Helping Mommy take care of the flowers

Now that summer is here, we have been spending a lot of time outside. Of course, Mommy and Daddy spend a lot of that time working in the yard. So we've decided that the best way to have more time to relax outside this year is to put our two year old to work. I guess it's a good thing she likes her new spray bottle so much!

Finding frogs

We headed out to Westchester Lagoon to catch a temporary pet. Brian had always caught and kept frogs when he was a kid so we went on a hunt of our own. We had to walk down the bike path a little ways to get to the reeds where the frogs live. Along the way we saw a train,

and picked some wild flowers for our hair

and finally Brian headed into the swamp. He caught a nice fat frog for us to take home. We got him a terrarium, some dirt, a log, a water bowl and bunch of crickets for him to munch. I figure we have about a week until the novelty wears off and then we can return him to the wild.

After Tadpole (Lucy picked his name) was all settled into his vacation home, Lucy and I baked some brownies for fun. She was happy to help me clean up!

Camping at Kenai Lake

Thank you to Neema and Granpi for letting us borrow their RV for another fantastic camping trip. This time we drove south and stayed at Trail River Campground on Kenai Lake. Our campsite was just a few paces from the lake front. Lucy had no chance of running out of rocks to throw into the lake here.

We made s'mores on the campfire. Lucy liked all the components by themselves, but not so much all together. She wasn't too sure what to think of all marshmallow goop on her hands.

We had one rainy day so we spent it in Seward. We had lunch and visited the SeaLife Center. It was fun to see all the animals there. They had a really neat bird room where I actually ducked because one of the birds swooped so close to my head. On our final day we got out on the water. Larry lent us his pack rafts. They are these really neat one person boats. There's just enough room for me to have my legs fully extended. Though they are not intended to be used this way, Lucy sat on my feet, facing me, with her legs on top of mine. We were even able to get the skirt over our legs so that we didn't get wet. We paddled all up and down the shoreline. After a while, Lucy got out and stayed ashore with Brian so I could do some exploring on my own. There's nothing that I can think of that's more peaceful than that.