Cousin play.

My sister-in-law came out our way visiting, so we went to see her. Her little one is the same age as Grayson, but of the female persuasion, so I've been using her as a reason to unload our little girl clothes. I took all of the 18 month old clothes with us and Hannah and she went through them. Hannah was in her element.
Outside, there was a water fight going on between all of the boys that lived or were visiting there. Hannah jumped right in and held her own. They were moving too fast for me to get any good pictures.

The family my sister-in-law was staying with had more toys (they had five different *types* of bikes - about fifteen bikes total) than you could play with in three hours. Not that Ainsley didn't give it an honest try.


Her favorite toys were the skateboards




I love her little tongue out in concentration in this picture.


Her little cousin thought the little skateboard looked like a little bit of fun. And it was. A little.


Gray was mainly a one-toy man. (The sun was a bit bright.)


Hannah was tired from her water fight.

It was a stellar day. Epic even. (That's for you, Patrick.)

Look, Mommy, I found mine manimal!

"It's a diraffe!"

Flower presses are ready for our next hike.

Or the next time the girls step out the front door, whichever comes first. (You get no more than one guess on that one.)

Here's Hannah's -


Here's Ainsley's -


Here are the ones we made as gifts for friends.


It's unlikely that the flowers will press as evenly with all of those decorations on the top, but they will certainly be used more than they would otherwise, so I'll take it. If we do these again, I'll have some stamps and ink ready so that we can decorate with those instead, but this weekend we went with what we had on hand and I do think they turned out sweet.

This is the tutorial I used.

Snapshot Sunday

How it began.

Other snapshots -
Stephanie
Heart Rockin' Mama
Leslie
Tuan's Princess
Kyre

Just an Ordinary day.

I wrote this on Friday but must have hit 'save' instead of 'publish'. It is a post that I do indeed want to save, to remind me of the daily minutia that is easily forgotten, so here it is.

Woke up early to a baby throwing up. Got him fixed up and up, back to sleep. Woke up thirty minutes later to a baby pulling my hair. Stayed up.

Cuddled with a sleepy toddler who wasn't ready to wake up but got the same hair treatment that I did. Pukey baby rolled around on the floor giggling at his toes. Hilarious, they were.

Made little pancakes. Gave over pancake job to five-year-old who "is old enough by now to do pancakes, Mother. Obviously."

Called sister-in-law to tell her our plans to play would have to be postponed due to illness. Bummer.

Did chicken and goat chores. Started planting in the Butterfly Garden. Stopped because it was too hot and baby wouldn't stay in the shade or in his hat.

Came inside and started pulling together the supplies for making flower presses while the girls played My Little Pony and Dragon Sticker Book.

Realized I needed to cut the boards and sand them still - nothing to do that with. Told the girls we needed to head to the store (Ains was fine with that - she'd been asking for candy for an hour or so), but Hannah had the idea of just marking where the boards would be cut and decorating the boards now. Good enough.



After some decoration, off to the store for candy and supplies. Or necessary items and supplies. It's all in the words you choose.

Grayson fell asleep on the way home and the weather got windy and cloudy, the best I was going to get today for planting, so more flowers went in. I hope *something* grows.

Now Grayson's awake and we're off to see Daddy at work.

Totally ordinary.

The dry run. Hiking-wise.

The kids and I went on a 'dry run' for our summer hiking today. What does that mean? That means we went with friends who could help me out if I'd overpacked or overlooked something or overestimated hiking ability of littles. It went wonderfully.

The hike we chose (out of Hiking Idaho) was a bit ambitious for a five-year-old and two two-and-a-half year olds, but not by much. It was a bit over two miles, but we covered that slowly. The terrain was not flat, but that added interest more than being too physically difficult. If I had remembered jackets for my girls, the wind wouldn't have affected them, and that would have helped.

We met up with our friends at a scenic overlook by the Snake River. Stunning view. Made scared-of-heights-li'l-ol-me lose my equilibrium just looking through the seven foot tall chain link guard fence, but my girls loved it.
That is a deep canyon.

When we got to the trail head, I got all situated with Gray on my back and a waist backpack (I will *not* say that I wore a fanny pack) on under his bum. That carried a first-aid kit, water bottles, snacks, bird and flower identification pamphlets, a map, diaper change kit, bug spray, pocketknife, a compass, and my car key. Next time, when we're on our own, I'll actually be carrying more - a little sketchbook and pencils so that the girls will have an excuse to sit down and relax along the trail, a magnifying glass, jackets for the kids.

We started up the trail with the kids predictably running off their excitement for the first few hundred yards. The first mile or so of the trail was lodgepole pine, absolutely beautiful and I can't believe that I got no clear pictures of it. Next time.

The girls all found walking sticks. Bella just used hers like a divining rod - it found every puddle of water in or around the trail, Ains used hers as a sword (of course), and Hannah carried hers for a lot longer than any of us expected just in case she ran into a giant who needed a walking stick.
I'm going to try to find a mushroom identification book for the next time we travel this trail - so many different kinds of mushrooms in the pine tree section of the trail. Ains was excited about all the fairy houses and Hannah was so intrigued by the different places they grew, the different sizes and shapes ... I wish I knew how to take close-up pictures of these things.

After we got out of the pines, we passed through a meadow.
I expected the meadow to be much smaller than it was - and much warmer. The wind blowing across the top of the mountain was cold. It also passed right by a Boy Scout camp where we were almost run into by five scouts who shouted frantically "HAVE YOU SEEN A FLAG????" Um, no. And that's cheating. Keep looking.

I heard Jo singing "Climb Every Mountain" and turned around to see this -
I like having friends who will unselfconsciously belt out fitting songs from musicals.

