Platte River

For another outing we go to Platte River.  This is the same river we have rafted in summers past.  When we rafted it I saw this place with a little beach and a thought maybe we could go fine it.  The first time we brought fishing poles - the next time we brought rafts!

This is what Megan does for most of our outings.  Lately I have to just ban her from bringing books.

Brock is the only one that likes to fish.  He never catches anything... I mean never.  Since he has spent about 3 or 4 summers trying to fish and never catching anything i think he has given up - which breaks my heart because he really wanted to learn to do it.  The problem is he doesn't have a good mentor.  I would like to find him someone who fishes and teach him how to actually fish.

But after Brock was done fishing Dane wanted to give it a try.  Dane will do almost anything if he sees Brock do it.

The water is really slow and shallow at this part of  the river and the beach extends fora while - so I let the kids (only the girls did it) walk the tube up the shore line and then float down to where we were - they did it over and over again.  They can touch the whole time and walk against the current - so I felt good about it.

I never let Dane float down the river - but he wanted to just sit in it for a minute.

Belleview Park

One of our favorite activities every summer is going to Belleview Park. There isn't a playground or anything but there is this really shallow river with really great beaches on the side and usually a train that goes around the park. The train was closed and I think technically the whole park was closed cuz I never saw any of the maintenance workers that are usually there. But there weren't any signs saying it was closed so people came to enjoy the stream. This was actually our first outing that we went with other friends. It was so nice to finally sit and talk with other women and watch my children play with their friends. Truth is I really didn't get to sit and talk with my friends much - they are all in the stage now where they get to sit and chat with each other and not care where their children are. Dane obviously wanted to be down in the stream most of the time and that is my stage of life. Usually my kids are really good about playing with Dane and not requiring me to do much, but since this was the first time in months they had seen their friends I didn't want to ask them to watch Dane. 

These pictures are from multiple visits

The kids made this really amazing sand castle village.

Hudsen gardens

One place that stayed open during shutdown was Hudson Gardens. I did a post previously on them as we went a few times during quarantine. It has now become one of our places to go during the summer. It is just acres and acres of manicured gardens with waterfalls, streams, ponds, and trees to climb. They also turn their sprinklers on at 12 in the afternoon. It's such a weird time to turn on sprinklers, and I actually think against the law. I believe they are doing it so the kids could all run through the sprinklers because they knew it was so hot and all the pools were closed

I love these pictures of my kids playing in the river. It just reminds me of summer. Most days they work diligently to build a dam to block the river. During the beginning of the summer it was just our family. It was so nice. I'm the kind of mom that is always bringing neighborhood kids and friends with us wherever we go, and I love that about our family. It's second nature to me to invite whoever wants to come. But it was really nice to not have anyone with us and to see my kids just playing together and interacting with each other and still being happy about it.

There is nothing better in my mind than a boy with a stick.

A bunch of geese just wondered by and Dane got really excited and obsessed with them. He learned almost instantly how to say "goose" and Noah took him by the hand and they ended up chasing the geese for a good 30 minutes.

It just warms my heart to see my older children take care of Dane so well. Brock is very good at taking care of Dane. He is so observant and careful. He gets nervous when Dan gets too close to the edge or water or anything like that too. It's really sweet.

I-Spy Megan up in that tree...

Summer of Covid

This summer is going to be different for a lot of reasons. Not just Covid but we also had a toddler that needed a morning activity before nap time. For the last few years I haven't had a napper, so our mornings were kind of slow and easy and we went on our outings in the afternoon. But now we are going back to our previous schedule of when these children were young, and having early productive mornings and getting out of the house early in the day and back by lunch for Dane's nap. Here is what our summer schedule looks like.

And my schedule

I also kept our point system from Covid. It works fairly well. It was great during Covid, but some days in the summer we forget all about it which is fine because the kids have done a great job playing.

I like to keep a list of lunches and snacks they can eat, this cuts down on the whining that there's nothing to eat.

Before I get into all the posts about our outings I want to say something about our summer of Covid. Colorado has been really really slow to open up. By the time summer hit all of the playgrounds, pools, splash pads, or anything else that the kids could go do for fun were all still closed. During remote school I had kept Dane on a two-a-day nap schedule. He napped from 10 to 12 and then again from 2 to 4. This work great for school but wasn't going to work for the summer. So I moved him to one nap in the afternoon. But if we were home in the morning he was grumpy and just wanted to nap, so we had to get out every single day. So I sat down and did some research and made a list of about 5 places we could go during our outings that were open or just natural places that can't be closed. It was also really hot at the beginning of the summer so all of our place is needed to have water that we could play in.  Each week we would just repeat these same 5 places. 

