May part 2

Apparently they re-did one of  the playgrounds near us so we had to go check it out. The four swings worked out nicely for us!

Someone was a little excited to make his own sandwich. This was his favorite sandwich for a while: turkey and cheese. He had it EVERYDAY for a good couple weeks.

While Jared took the older boys on the Father's & Sons campout, I took Kaliya to Burger King. 

Estherville had a town clean out day. There were lots of people throwing out "junk" but one man's junk is another man's treasure. We drove around town looking for things to take home and found 2 dressers, 1 plant stand, 1 corner shelf unit, 1 set of  nice bunkbeds, 2 dining chairs, and a plastic toy box. The bunkbeds got put to use right away (since ours were not in good shape anymore). The tall dresser in this picture got a new coat of paint and new knobs and became Makai's dresser. The shorter black dresser had been sitting in the breezeway but just recently (August) made it's way in the house to collect shoes and backpacks by the backdoor. I was pretty happy with our turnout of these findings and wish I had my own house with more storage for other things I saw and wanted. 

Makai had fun standing at the water table. He could just barely get his hands in the water but he loved it. He even didn't mind when his siblings started pouring water on him.

One morning I gave the kids baths, then in the afternoon came out to this ^. They decided to give themselves mud baths. 

Just a closer look at the muddy messes.

Makai enjoying his bath. I think he likes them even more now that he can sit up and see things.
And for some reason he decided dad's toes were good enough to suck on.

Kaliya enjoying the tire swing. Unfortunately soon after this, we had a storm that made this branch break off the tree so we lost our good tire-swing spot. There were no other good places on the tree out back so we had to relocate to a tree out front and make do with the swing close to the road. 

And it's always fun to play games with dad when he's home. 

Jared bought a new lawn mower - as in from the store new - because he hasn't had much luck with mowers the last two years when he bought used. So here he is taking it for a spin and Carter wanted to help so he got out his toy mower. He walked around the yard over and over again with dad. It was pretty cute.

One Sunday I wanted to go on a walk to take some nice pictures of the kids. So we headed to Fort Defiance, my go-to place for pictures. We found a trail that we hadn't walked before so we headed that direction. Here are a few of the pictures I got this time:

Unfortunately, Carter had a rough time just when I was trying to get pictures of all of them together. Something about sticks, maybe getting hit or poked, maybe wanting to hold it for the picture...I don't remember. But the little Turkey wouldn't smile.

After walking around for a bit, we were able to forget about whatever the stick incident was earlier and I got a good picture of my kids. At least, this is as good as I got. It would be so much better if Laken wasn't looking around or holding a stick....again with  the sticks!

Another day we decided to take a picnic to the splash park in Spirit Lake.

Makai getting a little water action. He didn't like it too much. So we had to cart him around instead.

Carter still is never sure if he likes to get all the way wet or not. He likes to stick his head in the water but doesn't like to run through anything that sprays water.

Laken always tries to get under the buckets when they dump, but he just can't quite figure out where to stand.

Kaliya enjoys playing with the water, not in the water.