Dragonfly

This beautiful specimen was hanging out on our mailbox as I headed out for my evening walk.  Any one single insect shows how truly amazing the designs of the natural world are.

Plus, they eat mosquitoes, so I really love dragonflies!

Ripe Tomatoes

Simon is sooooo excited every time one of the cherry tomatoes ripens. Today there were two, so he let Elli pick one. These two are really soul mates. They get along soooo well and play together as much as humanly possible when they're both home. When one goes in for a meal, the other always says, "Eat quickly and then come get me!"

Meanwhile, I'm trying to enjoy my last few lazy days of summer before I go back to work in one week (Eek!).

No Cavities!

The kids had their 6 month dental checkup this morning, and luckily no cavities were detected in Simon's mouth this time, so hopefully our gummy reduction plan (along with several other interventions) is finally helping.

Bat Friend Found

When I went up in the attic to finally put away the last of the hand-me-downs from Taesen, I found our resident bat. First he was flying around chaotically, then settled in the corner, which, based on the droppings, is his home base. We'd been wondering where he was coming in, and now we know. Still not sure how to fix the problem. And honestly, we'd just let him live there if it wasn't for the poop.

Pool Party, Cool Party

On Sunday, I went to Trader Joe's in the morning and then I took the kids to a pool party in the afternoon.

Alice wanted to wear some of her colored hair to the party. I'm struggling a bit with this clip-in hair. I don't know how to both hide the clips under normal hair, yet have the colored hair be visible.

While hanging out in the morning, Simon found a really cool beetle.

Finally, we got through lunch and headed to Jess and Anna's house for the pool party!

It was really fun. I love that our daycare group still hangs out even although the kiddos are about to enter (gasp!) THIRD GRADE.

Durham Day

I took the kids to Durham for the day to give Zac a chance to get stuff done around the house. It was a hot day, but we still had fun. Our first stop was the tree climbing area.

After that, we ate lunch then we spent a lot of time in the butterfly house.

Then we looked at the animals (bears, red wolves, lemurs).  Near the bears, Simon made a brief friend and started a trend.

After playing hide-and-go-seek in the mist for a while, we went inside the museum building to escape the heat. They had a cool new exhibit with lights that the kids had a lot of fun with.

Portraits

Friday evening, Alice was at her neighborhood friend Lily's birthday party, Zac was doing yard work, and so Simon and I decided to take a walk around the pond.

Simon's poses crack me up.

Little Boy in a Big Pond

Zac was playing with his new phone's ability to take pictures in the dark, and took the following portraits.

Alice came back from the party with clip-in blue hair, and was thrilled beyond belief.

Those Summer Days

An example of a project Alice did entirely on her own given the wonderful free time of summer.

Then we had to play Sankes and Ladders. It is really the most terrible game on earth.  By mutual consent, we abandoned the game after about 45 minutes and no progress.

After lunch, we went to the pool. Simon caught a little lizard in the parking lot.

It was 84 degrees today. The kids were freezing.

Alice and her friend Lily had fun making a tent!

Annual Checkup

The kids had their annual wellness visit today. They had great fun with the paper dressing gowns!

The Day After

The day after our big adventure to Hanging Rock, we just stayed home and took it easy. I unpacked and did laundry and taught Alice how to make grilled cheese and helped put together a wooden bee puzzle.

Day 4: Hidden Falls, Window Falls, Tory's Den & Falls

On the last morning, we had pancakes for breakfast and the kids finished off the last of the donuts.

While Zac packed up camp, I took the kids down to the creek, where Alice read and Simon built things out of rocks.

Meanwhile, I watched the butterflies.

Here's a moth Simon rescued from the creek. He was quite proud of himself.

Once we were all packed up, we took a short hike down to Hidden Falls and Window Falls.

I think Hidden Falls is my favorite from the whole trip because it was not crowded. (At least not on a Monday!)

We saw lots of wildlife there and the kids played for a long time, catching things.

Zac found these terribly huge spiders tucked in a corner.

And also this creepy snake. The rocks are alive!

Zac found a humongous crawdad.

Simon and Alice found the tiniest crawdads.

Alice started her nature documentary career today.

We could have stayed there forever, but eventually we moved downstream a bit to Window Falls. On the way, the kids decided to scale a small cliff, just to give their parents extra stress.

Zac and Simon spent most of the time looking for critters downstream of the falls.

A secret falls behind (and above) window falls.

After the falls, we headed to our final destination on the way out of the park: Tory's Den and Falls. The Den was a really cool cave.

The falls was beautiful but not really accessible, and the view was from terrifying cliffs. Having kept our kids alive this long, we hated to have them plummet to their deaths at the very end of the trip, so we didn't stick around very long. Plus a big thunderstorm was coming.

All in all, a great trip. I love the mountains!