Scavenger hunt

We decided to have a scavenger hunt this afternoon.

I printed a list I found online.  No sense in reinventing the wheel...

Grace read the list and she and Faith were off!

They started in the front yard where they knew they would find pinecones and rocks.

Faith found a wild flower in the monkey grass.

Then Grace stumbled upon a hornets nest and got stung mutiple times thus ending our scavenger hunt.  We hope to finish it soon.  After the hornets are sprayed and gone.

Park

Today we went to the castle park.

Grace pushed her little brother on the swings.

Which Benjamin thoroughly enjoyed.

Faith swung next to him.

Then we explored the playground.

And Benjamin slid down the wooden ramp.  It's quite steep.

Grace went down the emergency exit.

Next Faith played on the tire swing.

And Grace rested up for a bit before we all headed home.

He's walking

Benjamin took his first steps just last week but until now I haven't been able to get it on camera.

So I caught a quick snapshot with my Nikon.

And I'm hoping to get a video while he's still in his wobbly stage...  Fingers crossed because as soon as he sees me with a camera, he stops walking and laughs as he plops down to the ground.  It's like he knows I want it on video and is refusing to cooperate.

Tea Time!

It was a rainy day today.

So we had a dress up tea party using fine china.

Grace was a gracious hostess.

She poured pink lemonade tea.

And served moon pies!

Chocolate moon pies.

And banana moon pies.  Banana happens to be my favorite.

Even Benjamin joined in the festivities.

And Chloe went so far as to dress up for the occasion.

We drank our tea and nibbled on our moon pies.

Little boys are so different from little girls.

Benjamin likes to dip his moon pie in his tea before taking bites.  The girls would never dream of making a mess like that.  But Benjamin seems to love messes.

Chloe really wanted a moon pie.

Which Faith thought was just silly.

So did Grace.

Cheers everyone!

Maybe next time we'll give Chloe a teacup with water and dog biscuit for her snack...

Blueberry picking

It is nearing the end of blueberry season here in Alabama.

So we went to a local farm to pick some berries.

I must say we really enjoyed it.

And we gathered more than enough for a cobbler or two.

The owner told us to eat our fill, we only pay for what we take home.

So we ate quite a few and they were delicious!  

They were slightly tart but still sweet and very juicy.

We only picked for about 20 minutes and just went down one row of the fives acres of bushes.

We would have stayed longer but it was just too hot and humid.  But we still ended up with around 2 pounds of berries that only cost us $2.00.  Grace and Faith enjoyed it immensely and I plan for us to be some of the first pickers next season.

Happy Independence Day

We love celebrating Independence Day.

This year we loaded up the golf cart and drove down to a friend's house just down the street.

They like to blow things up just like we do.

We started the afternoon off with sparklers.

And silly faces.

Even Benjamin got to play with a few.

His first roman candle!

We enjoyed a snack of watermelon.

And some sparkly fountains.

Then we started with the mortars.

Sparkly mortars.

Multiple tiny things simultaneously.

Rockets.

Single shots.

Larger singles.

HUGE singles.

It took us over 4 hours with 3 men lightening them up before we shot off all our fireworks.

The triple shots were some of my favorite.

But it took us so long, that Faith eventually passed out on the golf cart while watching the show.  We had so much fun this year that we've already started planning for next.