I love to go to the cabin in the summertime. I can get crowded, but sometimes we get lucky and have the pool to ourselves. Dax was excited to use his giant pool noodle he got for his birthday:
Sometimes he even shared with his sisters...not very often, but sometime.
During the summer, I was training for (another) fall marathon, and I love to run up the canyon. It is so pretty. Once I let Olive off of the leash, and of course that is the time we ran into a herd of cows. Olive was scared at first, but after the cows started running away from her, she got brave and started chasing them around, which is worse than having her be afraid of them! She got between a momma cow and her baby and I was worried for her life. She survived, but I don't think I am ever going to let her off the leash again. Stinky dog.
Olive is fun to have at the beach. We don't have much beach at all this year, the water is soooo high. But we set up our awning in the weeds of our beach and the kids had fun kayaking and paddle boarding. Olive was on the paddle board with Cora. They started getting kind of far away, so I took one of the kid kayaks out to bring them closer to shore. They had a weight limit of 140 lbs, but seemed pretty sturdy...until Olive jumped off the paddle board and swam over to my kayak. I tried to lift her onto it with me, and my 135 plus Olive's 45 definitely put us over the weight limit. We sunk and I had to swim us back to shore.
One day Cora picked these wildflowers for me from outside in our yard. Aren't they beautiful?
The kids love to take the occasional trip to Crepes and Coffee, where they love to eat crepes, but not coffee. They really like anything with Nutella. I like the raspberry one, but the Smores one is pretty tasty.
Once we saw a mommy moose with her teenage daughter at our salt lick. They must have been really needing some sodium because they licked that salt block for 20 minutes straight. Olive was beside herself because I wouldn't let her bark at them.
After a while they wandered up the hill. Mooses are one of my favorite animals. They remind me of myself, all gangly and long-legged.
We came up with some friends for Raspberry Days. I took the kids to the parade, and Zips had a float where the threw actual mini raspberry shakes. They were frozen solid when they were handing them out, but it was pretty warm so they melted quickly. Best parade treat EVER!
We headed to the beach a few times, and of course had to break the wave runners out. Cora and Arden love to drive.
Dax usually prefers his kayak. He is pretty good!
We also went to the Raspberry Days rodeo! We got there nice and early this time and had much better seats. We enjoyed the bull riding:
And the buckin' broncos:
But the favorite part was between events when they called the kids down by age to have them chase animals around. The really little kids chased bunnies (which they got to keep), and the older kids chased a calf around. The calf had a ribbon tied to its tail, and if they caught the ribbon, they won $5. Arden was in this age group, but wouldn't even go down and try...boooring. Dax was willing to go down when they called the 8-9 year olds, and they were chasing a pig! Dax tried his best and ran right out of his flip flops, but unfortunately (or actually, fortunately), he didn't catch the pig.
We went to the fair the next day, and Dax and some friends had fun beating each other up with boxing gloves and big foam sticks:
All the kids and the dads then got into these big inflatable balls and bounced off each other for a while. It was hilarious to watch, but Preston said it was like being inside your own personal greenhouse on that hot day.
There were also bouncy slides and such. A good time was had by all.
We always love to make smores in our fire pit!
Goodnight, lake.
Olive stole Cora's pillow.
Games are also fun...some kids are playing Headbandz while some do air hockey.
More summer updates ahead! Maybe I'll have summer all done by the time fall is over.