We spent the first half of our summer on the banks of rivers. I loved it! I have always enjoyed being with my kids in nature and have bemoaned the fact that they grow up in a time when everything is artificial. I have longed for them to have a simpler childhood and this summer we got a taste of that. They spent their time in rivers and streams, throwing rocks, and building sand castles every single day. It was so wonderful. These kids got a 1950s summer!

As the summer wore on we started inviting other families to come with us - you know - as people started "re-entering society" :).  As of July pools and playgrounds have reopened - with very strict social distancing and having to make appointments.  It is nice to have these things.  But I kind of miss our isolated river play.

Last day of school

On the last day of school the kid's teachers did a parade past each of the kid's house.  The girls made signs and wore their battle of the book's shirts.  It was a nice gesture.  But as the cars streamed past with balloons and signs and all the teachers and faculty from the school I got overwhelmed with emotion.   I saw most of my children's teachers from Kindergarten and a lot of their aids and support staff drive their own vehicles, with their own decorations, past everybody's house in the whole school (some of these teachers live an hour or more away AND have their own kids at home and I realized how much they love my children and how much I love them.  I got all emotional and cried.  It was stupid - but it was authentic.  I am so grateful to them.  Not just for the last 2 months of remote learning (which the teachers did a fantastic job at) - but for the last 6 years of loving and helping my children - I couldn't have done it without them.

By the time it was the last day of school things had been SLOWLY starting to normalize, or at least it was on the horizon, or maybe we were all just tired of it.  Either way, the neighborhood mom's decided to have a little ice cream party for the kids in the cul-de-sac.  What started out as ice cream sandwiches and cupcakes for the kids on the street ballooned into a carnival with 60 plus people, an inflatable water slide, a food truck, and craziness.  We all kind of got in a fight the morning of because how can we go from quarantine to this??  We just knew we were going to be on the news.  We tried to reconsider but the wheels were in motion and we decided to just make the best of it.  It turned out fine, no one called the police (which was an actual concern - we have one of THOSE neighbors) and no one got covid.  phew! :) 

I didn't take more pictures because I was one of the ones who was kind of mad about the whole thing and was sort of quietly protesting.  I wasn't mad because we shouldn't do it - I was mad because of the hypocrisy of some of the other families.  But I won't go into all of that.  So I don't actually have any pictures form that day - but the weird blessing in it all was that the company that brought the water slide didn't pick it up that night, or the next day, or the next.  They came back 5 days later!  So the kids played on it everyday.  It was wonderful - it was the first time they had played with friends or done really anything fun in months.  These pictures come from those 5 days.

Anxiety

We had our baby girl!  I will post all about that later.  I have decided to hurry and catch up on my blog and post about her in order.  So I will (hopefully) be posting 2 or so posts a day until I get caught up.  But before I do that I want to document an emotion.

My 4 older kids left for Utah with my parents for 2 week so I could get some rest after having Eve and so the kids could do some fun summer things with their cousins and grandparents.

I am not the worrying kind of mom, or even the "I miss them" kind of mom.  I do miss them when we are separated, but it doesn't compel me to call them everyday.  When Jason and I go on vacation and leave them I am perfectly content to call them in 3 or 4 days and even then I don't feel like I need to talk to all of them.  I don't need to know what they did the whole time, and don't worry about their physical, emotional, or spiritual states.  It is just a temporary thing and it will be fine.

Until this time.

I am struggling.  I started struggling about a month or so before they left, and with each passing day I got more and more anxiety about it.  Most people wold pass it off as hormones of having a baby - and there is probably some truth to that. But I think the greater reason is because of quarantine.  I have been with these kids 24 hours a day, every single day, for about 5 months.   We have experienced everything together, every meal, every game, every show, e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g together.  Not only that but Jason and I have been their only influence.  They haven't had a teacher, a coach, a church leader, or even really a friend to influence them.  it has been all us.  And not to seem prideful but we kind of killed it!  I took President Nelson's council to heart and "remodeled my home into a sanctuary of faith".  We had a wonderful schedule filled with spiritual moments, working together, playing together, exercise, learning, alone time, and love.  It was all very intentional.

And now they are leaving me.  100% leaving me.  First off, I am pretty sure on of them is going to die.  I have never been afraid one of my children is going to die (not REALLY anyways - everyone thinks about it sometimes).  But this time it is palpable.  Second, I want to talk to each one of them every day and hear EVERYTHING that they did and how they felt about it.  And third, I worry about them.  I worry about what they are eating, when they are sleeping, how much screen time they are getting, and that doesn't even touch on the spiritual stuff.

Each day it gets less and less, so I know it isn't anything serious.  But I miss them dearly