After the meadow, we descended into a section of the trail populated by Quaking Aspens. Cottonwoods? I don't know their appropriate name, but they were pretty. Hannah told her daddy that her favorite part of the hike was 'the trees singing when we left the meadow.'

We saw lots of these on the Quaking Aspens and on the trees dotting the entrance and exit to the meadow. Lots and lots of these little caterpillars just emerging from their egg sack.
Ainsley learned the fine art of becoming interested in anything and everything when she needed to slow down.
Then she recruited Bella to discuss her findings.
After we'd crossed through the Quaking Aspen section...
we crossed back into Lodgepole pine, and then to our cars. In the last section, Ains and I got ahead of the rest of the group and immediately were rewarded with lots of bird sightings. Ruffled Grouse, Pileated Woodpeckers, as-of-yet-unidentified birds that are captured in blurry images on my camera. It was exciting. And she saw three Bald Eagles. With red breasts, eating worms, natch.

Back at the trail head, we busted out a honeydew melon. (The amazing part of this photo is Grayson - not on my lap. He loved Reese.)
Then our friends left and we stayed at the picnic site for a bit longer, playing and chatting. Gray looks so grown-up.
I found these little pamphlets somewhere ... Barnes and Noble maybe? ... and grabbed them for just such a journey. Lightweight and laminated, made to be handled outdoors and by little hands.
I came back from taking Gray and our stuff a few yards down to the car to see this - Hannah trying to find the birds she'd seen (Ains told Hannah she'd seen a Macaw in the forest and Hannah couldn't find it in the pamphlet - go figure.) and Ains at the other end of the table, staring at the yellow flowers (Heart Leaved Arnica, we discovered), trying to locate them in the flower pamphlet. It was endearing, this sight.
So that was our first hiking trip of the summer, and it was a huge success. I learned that I was doing a lot of stuff right, that I forgot some stuff, that going by ourselves will have some perks (not keeping to someone else's schedule), that going with friends has its perks (I laughed really hard and my girls adore Bella), and that it is nice, even when you live in the country, to get out in wild nature. It feeds the soul.

I think this has been my longest post ever. And I've paid for it dearly. Cygnus crashed at my feet about five minutes after I started downloading the pictures (which takes forever, Photobucket) and has been cheerily farting up a storm the entire time. Maybe he's frustrated that we didn't take him with us. Three kids was enough for me on my first trip out. Maybe next time.

The first 'real' camping trip of summer.

Last weekend was family time. Our first camping of the year in a tent, out of our yard. I was glad we'd done some dry runs at home.

The weather the first night and day was cold and rainy. Not that that slowed the kids down at all. Every time I looked for Hannah, this is what I saw...






Six girl cousins within four years of each other. They kept melding into one group, breaking into little groups, melding again. The little groups were never the same either, they were composed of different girls each time. A few disagreements, no outright fights. It was lovely and at the end of the weekend, Hannah hated to leave.

Ainsley's age group is more diverse, gender-wise. She had a blast also, playing with cousins, exploring her environment. She did a lot more checking in with her parents, but she had time for a few good laughs...

and she explained some stuff to her cousins.

Gray did a lot of this.


Though if this is an indication of how he feels about camping, I just don't know what to do for the rest of the summer.


I carried him in-arms most of the time because he hates being carried in a carrier on the front of my body, but if I put him on my back, the mosquitos got free rein.

In the afternoon, we went to Minnetonka Cave and went on the tour there. The staircases that go up and down in that cave are unbelievable. The cave has a lot of interesting formations (that interested the kids almost not at all) and houses five species of bats, one which is endangered.

We only saw two bats. I tried to get a picture of one of them - it was quite far away - and this is what came out of that. I thought I had him centered in the picture. Not so much.

Hannah stayed up towards the front of the group with an aunt and some cousins.

Ainsley did see one formation she liked - the pile of pirate gold.


I learned a few interesting things on the tour. The temperature in a cave never changes and is the average temperature of the area where the cave is located. Also, at the back of the cave, where no possible light from outside got in, the tour guide turned off the lights for a minute. It was so dark that your eyes would never adjust, she said. Damn it, I lost my chance to Gollum-ize.

Outside the cave was much more interesting for the littles. Lots of little Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels running around.
Running around quite close, actually.

Ainsley wanted so badly to hop down off that wall and go pet one. It was hard for her to understand that such a tiny creature was a wild animal that might bite her.

After the caves, most of the family went home, but we stayed an extra night with one other family. The next morning was cool, but turned warm by eleven o'clock. The kids had a lot of fun running around the camp - it was a stunningly beautiful campground - and we took a four-wheeler drive up to Paris Ice Cave. It's a cave that always has ice in it, so I don't even want to know what the average temperature there is. There was still lots of snow on the ground outside of it.

Back at camp, the kids played some more while the adults packed, and then they said goodbye to each other. (By this point, the boys were not having anything to do with pictures.)

When we were driving away, Hannah said "Will we see Zee again tomorrow?" Never too much of a good thing, my friends. Never too much.

Today we...

played with watercolor pencils.





smiled so much the Mother melted into a pile of malleable goo.



had a huge mud fight and did a lot of gardening.

Ainsley saw a Bald Eagle sitting in the tree outside the bedroom window.
(that not so clear picture is of a robin not two feet away outside our window)

watched Horton Hears a Who

sang lots of songs. read lots of books. played with kittens.

made coffee filter hats.





played My Little Pony. read more books. crashed.

(This is actually a 'Yesterday we...' post, but dang Photobucket combined with my dang internet connection makes for a very frustrated blogger. I think my picture quotient is going to go down.)