I wish you could understand just how elusive these guys were.  They seemed to be taunting all of us who just wanted one good shot.  They rarely landed and when they did they usually closed up revealing their boring, brown underside.  I snapped these shots just as we were about to give up and be happy with my blurry attempts to capture them flittering around us.

Gotcha!

At the end of the school year the kids did a project for their teachers that I was super-excited about and wanted to share with you.  Better late than never, right? Right.

So back up a year.  Remember this contraption?

That was the makeshift trellis that supported our bird house gourds.  When we planted them, we had no idea it would take them 9 months to fully dry out and cure.  We had actually given up that they would ever be useful since we cut them off the vine when we should have left them on, many rotted instead of drying, and they got lost under 80-some inches of snow this winter.  But when the snow cleared and the sun emerged, there were 3 survivors that were begging to be turned into birdhouses. 

So, of course, we obliged.

Patrick drilled bird-sized holes into each of the gourds. And two small holes at the top for hanging.

And then we set the kids loose with paint brushes, acrylics, smocks, and their imaginations.

They painted.

Imagined.

And painted some more.

After the paint dried, I coated them with a water-based, waterproof sealant and strung them with twine using a makeshift needle.

Aren’t they “gourd-geous”?

A fishing we will go,

A fishing we will go,

Hi-ho the derrio,

A fly fishing PJ will go for the first time in the pictures below.

playing at a local beach

building sand castles

splashing in the water

pretending to be mermaids

and burying yourself in the sand.

Mia’s first time winning Aggravation on her own!

So what have we been doing?

a field trip to the zoo with Uncle

a new haircut for the little guy

baseball in the dust

hockey

in the court

for the whole family

hanging out with Lilybug

celebrating an unbirthday

and just plain being silly!

We did Annie

and “Dancing Through The Calendar.” 

It was so much fun being back this year, but a sharp reminder of how not-so-sharp my brain is after hanging out with 3 kids all day.  More than the physical exhaustion was the mental exhaustion of having to remember when to be stage and from what side and all the steps to the dances.  My brain was fried by Saturday night!

Friday morning I took the little kids to a transportation day at a local preschool.  Every community should do this.  I think Ty thought he had died and gone to heaven.

There were trucks.

Everywhere. And you could climb in them.

You don’t realize how big some of these trucks are until you’re next to them,

or in them.

The coolest part was riding in the cherry picker!

When we got back to the care Ty said, “Trucks were fun!”

Saturday I had to drop something off at work.

It happened that “work” was actually RobotFest. 

I love my job.

Then off to baseball.