A few of my favorite things... Summer Edition

kiddie pool time

sand castles

picnics at the park

gorgeous flowers

kabobs on the grill

skipping rocks on the river

soapy slip n slide fun

road trips

heat waves

ice cream shop visits

Hope you are enjoying your summer as much as we are!

4th of July in Grass Country

wine tasting. rolling down grassy hills. tea from Wales. fireworks. 

private air show. mexican train dominoes. hammock lounging. fun times.

Our annual trip to Aunt Janel's in Oregon this year proved to be bittersweet.  My sister Ashley joined us for the first time and we had so much fun together. ( I was glad to spend some time with her before she is off to Switzerland for 6 weeks! )  Upon arriving late Thursday night after some horrendous traffic, we discovered that the grass farm fields surrounding Aunt Janel's had not been cut and were producing record levels of grass pollen...in particular, the highest grass pollen count in the nation.  Poor Levi and Aaron have severe grass allergies and were immediately hit hard.  Aaron was just pretty miserable, but Levi broke out into an allergy induced asthma attack.  I, unfortunately, left his inhaler at home since he rarely ever needs it.  I'm still having a hard time forgiving myself for that one.  After a sleepless, scary 24 hours of wheezing, coughing, sneezing and rapid heartbeats, Aaron and Levi decided to head for home.  Levi was heartbroken but once they got home Daddy pulled through and turned the disappointment into a winner of a weekend full of fun Daddy/Son activities.  Way to go, Babe!  

One reason I particularly enjoyed the weekend was I had many opportunities to experiment with my new camera.  I am still learning, but since practice makes perfect and I took over 450 "practice" shots this weekend, I certainly hope I learned something!

a very LONG car ride

Aunt Janel's supply of Legos is WAY cooler than ours! 

(I love that I happened to capture Levi in the background rubbing his itchy allergy eyes. Poor thing.)

 Sharing all the work we've been doing on ancestry.com.

Ash out in Aunt Janel's yard.

Alice and Lacey

The guys decided to have a skeet shooting contest over the lake.  Here my nephew Carter is getting a lesson.

Even Ashley took a shot!

All the ladies at a winery.

 Civil War reenactment...really a moving thing to witness. 

What says Happy 4th of July better than shaved ice?!

This is one of the infamous grass fields that sent half of my family home! :(

Happy 4th of July from the Jones Family!

Camping ... well, kind of.

Last week I took the boys camping with a few of my friends to the Edwards property in Cle Elum.  While it was hardly roughing it, we still enjoyed the time out in nature.  I really enjoyed the girl time, even if we were outnumbered, 7 kids to 4 adults. (The poor boys were outnumbered 9 to 2, so who am I to complain?!)  With three of the four of us sportin' SLRs, it would be no exaggeration for an outsider to think us the paparazzi and our kids the celebs.  No doubt some of you have already seen my friends' blogs on this topic (found here and here) so I will spare you the onslaught of shots which are basically time-lapsed photography of our entire trip and you can check theirs out if you'd like to see more.  They have practically dubbed me the slacker blogger, but hey, better late than never in my book.  Here are a few of my favorite shots.

Lunchtime...do not ask me why Levi is wearing a plastic horseshoe as a necklace. Too much female influence, no doubt!

At the river.  I took about 15 shots of this pose. Do you think any of them turned out?  The sun was in their eyes.  They would much rather be doing this anyhow...

These  boys can throw rocks in the river ALL DAY LONG.

Poor Heidi, she's not exactly a "roughin' it" sort of gal, but she's cute!

Fun with friends!

Sandbox Time!

CRAZY time!

Peek-a-boo time!

What would you expect a boy to do with a teacup?  Fill it with sand of course!!! You gotta work with what you got!!

It was a fun time, ladies.  When are we going again?!

Future Rock Stars

Music definitely runs deep in these boys' veins... but it didn't come from me!  Aaron has been giving some lessons to the boys lately and it seems we might have a little drummer on our hands.

