Mile High Vogels: Sun Shiny June

June has been a sun shiny month over here, happy to report. We've had 12 consecutive days with nothing out of the ordinary or traumatic to report. Let's hear it for summer. I'd like to follow my own advice of noting all the highs throughout my days and highlight a few June tokens of sunshine below.

The weather has been fabulouso
The kids have been joyful, frolicking and only get roughly 5 times outs a piece per day, most of them centered around suffocating the dog
We joined a local neighborhood pool and are meeting fun party people, including a lot of fellow little people from Dude's school
Dude had a memorable 90 degree trip to the zoo in a limo with his now retired principal
Squirt and Dude are loving summer camp at a local Lutheran school and Squirt has taken the role of "boss" in her classroom. She's also singing songs about Jesus, so hopefully there's a balance there
Our new across the street neighbors are proving to be socially awesome and a huge sigh of relief (we were quite fearful when we lost our Sheas)
Dude started horse therapy today and quite enjoyed his time with Bandit
Randy and Linsy were blessed with a perfect bundle of love, baby Hayes Michael
Dude is also doing Tai Kwondo twice per week and has made a lot of exciting progress in his 3 weeks
Squirt learned the letter "R," (she still thinks "red" is formally called "hot lava" but we're making small strides)
Tim just wrapped up an exhilarating car racing weekend with his favorite boy on the planet, Mr. Chris Warp, and other fun man friends
I've been working with a couple neighbor ladies and one rockin gentleman building a "Free Little Library" on our corner (more to come on that)
Our Enzo makes all of us smile and ooh and aaah daily. He does have a distended testicle that needs attention (did I catch you off guard with that one?), but is a perfect teddy bear that aside
We're (I'm) knee deep in becoming a thorn in the side of (I mean petitioning) the city of Centennial to make much needed safety changes on our street. I'm not giving up and I think that point has been made obnoxiously clear to the powers that be
It's summer, which means cold white wine is now in my fridge
Dude's wounds are close to invisible, which means we no longer have to answer the question, "What the heck happened to your poor son?"
Our neighborhood has once again proven to us why we adore living around these precious people. The have poured down love and care for our family since the accident through calls, emails, cards, flowers, food, treats, presents, visits, and hand made tokens of kid crafted love

Some visual June tokens.....

We're officially entering that unfortunate stage that 90% of all boys go through around age 7. They're just awkward in a plethora of ways. Still darling in their mother and grandmothers' eyes and uber lovable, but awkward none the less. Sorry buddy. It'll pass.

A face only a mother and every other human being on the planet can love.

So, these weren't taken in June, but they needed to be shared. Because. You see why.

Farewell Mrs. Ryan. You've left a permanent ray of sunshine in our Vogel hearts.

Enzo's first backyard bath. Soaking we he was slightly bigger than a very large rat. He wasn't a fan. Dude giggled like a schoolgirl on helium the entire time.

Farewell gathering for the Shea's departure. Pre baby Hayes arrival.

Edible.

Two of my favorite man dudes.

We had a sleepover with the two little Sheas before they headed out of our hood. We all visited the famous "Y" building (a request of my son). You see, it looks like a "Y" at the top and Dude talks about it every time we pass, which is daily. They all touched it and we moved on to the park.

Squirt's first one on one with a green caterpillar. She talked to it like it was a crying baby. After 10 minutes, Dude got up the nerve to hold it and proceeded to crush it in his excitement. Dead. He cried. A lot.

Our new pool! Crazy fun.

Pre-caterpillar death.

One of Dude's besties, Belen, joined us for a free day at our horse camp ranch. That was the first time Squirt got on a horse. She loved it.

This night on the town happened over a month ago, but I never posted it. 16 ladies involved in a local non-profit I belong to rented a bike bar and handed out tokens of encouragement and love to women downtown Denver as we made a huge scene hootin and hollering. Our tour guide thought we were a pretty good time.