Pictures of July

With all the party hoopla I fell behind on my blogging. I've been looking through pictures and I found many that I wish I would have posted. So here is a photo update of July, all the things we've been doing besides celebrating birthday's.

A few weeks back we drove over to my aunt and uncle's house for the morning. They live in the country and essentially have their own animal farm. I'm not sure on numbers but I'd estimate over 10 alpacas, 20+ chickens of a variety of breeds, 15+ cats and kittens (one of which I stepped on and incurred many scratches from), several bunnies, 2 dogs and a horse. My cousin Lexi raises the alpacas and uses their fur? wool? to knit and crochet with. She shears them, washes the wool, dyes it, spins it on a spinning wheel and makes neat stuff out of it. Pretty impressive. Gage and Lexi also show animals at the 4-H fair. 

One Friday this month we went for a play date at the Drury's house. The kids had fun with the water table and slip 'n slide. They all played so well together and Brittany and I had a great chance for deeper conversation. It's not often a morning spent with 6 kids can be considered relaxing, but I'd say this one came pretty close. 

This might look like just some water, but that is my aunt (who is not happy I took her picture) swimming with Jack. We've done lots of swimming at my parents lake and despite the amount of work it takes to get everyone in and out of the water, it is one of my favorite things to do this summer.

I got this idea from Brittany, to have the kids do finger painting on canvases as sort of a special art project for their 1st birthday. I'm thankful I didn't put a whole lot of effort into this project because it sorta flopped. We did end up with finger painted art from each of the kids, but getting them to do it was extremely challenging. Jack kept asking for a paintbrush. I'm not sure where he get's this, but being messy really bothers him sometimes. I just encouraged him to get as messy as possible, this was finger painting and that was the point. He finally got into it and did a fine job of smearing all his colors together. Schaeffer and Logan really wanted nothing to do with the paint. They touched it once and then spent the rest of the time trying to crawl away. With a little help from Paul, Schaeffer made a fine mess and accomplished some smearing. Logan was crazy. His entire painting is a result of me putting paint in his hand and then holding the canvas right by him so he'd touch it as he moved to crawl away. He just kept pushing the canvas away and refused to touch it on his own accord. Still, everyone got messy and I got some funny/interesting artwork. We let them clean off in the water table and pool and they all enjoyed that a great deal more than the paint.

This is my proof. Logan can stand. He just doesn't realize it. This happened just this week during one of our many evenings spent outside getting wet. Water is really the only option if we're going to be outside in all the heat.