 This boy can keep a beat!  Now, I know how hard this is.  Aaron has made futile attempts at teaching me to play the drums over the years.  I can do 2 beats at once, but try for a 3rd and I gotta throw in the towel.  I just can't do it to save my life!  But here my 7 year old hops on and with about 20 minutes of instruction, he masters it!  We say, do it faster... he does it faster. On beat. Amazing.

And who can resist the cuteness of this?  The guitar is about the size of him! Landon is learning a little as well, but he's just not quite big enough yet!  I love this next shot.  It makes me think of how the rock stars play with their guitars slung really low past their waist.

The only bummer about this post is that I don't have an audio clip to accurately portray the noise level during this photo sequence.  Earplugs and Excedrin please.

Look Mom, It's Our Fort!

Today the boys wanted to give me a tour of their fort behind our house.  They spend quite a bit of time back there, and honestly I try NOT to go back there due to the plethora of spiders and other creepy crawlies. But today I humored them. I figure a mother of boys needs to learn to be a little less squeamish. 

The boys actually found these wooden benches somewhere back in the woods.  I guess maybe the people who lived here before us might have made them.  So when they needed a table to complete their setup, I thought it the perfect opportunity to get rid of our well-loved, now hated Ikea end table.  That thing had seen its way through too many Jones family moves and I think it only cost $10 brand new.  I was done and it was done.  (Side note: I don't actually let the boys eat at this table because this is about 10 feet away from where Aaron saw the bear last spring.)

The branches above Levi's head are strategically placed and are the roof, so I'm told.

 "Come on, Mom, just climb over this big mountain."

And this, my dear blog friends, is the fort's bathroom.  What, you might ask, is that wheel rim doing in the bathroom?  Yep, you guessed it.  It's the pot. The "Pee Pot" is what they have dubbed it.  And because he is so kind, Landon had to demonstrate for me that, yes, he really does pee in it.  Nice.  Well, maybe that'll ward off the bears.

And of course they had to show me how they could climb all the trees. I really like this shot I captured!

Finally this above shot is their "hammocks."  They pull the bottom tree branches down and then lay on them before they can spring back up.  Pretty creative, I thought. Not so comfy though!

And here they are.  The fort masterminds. They're all boy.  And I love them.

Love These Boys

I consider it a privilege to get to mother these boys every day.  They are my joy and they have certainly been a blessing in my life!

Happy Mother's Day to all you Mommies out there in blog land.  I hope you're letting your loved ones spoil you today! You deserve it!

California Dreamin'

That's what I'm doing this morning after returning to this miserable weather.  We had such an amazing time on our vacation.  The weather was perfect and the kids had a blast.  And I took A LOT of pictures.  710 to be exact.  I will spare you the most of them and share a few of my favorites, though it will be rough to narrow it down.  I plan to upload a few more to my facebook page. 

We picked a great time to visit.  We never waited longer than 25 minutes for a ride with the average wait time being less than that and sometimes no wait at all! 

The kids were chosen out of a group of about 100 to participate in the Star Wars Jedi Academy training.  This could not have been more perfect for them, since they are obsessed with Star Wars!  They first received group training from the Jedi Master and then were invited up on stage to individually battle Darth Vader himself!  They received their own Certificate of Completion for the program and then had perma-smiles on their faces as they came off stage! Of course I have the whole thing on video!

California Adventure was a hit as well.  A few favorite memories for me were screaming in Aaron's ear on the giant California Screamin' roller coaster pictured in the background above, as well as being stuck at the top of the Mickey Ferris Wheel where it was WAY more windy than on the ground and we were all freezing to death!

On Saturday we rented an SUV and drove to the coast.  This picture was at Huntington Beach where they were having a surfing competition.  Aaron was pretty excited to get to see that.  About five seconds after this picture was taken, a giant wave came in and took Landon out, leaving him soaked, sandy and crying on the beach.  Of course I had to take a picture of that! 

We continued down the coast and hit up Newport Beach and Laguna Beach as well.  We saw the tidepools at Crystal Cove Beach, but frankly they paled in comparison to the Washington coast tidepools. 

But it was all fine by me because those beaches are amazing. I could've spent the whole 5 days laying there!  I can't wait to go back!