Summer's simple pleasures

If you are a parent, you may have also noticed the long, lost art of summer recreation. Parker had a friend over this week and she refused to play in our sprinkler (despite the HOT temps). When I questioned her about it, she said,
"I never played in one before. I don't think it looks like fun." I am happy to report we proved the poor girl wrong and I had to literally drag her out (soaking wet and purple lips) after 40 minutes. What about hula hoops, hopscotch and even good ole' fashion bike riding? We were invited to the park at the end of the school year and I packed the kids bikes. Do you know we were the only ones to bring a bike as the mode of transportation? Two kids brought along their Jeep Powerwheels, 1 kid brought her little motorized scooter and the other two 5 year olds still didn't know how to pedal a bike so they just watched. All the kids were clamoring to try the bikes and we ended up having to share 2 bikes 9ways.

My intentional goal this summer has become helping Parker and Lillie enjoy the simple activities that I enjoyed as a kid. Picnics in the grass, bike excursions around the neighborhood, obstacle courses created with what we have around the house, and LOTS of sand castles! We went to the playground the other day and the kids wanted to take a nature walk along the lakes and on the trails. We ended up staying 3 hours! We caught butterflies and dragonflies and found a HUGE ant hill, a dead fish, a warty toad and bunches of wildflowers!!! Parker was in little boy heaven and well, Lillie had enough flower bouquets for a Hollywood wedding! It was such a great day and I am sooo sad I didn't have my camera to capture the moments. It started out as an innocent trip to play on the swings and turned into a very adventurous outing.

Yesterday, we had some good friends visit us. We hadn't seen Heather and her kids since September so the reunion was long overdue and very anticipated. Maddie, who is 6 years old brought my kids a gift. She gave each one a little ziploc bag full of water with some shells in it and called it "their personal aquarium". Do you know that those little ziploc bags have provided a whole day of fun around here? They added sand to the bags and little pieces of grass and then some pretend fish. They admired each others "aquariums" and gave suggestions for making them "cooler" and traded shells. Thank you Maddie (and Heather) for being so creative and enjoying the simple things in life.

I hope whether you have kids or not, that this summer you re-discover the fun of reading a book under a tree, have a watermelon seed spitting contest, pick wildflowers to your hearts content,making fresh squeezed lemonade,roll in freshly mowed grass and please please please run thru a sprinkler and make a wish!