It's pool time again!

Monday kicked off pool season with our first trip to our neighborhood pool!  

Our Austin turtles!

Mama had some mad turtle-catching skills on our trip.  I caught a baby softshell turtle first.  It was soooooo cute!  We had never handled a softshell before, so it was really neat to see how it felt.  It has such a long neck--it can reach all the way around to try to bite you.  The kids had fun holding it and playing with it until it got away.  

 Then I caught a baby red-earred slider, which they also played with for a bit.  It was the tiniest one we've ever seen in real life--even tinier than the tiny turtles we've owned!!

My animal lover was realllllly happy with some reptiles to play with for a bit!

Oh, Austin....

A weekend in Austin with my loves.  Wildflowers, hiking, swimming in a clear/cold river, waterfalls, delish breakfast, shaved ice, cafe au lait on the patio, critters....there isn't much else I'd ask for on a laid-back weekend vacay.

Evening Hikes

As many evenings as week as we can, we head out after dinner for a 5-6 mile hike in our neighborhood and the trails nearby.  Matt and I are training a bit for our PNW trip in July and we want to be in shape to hike a bit!  This is the third year for our spring hikes in preparation for a summer hiking trip, and it has paid off the past two years, so we are at it again!  We load the kids into the jogger with an audiobook and headphone splitters so they can listen together.  Quinn sometimes brings a sketchpad and colored pencils.  Beck brings his pocketknife because it has a flashlight on the end.  ;)

 Sometimes we let the kids get out and run a bit.  I love being out at sunset and I love an extra hour to chat with Matt.  I dig our evening walks!!

 My 3 spying on some deer in the woods.  We know where they hide, so we always look for them when we are out!

My favorite days are the ones with time to soak in the little joys....

 ...like giggling over an inchworm crawling up his arm.

Having fun with Grammie!

I don't know who enjoyed shooting the ping pong ball gun more....

pickin' squash

My lizard-wizard, going strong!

She went jumping out of the car as soon as we got home from school to catch one she spotted on the fence.

 

Around here....

Rainy days are good for watercoloring.

 Quinn, showing us some artwork she made in Spanish class.  They were learning their colors in Espanol.

I helped with the Impact Girl's Retreat again this year.  I did some of the set up on Friday and Beck and I helped some of the Bammel teen guys put up 40 camping cots for the girls.  I hope my son soaked up some of those big boy's serving hearts, as they spent one of their days off school to set up all the cots.  Beck definitely soaked up every bit of roughhousing they would give him!!!

The Impact Girls' Minister always does an awesome job with the retreat.  I am continually impressed with the amount of creativity, organization, and spirituality she puts into it EVERY YEAR.  

Shannon made this awesome Instagram photo prop, to go along with this years theme about using our voices, no matter how we use them, for good.  

I got to use a Polaroid to take the girls' photos!!!  How fun that was!  I have never even taken a single Polaroid before!  I didn't want to stop.....

The speakers talked about using our voices.  There was an awesome video introducing the coaches that would lead the girls in group.  Dinner was formal--real dishes, linens and roses on the tables.  It was so pretty!  There was even a sparkly red carpet the girls got to walk down to get to the dinner!

Because we used real dishes, someone had to wash them.  My sweet hubby came up and did all the dishes.  I loved him a little extra for that.  

 The next day we had CPR downtown and were thankful Grandbob and GrandSue kept the kiddos for the weekend.  Here's Matt, saving babies two fingers at a time.

We took advantage of a day downtown!!  We had the best Turkish food.  We went to a store I love to buy some tea.  We had coffees in the park.  We went out for ice cream for dinner and ran into friends and sat and talked for about an hour....It was pretty lovely!!

 My boy and his catches.  Some grubs.  He loves all creatures.  ALL. Even nasty ones like roaches and spiders.

Scenes from Q's classroom:

 Digging out a splinter with Daddy.

 Flowers from my gardens:

 This is earlier in April.  Our garden.  It looks nothing like this now!!

Where Beaux goes.

 Be still my heart.  This has become their new library routine.  She likes to read him a couple books each visit.

 He found this click beetle out in the yard and played with it for a while.  Later in the day he came inside, crying, with blood dripping down his hand and all over his pants.  I just knew he'd sliced his finger with his pocketknife....but nope, the clickbug had gotten him with its pincers.  Apparently they can pinch really hard!  He's tough and gets over injuries pretty quickly and had his finger washed and bandaged and was back out holding that bug in a matter of minutes.

 He had a pet toad all week.  And the Merediths brought him another on on Friday night.  He loves his toads!

I looked out one morning to see him mowing in the rain.  :)

Our picnic lunch routine is still going strong!!

His new pocketknife.

 Beck is crazy in love with pocketknives.  He has a couple of Matt's old ones that he can use at agreed-upon times with Daddy.  He spotted some at Academy one day that were clip-one ones and he was smitten.  He had to save up some chore money and Papa gave him some change out of his change jar, and when he had enough for the amazing knife, we went and got it.  It can also open soda and root beer bottles, which rocks his world!  We occasionally get the Mexican sodas in glass bottles in crazy flavors and he can't wait for us to do that again so he can open his own!!!

 

Daddy is training him on knife-handling skills and they are practicing doing some carving. Oh yeah, it also has a flashlight, so he takes it on our evening hikes in case we are still out when it starts getting dark, then he lights the way for us.  :)

When across-the-street from the post office looks like this.....you know we gotta pull over!