Thursday, September 10, 2009

What we did during our (last week of) summer vacation.

My first assignment of this new school year is to get the photos of our last fun filled summer week posted on to this blog. So here they are....

Spencer marching in the Roosevelt Park Day parade with the Cub Scouts. He was a little bit bummed that he had to pass out the candy and not get to collect it for himself. Evan and Hailey came home with bags bursting. More than Halloween. I am not even kidding.

A visit to the John Ball Park Zoo. We realized that the boys lives have been filled with visits to many different zoos. Hailey has not been to one ever. Or at least since she was itty bitty. She loved seeing all the animals.

This exhibit was really cool. For one dollar you could buy a stick with some sort of bird food stuck to the end of it and go inside the giant bird cage and feed the birds. They would sometimes even land on the stick and let you carry them around. Totally worth the three bucks we spent.

The kids were extremely excited to get to pet the stingrays but once we got there, Evan got a little freaked out. I love how in this picture you can see him just looking at the water like "should I do this?" We told him he didn't have to pet them, but he really wanted to. After a bit of coaxing, he mustered up the courage and did it. He was very proud of himself.

The best part of the zoo. The slushy drinks that they only sell in the souvenir cup that you have to shell out five bucks each for.

Come to find out all it takes is a play set to make them happy. We found this hidden in a total empty area of the John Ball Park. Trent took off geocaching and the kids played their hearts out.

This one is especially for Uncle Mark. Hailey has taken a liking to my not-so-great habit of drinking Diet Coke. She was thrilled to get the remnants from my can. I fear that I am going to have to give up my habit just to stop her from drinking it. Sadly since school has started, the caffeine is the only thing that keeps me going.

This picnic shelter was also in the "hidden" park. I talked the kids into posing for a few photos and in my excitement bumped my lens on the brick. I was sick to my stomach. I can see a mark on the lens, but the pictures don't seem to show it. I was so mad at myself!

Evan can be such a willing subject if he is in the right mood. Fortunately this day he was.

His brother on the other hand, was not.

This is not the work of some frat boys. This is our can pyramid that Evan and I made for the BB gun range. Have I mentioned this before? We bought Spencer a BB gun for his birthday and he is so good at it. I mean SCARY good! The kid hardly misses a shot. So good that he could grow up to be a sharp shooter or (hopefully not) an assassin for hire.
He only gets to shoot it at the cabin and only on the range. He has had training through Boy Scouts and Trent has also taught both boys and set up some very strict rules.

Apparently he gets his skills from Annie Oakley, his target blowing Grama because she is a good shot as well. I on the other hand, am awful.

While we we up north I forced the boys to give me a couple minutes of their time for their official yearly photo shoots. (Those pictures are for another day) I would have done Hailey as well, but since she is a mosquito beacon (even though you can't really tell here), I had to put hers off. Since her brothers were posing, she had to pose as well, so I got some shots of her anyway. Notice her cute new shirt? We totally left her overnight bag at home. She had no clothes but the ones on her back. No jammies. Nothing. I had to raid the Family Dollar for a new cabin wardrobe for her. I got her some jammies, this shirt that had a skort to match, a sweatshirt/pants combo and a cute clearance play dress for next summer for nineteen dollars.

There is a better photo of our little Sloth. I don't know why those darn bugs just attack her face!

We brought the cat with us up north and he loved every minute of rolling around in the dirt and chasing bugs. Spencer was all about putting his lease on and taking him for a walk. Sadly, the cat doesn't really get the "walk" concept all that much. He prefers to stalk around and pounce on things.

For the most part our last week was spent all together, enjoying each others company and
saying goodbye to a wonderful summer.

2 comments:

jensenbo said...

Beautiful post of your last week of summer --- it was packed with fun activies that I can see the kids loved!! Nice way to end the summer.

Lesley said...

I didn't read the whole think, but started cracking up at "Annie Oakley", so funny.... laughing out loud. I don't know why, but it struck me as funny!!