dale's birthday weekend

the rush of going out of town feels wonderful-so great that on thursday morning before we were supposed to leave on friday-i had this fiery energy that made it possible to get both the puppy and a cat to the vet and make appointments to get the girls' hair cut (that day-my kind of appointment :) and as i was rushing around the idea formed "why not just leave today"

 and then i couldn't get that idea to go away. so i called all my wonderful assistants for my friday toddler class-got that all taken care of and began to frantically pack-trying to remember all the blankets and jammies and rainboots. 

we left to pick up grant and got to tell him we weren't going home-we were driving to nana and papa's RIGHT NOW-car is packed and we are headed out of town!

the prius won some awards-

first place for getting the girls to sleep (about 30 minutes at the SAME TIME)

first place for cost of getting down to OK (around 15$ each way)

first place for crazy dance party in the backseat

i was so glad we left early-because friday was a beautiful day in many ways. becky took the boys out of school-so all the cousins played together all day in the amazing weather. and yes-roy is now driving :)

 they were so excited to pull out the big water slide-but although the weather was great-the water was COLD-as they were all wrapped up in towels-roy suggested they reenact the trail of tears-fun weekend with history-what could be better :) grant is not as up on his native american history-so he was left wondering what he could do to be a part of the game. emily didn't let her lack of understanding hold her back at all...

as the kids were laying around on the magic quilt-i had the idea to take a picture of them laying down with their feet all touching the bottom of the quilt-to make a cute record of their nice stair step heights. this was the attempt-i was standing on a tall step ladder-holding the camera above my head-trying to get them all in the shot-it didn't work out quite as planned

so we moved to the walk out slab of the basement-with me up above on the deck-this was perfect-

and i'm so happy with the shot we finally got-altough it took becky's amazingness and some marshmellows thrown down at them randomly.. 

the alfalfa was lush and green-and very good at hiding kids-we only lost one croc-which may end up in a bale later-

saturday we celebrated dale's birthday-can't believe it has been 6 years since we flew out to north carolina to meet him for the first time. he is such a joy-so compassionate, thoughtful and tough!

until next time...