Nat's Summer Plans

As my beautiful Natalie was waiting for summer to arrive she devised a list of things she wanted to do this summer:
1) Go to Six Flags
2) Camp in the backyard
3) Pick Peaches like we used to in Arizona
4) Buy (and eat) cherries
5) Go swimming

So far, we have gone to Six Flags a lot (mostly before it got hot), spent a LOT of time in the pool, and a few weeks ago we had our first cherries. For me, growing up with a cherry tree, summer and cherries are synanamous. Since those first cherries a few weeks ago, we have really been enjoying lots of cherries, blackberries, raspberries, and watermelon. Fresh fruit is one of the best things about summer.






So yesterday we decided we would do our camp out. Of course we had a fire and cooked our hotdogs and s'mores over it. Stephen has been asking for "fire dogs" lately. So he was SO excited about them.

We played basketball in the dark. The kids loved having Daddy lift them up to try to make a basket. The basketball hoop was something Natalie wanted to get Daddy as a gift, so it was fun for her to use play with Daddy. She is so girly, and very cute to watch.


The last (and only other time) we have ever camped was Nov. 2008 shortly before we went to Nat's annual fashion show in Tucson. Funny, how some things like that stick in your memory. It was fun, but it got a little chilly in the middle of the night. Last night was the opposite, so hot and humid it was hard to sleep. Both times it rained, there is something cool about hearing the rain pound on the roof of the tent. Funny because our kids sleep right through it both times.
Nov 2008
Nov 2008



The thing Stephen enjoyed the most about camping out was playing with all the bugs. He termed a new name for the bugs attracted to the light, "night bugs." Really they were the flying potato bugs that are so annoying. He didn't love those bugs, but he had a lot of fun smashing them. There were a few dead ones that he had smashed near the sliding door and Natalie wouldn't come out or in unless someone lifted her over the bugs. She is such a funny girl with her fear of bugs.
Stephen's favorite thing is catching Rolly Polly's. He had this BIG handful of them. He is always picking up Rolly Polly's. I am always finding one in his fist when I buckle him in the car seat--he always manages to find one on the way from the front door to the car. Last night he was finding a ton of them and was in heaven playing with them; he calls them his friends. He is very much influenced by Natalie and he says he likes all the bugs on Natalie's "good bug" list. All the other bugs, he enjoys smashing. He likes to bring them to me to show me too, ugghh. If he finds a dead bug in the house he always brings it to me too. He is such a boy.



At one point, Stephen was sitting on my lap, and he looked up at the second story of our house with all dark windows and said, "HAUNTED!"
For fun, we decided to get the kids little DVD player and watch a movie all snuggled up in the tent. We watched Private Eyes, an old Don Knotts movie. It is David's favorite movie and the first DVD I ever bought. We have tried to get Natalie to watch it before, but she refuses and won't give it a chance because she thinks the opening scene in scary. She tried resisting last night, but after we skipped the opening scene, we finally convinced her it was a funny movie. The kids got too tired to finish it and all days they have been begging to finish watching Don Knotts, who they know from a Scooby Doo guest appearance.



One thing David and I reminisced about last night is how last summer when we were cooking hotdogs over open fires a lot, Natalie would eat them like crazy. In fact, we remember one night she ate 2 1/2 hotdogs. It was that amazing eating that made us comfortable enough to start attempting to wean her off her feeding tube. That was just before we left on her Wish Trip and she was doing great! Maybe by the end of the summer we will get her back to that point.


These sleeping pictures crack me up. They are so cute.
It was hot enough that even Natalie didn't climb inside her sleeping bag!
Stephen was SO happy, he has grown tall enough that he was able to comfortably wear his Batman jammies for the first time last night. The legs were so long before that they just annoyed him TOO much.

Enjoying more berries for breakfast. Already for the pool, just waiting for it to open!! Just last week Natalie told me that summer days are her favorite days. I agree, summer days are the best!!





The only official item left on the Summer Plans list is to pick peaches, can't wait to do that!!