Gross.

Samson can now open the toilet all by himself in order to drink out of it. Yeah. The dogs are totally running this house.
In other news, we are back home and back to our routine after having company and then being company at my parents'. It is nice to be making a dent in the laundry pile and the kitchen clutter after a few busy (but way more fun than housework) weeks.

Sauerkraut Baby

Emmaline has finally learned to crawl forward. She has mastered this skill about 2 weeks before Ethan did. When he crawled forward for the first time, it was across the camp entryway to Levi. Emma crawled across the living room to my plate of brat and sauerkraut. She wasn't exactly sure what to do with it when she got there, but it was a great motivator.

Now Ethan is off with Levi and a bunch of the camp guys helping them chase a bear away from the camp dumpsters. His first bear chase!

Cousins

Every summer, Raven and Austin (Levi's sister's kids), come out to Colorado to hang out with Levi's mom for a few weeks. This summer, they are taking turns coming up to camp for a week while they are here. So Austin came to cabin camp last week, and then had a glorious Friday evening playing all of Levi's video games while Ethan "helped."



Saturday, the five of us went up to Denver and met Raven, Kathy, Levi's aunt Christine, Jesse, Kara, and Aydin, and my parents, for an afternoon at Lakeside amusement park. The kids had so much fun! I did not remember my camera, so I do not have photographic proof of this. But we had a great time. Ethan looked a little terrified on all of the kiddie rides, but as soon as they were done, he asked for "more please."

After enjoying Lakeside, we came back home with Raven, who is going to go to camp this coming week. She is so good with the kids! They love having her here. She and Ethan made bead jewelry this morning.

Summertime and the Livin' is Easy...

It's been a long time since my last post, and I can't decide if it's because nothing important has happened or if it's because I've been so busy with unimportant things. Unimportant in a good way. Like playing outside and going to camp and the park and the farmer's market. These things do not really warrant a blog post (especially the farmer's market...nothing is ripe up here but onions and radishes), but they do distract me from updating my extensive readership on our goings on.
So here are the highlights of the summer so far:
*Levi has so far spent most of the summer about 40 feet up in the air working on our new 65-foot climbing tower at camp. It currently has a climbing wall on one side, and when it's finished, it will have 2 other high ropes elements and a zip line across the pond. He said that his most recent day of working on it (last Friday), was the scariest day of his life. He's also been playing on the church softball team, which has a winning record for the first summer in a long, long time.
*Ethan is talking like crazy! He is very into animals and the noises they make. He also has a (kind of annoying) push-a-button-and-strum-and-it-plays-songs guitar that he is wild about. For some mysterious reason, he only plays it while wearing hats.
*Emmaline is sitting up well, getting into all of Ethan's toys, laughing like crazy when he entertains her, and making it very difficult for me to eat dinner with her on my lap. She smiles pretty much constantly, and she is content to go anywhere and do anything as long as she is attached to me.
*Samson has destroyed my garden twice. The first time, I had just planted it, so I was able to replant with a lot of success. But Sunday, he celebrated the 4th of July by digging up almost all my plants while we were at church. I managed to save a few, but that evening, we had the biggest hailstorm I've ever seen here. That pretty much finished it off. I now have one pathetic lettuce, 2 spinach plants, and about 15 carrots. I can plant some new lettuce, and maybe some radishes, but our 3-month growing season is running out too quickly for much else. Better luck next year, I guess. We decided to keep Samson anyway (although I briefly considered turning him into a rug).
*I have been enjoying lazy days, not cooking lunch or dinner, going for lots of walks, and having a bunch of fantastic college summer staffers here (many of whom like to hold/play with babies for me so I can eat at mealtime). I'm planning on blowing up the kiddie pool tomorrow.

So that is summer so far at our house. 2 months summarize into one post quite well.

Pata Pata Bath Time

Glorious Saturday morning.
Levi is at church for the Men's Prayer Breakfast.
Emmaline is napping peacefully.
Ethan has been in the bathtub for at least 45 minutes, with no sign yet of getting bored.
"Unfortunately," I need to stay in the bathroom to keep an eye on him, so I have a great excuse to not work right now and hang out online instead. We have been dancing to "Pata Pata" by Miriam Makeba.
One lazy Saturday makes up for a lot of crazy days.

Hooray for Earth Day!

Yes, I know Earth Day was last Thursday, but I am still celebrating: City Market (our small-town version or Kroger/King Soopers) has a whole page of organic produce on sale!! It is always a delicate balance around here, trying to feed the kids the best food I can find while simultaneously avoiding the poorhouse.
On a related note, we're going to give the ol' vegetable garden another try this summer, this time inside the backyard fence, to keep the marauding deer out, and probably inside yet another fence, to keep the curious Samson out. The garden is a little hard to imagine right now, since my chosen garden spot is currently covered with a foot of snow. But even up here (I have heard, not experienced), beans, lettuce, carrots, and beets grow well, so I am hoping for the best!
In the meantime, we're headed to the grocery store this morning to pick up some fantastic organic strawberries (berrrs, as Ethan says). I wish it were Earth Day every Thursday...

Always Watching

Whenever I cook something on the stove, Ethan pulls one of my pots out of the cupboard so he can stir too. He asks for a "poons" (spoon), grabs a few handfuls of magnet letters from the fridge, and makes alphabet soup. So I wasn't really watching what he was doing this afternoon while I made sauce on the stove. But I turned around just in time to see him reaching up to the counter for the salt shaker. Turns out he had already thoroughly peppered his pot and was finishing up the seasoning. I was very impressed with his observation and culinary skills (even though he knows he's not supposed to play with the salt and pepper).