It has felt one-hundred percent like summer lately. Which with school still in can be interesting, but we have just had a few wonderful afternoons, pretending.
One of the greatest perks of living where we live is the friends we enjoy nearby. Our kids run back and forth (even when told not too...) riding scooters, raiding freezers, makin' their own fun like it's 1976 (or what I imagine 1976 would be like-- basically, only slightly more free than my own eighties childhood).
I know there are tons of blog posts and articles out there romanticizing the good ol' days of childhood and parenting, before soccer became something you signed your 3 year up for, instead of something your kids played unsupervised at a nearby park. I get it. But I also think we can still give our kids so much of those nostalgic memories....just turn on the hose right? This morning Levi wanted me to make him a kazoo...so I dutifully unraveled half a roll of toilet paper (now on my bathroom counter) so we had a roll to make it out of. He had a blast, got the pots and pans out for his baby brother and sister and they rocked out. Wait? Why did I start thinking about this....
Oh ya. Because I have thought a tone about the parenting side of it. Why does it seem so much more stressful and hard? There are a ton of contributing factors to this, but I've found it very interesting that when I've asked moms from just one generation back, what's the main difference between when they raised us and us raising our kids today (with the implied, how the heck could you have 8 kids and 2 or 3 is making us feel totally overwhelmed?), so many, without hesitation answered,
"Oh, we just helped each other more."
"We didn't expect each others houses to be spotless...there were kids there! We didn't want to take our kids along with us for everything and neither did our friends, so we would just drop em off and let them play and take other's kids for them. And we never kept track."
It's something, that even though I truly believe it, in our current culture it can be challenging to put into practice. I can't wait for my copy of "Mothers of the Village" (I ordered myself for Mother's Day!!!) to get here, all about this idea of woman supporting each other.
These sprinkler pictures came about because my baby was sick. I'd finally decided to take poor miserable Enoch into the doctor but of course the time the clinic had a available was right as the kids got out of school. Now, I could drag all my kids to the doctors, it would be a nightmare and we'd probably come home with more sicknesses than we went in with, but instead I asked if they could play at my friend's house. The trick is, when your friends with someone, you know their life is crazy, you know a bit about their struggles and stresses and the last thing you want to do is add to it! And maybe she played it real cool and in reality having my kids over was actually the last thing she could handle that day, but she didn't make me feel like that.
I went to the doctor, and the kids had a blast playing in the sprinklers. I brought back a couple boxes of popsicles with me that all the kids devoured for "dinner".
I hope I can be as helpful to her as she always is to me, but we aren't keeping a balance sheet. Ya know?
Anyways, I sat and chatted after the appointment all the while noticing the way the sunlight was making Hadley's piggy tails glow, seeing McKye make the best over the top expressions when he'd plasmacar down the driveway, and Levi making awesome power poses as he jumped through the sprinklers until I couldn't stand it! The summer time childhood good vibes, in the lovely light were begging to be captured, "I gotta go get my camera!!!" So I did, brought it back, realized the battery was dead, debated all over again whether to run back to change the battery...
In the end, I'm very glad I did. Cuz I really love how some of these photos turned out. 
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| McKye is starting to think it's funny to try and mess me up while I'm trying to take his photo... I told him if he keeps it up I'm taking away his college fund. |
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| So I can remember Mckye's awkward adult teeth growing in |
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| He thinks he is soooo funny |
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| These two are beyond cute |
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| Get off! My turn! |
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| I don't even like this photo, shoulda took a video of this, cuz her little diaper bum waddling while she pushed her big brother was so darling. |
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| Took this one on May the 4th:) |
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| Lawn lovers, be warned....these are gonna make you cringe. |
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| Are my kids' faces ever clean?????!?!?!? |
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| I wanted to get some of Hadley, but we were late for something...who knows what, that was a whole week ago, might as well be a life time!
Soooo I took some of her yesterday after church instead....
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| I promise it's just really this one corner of our yard that's this "bad"... I love it. Soemone said to me once, "You don't want a lawn, Chelsea, you want a meadow!", and it's soooo true! |
And one again, trampoline pictures.
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