours every afternoon. It was like our own little water park.

What do you do in the summer time?

The evening we were camping we did lots of fun stuff. We made s'mores (Joey was didn't want to get too close to the hot fire), played some games, did a little exploring, played with flashlights and light sticks (flashlight TAG was a big hit), caught and chased fireflies, and everyone got a little dirty. Mario couldn't believe that we expected him to stay in his muddy pants. He REALLY wanted a change of clothes. Owen fell face first in the mud- he is doing that a lot lately. Later we all snuggled together in the tent and told scary stories. It took everyone a while to fall asleep, partly due to the fact that Owen refused to stay in his spot and kept climbing all over everyone, and it was a lot colder that night than expected. But the next day (JULY 4- also Mario's birthday) I asked Mario if he was having a good birthday and what his favorite part of camping was. He said his favorite part was sleeping in the freezing tent and that the burnt dinner was the worst, funnest dinner ever! Kids are hilarious. We will have to do camping together again...

CAMPING! (And burnt dinner)

Emily, Nana, and company came into town this last week. We have been having a lot of fun. On Thursday we went out camping with some of our other friends. It was the funnest disaster we've had. We prepared these great tin-foil dinners, and after starting a great fire (all I can say is it could've taken longer...) we cooked them a little too long. The kids were great about trying to eat the charred burnt meat and veggies. At one point Matt was like, "its not burned, its fine" he took a big bite before immediately spitting it out everywhere. It was really bad, but the kids were loving every second!

muddy

Our back porch has stairs down to the yard. At the bottom of the stairs there is a spot that gets pretty muddy after it rains. Owen fell down the stairs on his way down a few days ago after it had rained and got pretty muddy. He did not like it. :-(