3rd Annual Ranch Trip

For the 3rd year our family, plus Nana, made the 4 hour trek to A-A Ranch in Wyoming, courtesy of Tim's work.  He works, the rest of us play, explore, hike, relax, dig, jump, ride, nap, run, stroll, puddle hop....no screens, no phones, just earth.  I fall in love more and more every year.  Words don't really do this place justice, so I'll leave you with photos.   

 

 

 About 20 seconds after this shot, the girl fell face first in the river.  Nana came running from afar, thinking she was being stung by an entire hive of bees.  That's how loud her reaction was.  I, of course, refused to pick her mud caked self up and forced her to walk back to our cabin.  

Cool Whip Body Paint Baby

What do you get when you mix 3 little monkeys, cool whip, and food coloring?

Retreating

I've been attending a Thursday morning Bible study with some rather dope ladies from our church for the past 6 months.  It's a 2 hour segment of time I really look forward to every week both for the social aspect as well as the thought provoking spiritual nature.  We're honest and vulnerable, making it a group worth being a part of.  No fake smiles or offerings of perfection.  All of our kids scream and fight and poop their pants and all our marriages have flaws and imperfections.  We all adore and get equally fed up with our lives as moms and admit to locking ourselves in bathrooms and closets on a regular basis.  Refreshing.

A few weeks ago, we rented a gigantic cabin in the mountains and spent 2 days away from our imperfect lives to reflect, eat, drink lattes, watch hummingbirds fight, pray, study, sleep, laugh out loud, share stories, watch Fallon clips, and eat some more.  It was exactly what we all needed in our individual lives.  I look forward to the next opportunity to retreat.  We all need to, right?

 Heidi.  She's about to move to India with her family for a year.  Brave soul.  

 Amy.  Split your pants funny.

 Another Amy.  Our latte maker for the weekend & my car mate.  

 The view from my quiet spot for the weekend.

 Kyrie Eleison.  That's her official name.  Awesome right?  She is every bit awesome.

 Alison (left).  The leader of our little group.  Also a very brave soul.  

 The location for our final morning devotion time.  Not bad.

 Of course a lone bird decided to fly into the house as we were leaving.  Problem solved.

 

Shutterbooth Trickery

Summer as a stay at home mom is proving to provide very little blogging time.  Very little meaning next to none.  Squirt is watching Curious George Halloween special and Dude is loving life in Chicago with Nana and Papa, so I'm attempting to get a post in.  However, Enzo is passing some lethal gas in my office, so my time and tolerance will be limited.

Some of our besties, Randy and Linsy, own Denver Shutterbooth and the kids have a way of getting their sticky fingers into the prop bins in their garage.  We documented this trickery a couple weeks ago and we're so glad we did.  It was rather enjoyable for the adults.

Next Round of Random Happs

May finished out with our annual trip to Tim's work ranch, but before that bliss took place we did a little of this and a little of that, highlighted below.

 When I'm brave enough to allow the littles to play beauty parlor on me, this is what transpires.  This session occurred at the beginning stages of my soon to be diagnosed strep throat.  That happened too, but will not be shown in photos.  It wasn't even remotely pretty.  

 Despite monsoon May, our pool finally opened and we've been spending a considerable amount of our free time there.  It's kinda like second home this summer, which I'm more than grateful for.  So many fun kids and fun mamas to sit on the edge with our feet in.  Because that's all us moms do.  

 Nana came to town for the ranch excursion and was able to spend some QT at home with us too.