We also went to the local fair and had a great time. We saw lots of animals, carnival rides, street vendors and some crafts. The kids enjoyed themselves and I enjoyed going back to the fair after probably 30 years.
This baby was born just 5 hours before this picture. The mother still had not passed the placenta so it was pretty cool. I was amazed by how big the calf was. It did not seem possible that the calf fit into the cow's belly. I don't think that human babies are that big compared to the mother. This calf had long legs. It was pretty neat to see this.
We did not all fit onto this ride so I tried to get Mallory to ride with Julianne but she refused. So I asked if Julianne would ride by herself and she did. So I was thankful that that did not become an issue. She liked riding by herself.
Homemade ice cream. Nathan did not get a cone but refused to use a spoon. So this is what resulted.
I think I mentioned that I finally found out that you can have your blog published into a book. What a great idea and I was so thrilled when I saw the ad. It is Blog2Print, I think. I ordered the past two years of blog entries, pictures and comments and the book is great. Granted I did not re-edit the pages because I was too lazy and not interested so I am sure it will be interesting to reread. I will have my red pen out fixing mistakes but that is not the point of printing it out. The point is that if someday something will happen to blogger or to where I store my pictures I will not really be able to recreate it. So it is nice to have those memories in a book format. I will try to do it every year. However at the rate I have been posting lately, almost every two weeks, I will not have that many pages. But who cares. it is not for anyone else besides myself and the kids. It is not even for mister grammatically correct D who would have a hay day correcting all the mistakes in the blog. So to all those folks, too bad!!
This summer has been a little frustrating at times because I scheduled one camp per month per child. So my goal was to schedule some things this summer for the kids but not to over schedule them. Most of the time the kids were at home pretend playing, running around with the neighborhood kids, hanging out at the pool, etc. So I did not plan too many activities. However, the camps that I did plan seemed to be more work than fun. I planned one half day week long horse back riding camp and two week long half day art camps for the girls. Nathan had one week one hour golf and soccer camp. So not too much time away from mom or being too scheduled. However, Mallory cried at every camp that I dropped her off in. It was like I was torturing her, or making her do something that was just painful. She would act like it was the end of the world that I was dropping her off. This was usually just the first day and some the other days but it was mostly the first day of camp that she cried. It was also a real sadness crying not a fake, getting attention cry. So it was hard to tell her that it was only a few hours and she would have fun. So it was very frustrating because to my perspective it was camps that I knew she would enjoy, her sister was attending with her, and it was giving her some education and other activities besides being at home. Who would not enjoy that? Well anyway, she ended up liking all the camps and was happy that she attended but sometime I would just like to have the kid that just jumps out of the car and says, "Bye Mom, I will see you after camp." That is all I am asking. It wears me out when all my kids, including Julianne sometimes, refuse to do an activity. I don't give in also so I have to stand strong and basically tell then that if they do not participate then they have a consequence and I will still leave. So I know it will eventually happen when they just fly out of the car and not look back and I will be sad that they don't want to hang out with me but a little moderation now would be great.
I also have to comment on Julianne's need to push things. There have been three instances this week where she has been playing and just got into the playing way to much, or according to my adult perception. Which i know is natural for kids but I do think that some kids do push and play a little harder than others. My friend and I took the kids to a park with a creek and she wanted to get into it. She wanted to walk in it and she wanted to follow it way too long and into a dark tunnel. Granted we went to the park to play at the park not to pay in the creek. So she did not have the right shoes or clothes on and all the other kids wanted to do what she wanted to do. So we would say, "OK you can get in but don't go in too far." Then the next minute she would say, "can we go down there," meaning way down there. They they were skipping rocks and of course she eventually went to the large boulder like rocks that we were afraid she would drop on someone or fall. So I had to pull her back in.
Another instance is I took her to a sand park this weekend and she got into the sand and compared to all the kids she had sand everywhere, it was ingrained into her shorts, her panties, her hair, etc. No one else had that much sand scattered around them. The last instance was just today. I let the kids run the sprinkler and of course she found a mud puddle and had to sit in it and get completely muddy. Whatever happened to just running in the sprinkler? Anyway, my point is that she really gets into playing and she does like to see how far she can go with the playing and the fun. I like to let her explorer this and not have her fit into the way, we adults, feel like they should play. However, there is a fine line at some points and I am probably a little lenient at sometimes but then I think that at some point it is not acceptable to play in mud as an adult. So why worry about it when they are kids. It is just because I don't want to have to clean her up. So I have to try to remember that.
Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Sharing experiences with my children and D
-running with Julianne this summer
