Crafting and a new snack

When picking up our CSA box last Saturday, the farm had out samples of red, orange, and yellow watermelon.  Clare decided she liked yellow the best and Sean wasn't really a fan of any of them - he's more of a cantaloupe kind of guy...

After we get our "farm box" and whatever else (e.g., extra tomatoes and white sweet corn), we got ice cream!

We went home with a yellow watermelon, btw - it tastes just like a regular watermelon but it's yellow. Strange.  But tasty.

The kids got to work putting together a birdhouse kit and painting it - they we so nice to each other despite sitting in the same chair (which could have gone very badly)

We also did this melted crayon canvas craft - we hot glued crayons to a canvas and then melted the crayons with a hair dryer.  Once the desired level and pattern of melty-ness was achieved, the canvases were done.  Note - the crayon will SPLATTER everywhere.  This is an outdoor/garage craft for sure.

Queen of the Pool

While Sean had swimming lessons everyday at camp this summer, Clare kept up with swimming lessons with her teacher.  She showed us her progress at the beach these past two weeks, bravely boogie boarding, body surfing, and ducking under the water!  Tonight was her first lesson back after two weeks at the beach and she really took things up a notch!  Check out her new "trick"!

Tall tower!

I found this post hanging out in my drafts folder - I think it's from about April 2012...

Sean was so excited when he built this "big tall tower!" of trucks and cars:

With his dinosaur, "Baby Dinah" on top:

New Trail

We found a new network of nature trails near our house - we spent a (HOT) afternoon exploring one of the trails and we can't wait to go back!

Did I mention that it was a hot afternoon?  We made sure to take a lot of water breaks:

One of the trails took us to a makeshift bridge over a muddy patch:

Another took us to this bog:

Sean helped Clare over/under a fallen tree branch:

Flashback

Our town held its celebration for National Night Out last night but the kids were with their grandparents so we didn't go... but we went last year!  It was a fun event - free pizza and water ice plus chances to sit in fire trucks and police vehicles.

We got to watch some exciting demonstrations by the K-9 Unit:

We took a tour of the police station and learned that the officers in our town carry around trading cards - kind of like baseball cards for police officers.

The kids were really happy about the amount of trading cards they'd collected: