Chasing Butterflies

Paisley and I had a fun morning at the park. There are butterflies in bloom all over here and we had some fun chasing them. I love the simple joys in a child's mind.

SWING!!!!

Fall Sports X 3

This Fall Ethen is playing football, Phoebe is playing volleyball, and Luke is playing soccer. Ethen made the A team at his school for his 7th grade team. He is starting defense and plays some offense as well. We play in the high school stadium here and all his games are at night, so I am unable to really get pictures of him on the field. They turn out too dark. He is doing great and I just love watching him play. He is number #35.Phoebe decided it would be fun to try out volleyball this year and she is having a good time learning how to bump the ball. The rules are a bit different than when I played in school so we are learning together.
Luke is back on his team Speed. Soccer is such a fantastic sport for him with the constant running around. He had a lot of energy and chases after that ball like no other.

Slip N Slide Trampoline

The kids say the ground is too hard for sliding so they came up with the brilliant idea to stick it up on the trampoline. Here are some pictures of our sliding fun :)

Hairstyles

I have been enjoying trying some hairstyles on the girls recently. If I have time and they are willing then we usually try something cute. These are a few that I actually took pictures of. Most of the time that doesn't happen though. I have been very into french braids recently and finally am able to do them fairly quickly.

straight waterfall braid

curled waterfall braid

don't have a name for this one, but its basically a wrap french braid

side inside out french braid

simple connecting ponies

This one takes some time, but I love the look. It's called a fish tail/bone braid (depending on who your talking to).

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Gretel twist buns

Ice Skating cool down

It has been a HOT summer here this year. Scott took the kids ice skating for a last activity before school started and had a few hours of cold. It felt great to need a jacket again. Paisley was even able to skate around on her own. There were a few tumbles and scrapes by the end, but everyone still had a great time. It only took Phoebe a couple weeks for her arm to heal and Ethen looked like a tough guy at football practice because he already had scrapes on his arm.
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Scott body surfing

Always entertaining for me and the kids. Don't know why we haven't tried body surfing before now, but it turned out to be loads of fun!

End of Summer boating

We took the boat out this final Holiday weekend of the summer for some fun. The lake is pretty low since we haven't had rain this summer so everyone had to pile into the boat and I had to swim out to get on after I parked the car/trailer. The nice thing is that we did get some rain last week and so the water felt nice and cool. Usually this late in the season the water feels really warm and it isn't even refreshing to jump into. We tried a couple new things this time and had some fun body surfing. They day would have ended on a great upnote if I had some backwards driving skills at all and it didn't take me forever to back the trailer down straight and while doing that I bent the hand crank and Scott had to fix it so we could get the boat on the trailer. I think I may be officially grounded from helping. Scott was so very patient with me though. I know there are a lot of pictures, but I love taking them and couldn't choose.

Ethen body surfing

Phoebe and Ethen before taking a hard spillEthen being a great big brother and helping Paisley

Phoebe body surfing