Outside Play

Here's some more adorable pictures of the boys as they become best buddies.  We love playing outside!  It seems we are outside more than in lately.  The weather has been fantastic getting up into the 80's.  BUT NO HUMIDITY!!  It's crazy.  I would be dying of heat and very tempted to turn on the A/C in Gardner but even if I had that choice here, I wouldn't be thinking about it yet.  Yes, you read that right.  We do not have an air conditioner here.  We aren't sure how much of an issue that will be but so far, we have not missed it in the 9 months that we've been here.  We just open the windows and use the attic fan as needed.  It cools down at night and the house feels great when we sleep.

We haven't gotten a lot of rain, which is not a great thing as we are under water restrictions due to drought conditions.  But it does mean lots of sun shiny days to play outside.

Some days we just play in dirt.  The boys make us dirt soup or dirt pizza a lot.  We moved the kiddie grill to the back porch so they can play with it outside and because we have a covered deck, it's protected against the elements.  They love to "take our order" making anything we can dream up.  Even putting rock "cheese" on top of our soup for us.

They like to borrow my kitchen things to cook with.  I think they were "packing lunches" here.

They also love to play in the front yard.  There are SO many little kids on our block!  If we all got together there would be 12 kids including the boys ranging in age from 2 - 10.  And that's just the houses directly next to us and across the street.  That's why they love the front yard so much.  They can ride their bikes around and go visit the neighbors who are also always outside.  They have even gone on a "backyard" play date at their friends house while John and I cooked dinner kid free.  

On this particular day, John was working on the Durango and they boys sat and watched.  Well at least for a few minutes before getting up and playing again.

Today I couldn't resist, I went to Walmart and bought a kiddie pool.  It's the inflatable kind and I'm not sure I love it but I DO love that the kids do.  They had a blast today splashing around and going down the slide - even though the water was FREEZING!   It got so filthy that there is no way I can let them swim in the same water tomorrow.  

I read up on all these great natural ways to keep the kiddie pool clean so you can reuse the water.  Yeah.  No such luck with these boys!  It seems like a big waste of water to dump it after each use.  That is what I don't like about it.  But the boys love it so I guess I can get over it!  I'll use the dirty water on the garden and maybe that will help me feel better about being so wasteful. : )

This was only half way through the day...  It now has ripples of dirt on the bottom and is very murky.

We haven't gone on a lot of hikes or anything recently but rather just enjoying our house.  It's nice to have such a fabulous back yard.  I can't wait to get their basketball goal up from the basement.  And I had to seriously resist the urge to buy things for the backyard today as I know Aaron's birthday is coming up.  The great thing about the back yard is it's fenced in.  The boys can keep themselves pretty occupied for quite some time giving me the chance to work some magic in the kitchen for a while.  You know, cleaning, cooking, cleaning, baking, oh yeah, and cleaning some more. : )

Miss everyone back home.  Love you guys! : )