Dog Days

I am still loving me some summer these days.  I have never ever no not ever been a fan of our unbelievable heat and humidity, but this summer has been particularly fun for me and the girls.  We're still spending lots of time outside with popsicles and water hoses, and I'm spending my afternoons reading really obscene amounts of fiction and occasionally working on a project or two.  We happily enjoy our air conditioning with all kinds of shenanigans. 

 And our garden is producing!  Today we enjoyed our first two cherry tomatoes... no time to take a picture of them, as we were too excited to wait before devouring them... and I had all but given up on my tomato plants.  Perhaps I was spoiled by Early Girl tomatoes in previous years?  It just seemed to take forever this year for our garden to grow!  We also harvested an entire bucket full of hot peppers, and apparently I'll be pickling them, because I had no idea how prolific our pepper crop would be this year.  I have absolutely no sweet banana peppers left because Nora likes to pick them before I even know about them and inhale them.  She ate three the other day before lunch.

I am not at all a critter person, but I'm trying desperately not to discourage critter-love in my children.  They know they'd better not bring a worm nearby, but I'll generally tolerate other critters -- especially if they have legs.  The other day, I saw what I thought was a grasshopper; instead, it was the tiniest lizard I have ever seen.  The girls call all of our lizards "Lizzy", and somehow, Phoebe worked up the nerve to try to catch her. 

 

I was amazed when she managed to catch her four times!  Phoebe worked up this precious little house for her lizard (which featured lots of flower petals in a small sidewalk chalk box), but the lizard kept plotting escapes.  Phoebe was undaunted, and repeatedly caught that tiny little Lizzy. 

 

Speaking of critters, the girls were absolutely delighted to learn that they would be meeting some real live horses when we visited some friends in Mississippi.  We had a sweet, sweet time reuniting with these dear friends of ours.  I loved seeing my girls among their children, and we returned home with precious memories of exploding whipped cream, games of Risk played in character, and kids running barefoot for days. 

 

When we returned home, I found myself a little more relaxed.  So relaxed, in fact, that I just let the girls go nuts when they discovered that I hadn't dumped out the swimming pool from the morning's playtime.  They thought I was totally off my rocker.

 

Phoebe now thinks that she gets to go playing in the pool while dressed any time she wears her striped dress.  (She doesn't.)  Nora was far more into painting the sidewalk with our dollar store brushes.  And Ruthie got a rockin' diaper while she was out there, bless her little heart.

And since I'm hopped up on last night's Nyquil-residuals, I think I'm going to end this here.  Happy Weekend, y'all.