Catching Up

Do you ever notice that sometimes you are so busy making memories that you don't have time to record them? That's what we've been doing for the last three weeks - making memories instead of recording them. This is my attempt to catch up the record of our lives :).

The week before we left on vacation to Wyoming, Charlotte participated in a summer school project titled "Art in Nature, Nature in Art." To participate, a student had to be invited by his/her school. We were not sure what to expect, but were thrilled with what she learned. Each day the students studied a different well-known artist and then imitated that artist's style. As parents and family, we were treated to an amazing art show on the final day of class. My personal favorite was Charlotte's version of Van Gogh's Sunflower piece. I have also included her Eric Carle piece from "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."

Since returning from our Wyoming vacation (which will be a separate post), we've been busy enjoying these last dog days of August. On Tuesday, David and the girls joined my Webelos den for a three-mile hike which included geocaching (to keep them motivated) followed by a campfire. The activity took three hours to complete. I was proud of my boys in that they didn't complain and were good sports to the end. I'm not really sure if any of my scouts enjoyed the hike or the geocaching, but our family really enjoyed the beautiful scenery, mild temperature with a perfect breeze, and being together outside on a summer night.

Christopher Brown, Jacob Rolfs, Isaac Holcomb, David Rolfs, & Bradley Moonga

Bradley, Christopher, Isaac, and Jacob

We spent Wednesday at the Elm Creek lake (filtered and chlorinated, but surrounded by sand - doesn't get much better than this in my opinion). And Thursday, we enjoyed a day at Como Zoo and Como Town. To be honest, I really could have skipped Como Town since it is cheesy and expensive, but my kids liked it. Before we left, we enjoyed the butterfly exhibit where each of my kids were able to provide a landing spot for one of these beautiful creatures.

Jacob's head

Charlotte's hand

Laurel's shoulder

and Mary's hand.

And if that wasn't enough for the week, yesterday (Saturday), we took our kids to their primary activity at church in the morning, treated them to lunch via Burger King before going to Coono Rapids for mini-golf and bumper boats. We then searched the woods for four geocaches and kept going even after it started rain (Jacob LOVED this). We then came home and watched a movie together as a family. I'm recording all of this because I have heard these incredible words come out of my kids' mouths on occasion, "I'm bored . . . we never do anything." Yea Right - here's the proof and we'll still have it when they are grown up and having kids of their own.