summer days

We are LOVING this summer weather in April!!!

We got out the water slide on Monday. It reached 92 degrees!

This is Elliot on a brief break from the water slide to play guns. “Mommy! Mommy! Play guns with me!!!” I feel a bit silly running around the yard waving a stick and shouting “Pow! Pow!” But that’s part of my job these days, and I take that job seriously. :)

This weather has also inspired me to start on some gardening. Or more accurately, some weeding.

I took this picture halfway through pulling out the weeds on this little plot that will hopefully be a vegetable garden this summer. We’ll see if I can pull it off.

We have a new visitor around our place. A bear has discovered our compost pile. We haven’t seen him, but he must be pretty big to pull this thing out of the ground. Terrific. I’ve stopped putting food scraps in it, so hopefully he will realize there’s nothing for him here. Go away, bear!

After all the water play, we had some nice big mud puddles in the yard, which Sophie discovered with delight.

She was eating hob nobs and jumping in mud. Can you imagine anything happier for a 3-year-old?

Elliot is not one to enjoy getting dirty, so he chose to pair his hob nob eating with some karate moves instead.

I love this shot of him playing on his own on this rock with the sun spilling in through the trees. It looks like boyhood innocence to me.

This weather also inspired my first run of the season. While Elliot was at school, Sophie and I went for a little jog.

She’s pretty fast.

But I don’t think I’m going to get super fit running with my 3-year-old. I would just get a good pace with her in the stroller, and then she’d want out. We would run together for a ways, and then she would stop to look at a butterfly. Or to throw rocks in the stream. Or to pick a dandelion for me. Then she’d want back in the stroller for a few meters. And then out again…

But it’s all good. These days are golden.