One of My Finest Ideas

Thanks to friends from the meeting I grew up in, the three oldest girls were given the opportunity to attend a Bible camp, their first camp ever, which was a combination of meetings, sings, and lots of swimming, late-night games, and--judging by the evidence I gathered from the clothes they brought home-- oatmeal fights.

Sometimes I compare the mother I am now to the mother I was without big girls to help cook and clean and hold babies, and I feel ashamed of the lazy lump I now am. I thought that their five days away would hammer this truth home more firmly, but, instead, I was pleasantly surprised that in many ways my parenting gig was easier with them off having fun. This is not to say that we didn't miss them terribly and welcome their return with jubilation--'cause we did-- but it was affirming to know that older children take up large oceans of emotional energy in ways that younger children simply do not.

The day they left began a crazy heat wave here on the East coast, and, with my confidence in my mothering capabilities restored, I not only took the children swimming every single day while they were away, but I decided (on one 100+ day) to take them on a combination hike/picnic/playground/swimming day.

We were sweating buckets five minutes after we arrived at the park and finished our entire supply of water by the end of the hike, resorting to refilling the water jugs in the park bathroom sinks, which I'm sure had no germs of any kind lurking in wait for us.

Even though Cadence left her shoes somewhere on the trail at the end of the hike, and we didn't discover it until we had picnicked and then left the playground to swim, and even though she had two major meltdowns, and I had to carry her and the baby both to the swimming area after we found the shoes, and even though the baby was so exhausted that she fell asleep while sitting on my lap up to her chest in water, and even though we probably did ingest some bathroom bacteria from that sink water, it was a Good Day, and I was glad for it.

There were traffic jams of tiny hoppers all over the path in parts, and the children had to stop to catch some every few minutes.

A secret nest.

Zeke wanted me to take pictures of everything he found so he could show the big girls when they returned. Here, he demonstrates the size of the nest with his hands.

 I took too many pictures of this pudgy muffin (the BABY, not Luci) because she was pouring on the charm something fierce.

 Documentation of sunscreen application?  I'm guessing this was Zeke's work, since he's not in the pictures.

WAIT! More sunscreen application. Now Zeke's posing, but Aidan has disappeared.  Weird.

Anyway, an all-day adventure during the heat wave may not have been one of my finest ideas, but at the end of the day, it wasn't one of my worst ideas, either.