Swim swim swim

Elise writes and performs her newest hit:

Ooops. Need to blog more!

First day of school picture. Owen is making silly faces, and Elise was crying because her chalk pastel drawing got left out in the rain, and was now an impressionistic drawing (not her intention!)

I call this - Series with Chicken. (And no, I didn't take them....)

What I really want to know, is - Why is the chicken in the dining room?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?

Elise and school friend/neighbor K having a tea party:

Elise was patiently watching Pecky in the nest box (the first time we noticed her there).

Pecky tolerated the audience.

And voilà! Her patience (and Pecky's!) paid off!

This project has been all-encompassing in our lives lately - the deck removal/concrete removal/dirt moving/patio moving/new deck building project:

Here is the wall before (You can't see all the cracks in this picture, or how much wall was leaning out. It would have been difficult and expensive to fix.)

Lower portion of the wall before:

The first tractor (yes, the one that tore up our grass):


Lifting the patio to loosen it:

Tractor #2 workingon the concrete wall:

The wall is down!

Scooping up the concrete afterwards:

Here's a view after the concrete is gone:


Here is John happily preparing to electrocute himself, er, I mean cut down the small spruce tree that was growing through the power lines:

Spruce top is down:

Getting ready to remove the lower portion of the spruce. Notice in the foreground where we have started to let the dirt go the way of gravity. With lots of major hard work convincing:

Look at all the junk someone used to build up our hill:

More pics of the dirt moving to come.......

What do I call this? Birds on a ladder?

Here's a blurry but bigger view of the ladder with all 4 girls:

Our first dozen. Not officially, since we had eaten a bunch already, but we saved for a few days to make a full carton. Some days we get 3 eggs!

And finally, our first dinner, with eggs as the main course, where the whole family had our home-grown eggs!

We are gonna miss summer!!!!!

Camping - Kelsey Campground, August 2009

First and foremost, this campground contains the Kingdom of Fluffaluffagus. That just made it. The rocks were close enough to let the kids play "unsupervised" for hours, yet far enough that they had lots of freedom.
The house made of leaned logs was pretty cool.
It was big enough for several kids to be inside, they patched it up with bark to make it "waterproof", and made a campfire ring inside.


They begged to sleep in it overnight.

Owen found a large axe, or scythe.

This campground is in the Pike National Forest, near Deckers. Very close to the burn area from the 2002 Hayman Fire. Driving up and around the area was humbling - to see the damage caused by forest fires.

Our site was lovely - the rocks behind us, shady, undisturbed by the fire. No ammentities, except pit toilets. We had to drive to another campground down the road to get more water.

We would definitely go back - a great place to escape, close to Denver, for the weekend.

Saturday the men went fishing in Cheeseman Canyon, in the spillway under the dam into the South Platte River.

The rest of us headed up to the reservoir. It was not what we were expecting - no boating, no swimming, no body contact with the water ;-p

The kids tryed their hands at fishing, with a few real and a few makeshift poles. Quite cute.

Relaxing back in camp after the day.

We were singing fools that night.

The kids did some shows - apologies for the poor picture quality - a combination of my camera switching to lower quality on the video, and the darkness.

Next morning - pancake breakfast.

Our hippie kids.

Me John.

I'm just not sure what this was!

Who knew a tackle box could be so exciting?

Wow!

Sunday we hiked up Cheeseman Canyon. Again, we got to see some of the fire damage, and the recovery happening after.

The river was absolutely beautiful.

Our lovely lunch spot.

John is so cute when he fishes!

Mi Familie:

Again with the cutness:

S meditating on the rock:

Lots of interesting discoveries here!

The rocks and water made beautiful sculpted designs:

Hmmm.

Juxtaposition of fire results and recovery:

The meadows were colorful:

Oh, and did I mention the beetles? THey were everywhere, especially on our hike. They kept landing on us :-) They were also all around the campground, we found some rotting stumps where the beetles were feasting on fungii. (That is what they are eating in this photo.) This is the Pleasing Fungus Beetle aka Gibbifer californicus.

Just a fun trip. The last weekend before school starts.